Monday, August 22, 2011

“History Lessons” From Idiots

I consider myself a bit of a history buff. While those around me mentally masturbate to pointless fictional dramas, deriving some sick pleasure from watching fake cops catch fake criminals or fake friends going through fake dilemmas, I find far more interest in reading the accounts of events that actually happened.

Does this make me smarter than the average person? I’m going out on a limb here, and I’m going to say, “Yes.” I’m not naturally smarter, but I have made the effort to be informed, and I tend to have a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of events that happen in the past.

To be fair, I don’t know the names of the characters or actors on any “CSI” show. I am truly stupid when it comes to TV trivia, a trade-off I’m comfortable with.

When you have a different outlook on things, one based on nuance and esoteric information most are not privy to, you tend to get a lot of people thinking you’re stupid, ignorant, nuts, or all of the above. For those wondering the difference between stupidity and ignorance: stupid is something you’re born with, ignorance is something you learn (or more often, the result of what you refuse to learn).

When I get e-mails about my stance on Israel/Palestine, a strange thing happens. Generally, people assume I have come to my decision to oppose the formation and existence of Israel through some sort of ignorance, or worse, anti-Semitism. People feel compelled to explain to me, at great length, the “history” of Israel. I use quotes, because usually it’s not a history, so much as a series of unconnected events used to justify a crime against humanity.

I got one such e-mail the other day. The e-mail was 6 pages long when I copied and pasted it to Word, and the sender was confused as to why it didn’t fit in the comments of my blog, insisting I check to see what the error was, because they tried posting it in many different browsers.

Now, before you question the intelligence of this person based on such a silly thing, why don’t I share with you the pre-amble to this “history lesson”:

Usually I wouldn't comment on a blog post by such a small minded, uneducated antisemite masquerading as as [sic] a morally superior anti-zionist, but I'm in a funny mood so what the hell.

Oy vey… this is going to be a hoot, I can tell already.

I contemplated posting the e-mail in full (without the person’s contact info, of course), but frankly… it’s just too long and rambling. I felt like the whole thing never got to the point, even as I was reading the last paragraph. I kept waiting for the history lesson, for something interesting, for anything new, perhaps some novel argument or angle. But no, it’s the same pre-packaged, freeze-dried propaganda I see out of all pro-Israel clowns.

Instead, I’ll try to cull out of the primary arguments, the same stock bullshit I see on a regular basis when discussing this issue, and I’ll explain why these ideas are empty and meaningless to me.

Perhaps one of the strangest points people make when discussing Israel with me is the definition and origin of the very concept of “nation.” I’m quite familiar with the idea of what a nation is or isn’t, how they came about, and all of that. For some reason, it’s a compelling argument for Jews to say that “Palestine was not a nation.”

I’m assuming this is how the logic works: there was no nation of Palestine prior to the formation of the nation of Israel, ergo, there are no Palestinians who have any claim to the land.

Here’s why this makes no sense: it doesn’t matter if a person is living in a tribal system or a national system. Coming to people’s homes at gunpoint and dislocating them against their will from a place their ancestors have lived for generations is criminal.

It also doesn’t matter that Britain controlled the land and was “legally allowed” to do what they did. You can’t hide behind the mask of Colonialism and pretend that just because everything was done “by the books,” that it’s okay. I would have thought that the Jews, of all people, would be sympathetic to the idea that a government order to carry out an immoral act does not justify that act. Apparently the Holocaust was acceptable, since we have all the paperwork and it was clearly done with full bureaucratic approval…

Except, that’s not how morality works…

So anyway, Nazi comparisons aside, another common argument I see constantly brought up is the persecution Jews have experienced in the diaspora or while in the Holy Land prior to the formation of Israel. I’m not 100% sure why everyone mentions this. I guess I’m supposed to shed a tear and feel sorry for the Jews as a people, and then turn a blind eye to what they decide to do now, today.

This is a pretty piss-poor attitude. “Well, horrible things happened to my people, so I can do whatever I want now.” That is what I hear when I listen to people lecture me on the persecution of Jews while defending the existence of Israel.

I also think, “Yeah, what a great idea, let’s encourage anti-Semitism by telling Jews they’ll never be able to be accepted by other cultures. Instead of encouraging tolerance, let’s ship them all back to Israel. Next step: shipping the niggers back to Africa.”

That’s truly a healthy way of looking at things: let’s ship people we don’t like someplace else. And not just anyplace else, we’ll move them someplace where people already lived, and in the process, we’ll create a whole new population of oppressed people from that general region.

Frankly, I find the very notion of Israel to be anti-Semitic. I see the “Jewish Problem” in Europe being “solved” by a bunch of Jew-hating Western nations shipping their Jews off to the world’s largest concentration camp, conveniently surrounded by people who already hate them. Sounds like a good recipe for Jewish extermination.

Another major argument I read regarding why I should have sympathy for Israel is that Israel is constantly being attacked. These people generally leave out the “why,” and when I ask them why Israel is attacked, I generally get no real answer. The reply I most often hear revolves around “anti-Semitism,” which is the catch-all argument for everything having to do with Jews or Israel.

News flash: the people attacking Israel are largely people who have been adversely affected by the very creation of Israel, or are sympathetic to the victims of these violations. Israel routinely uses excessive force and needlessly kills scores of innocent civilians in their campaign to instill fear in the surrounding non-Jewish communities. Entire villages are decimated because of reports of rocket fire perpetrated by just a few individuals in the area.

The Muslim people in the region have grown to hate Israel, and I would argue that they’re justified in their violent rage. I don’t condone specific acts of violence, but I fully understand that when an outside, foreign people invade and occupy your home, there are going to be plenty of people in the affected communities who fight such a thing. Personally, I would get the fuck out of the whole area and try to start over, but the urge to defend your home is generally seen as an acceptable response to invasion… unless, apparently, those invaders are Jewish and they have UN approval.

It’s strange, really, because people who support these Jewish foreign occupiers ask me, “Don’t people have a right to defend their homes?” When they say this, they always mean the Israelis should have a right to defend Israel, not that the people whose homes they took have a right to defend what was theirs.

These are basically the only arguments I ever hear made. There are other distractionary points hurled from time to time, irrelevant tangents which serve only to muddy the waters. Things like, “The US took land from the Indians” or “Israel is a beacon of Western democracy” don’t address the facts at hand, they are merely meant to veer the discussion off course, because if one focuses solely on the events as they occurred, there is no conclusion one can come to besides complete and utter dismissal of the right of Israel to exist as a nation.

This is important, because as an American, my country’s stance on Israel is just another dark-spot on our history. We funnel billions in cash and weapons to Israel to fund ongoing war crimes. Speaking out against Israel can get you fired in the US, especially if you work in the press. No federal politician dares to speak out, for fear of being labeled an “anti-Semite” or losing out on huge amounts of pro-Israeli lobby cash.

At some point, every sane and rational person is going to see Israel for the travesty that it is, even if it’s decades from now, through the retrospective lens of history. I hope there are still plenty of Jews around then to see the error of their ways.

And one final note: if you can’t make an argument in favor of Israel without using the term “anti-Semitism,” you are a lazy and ignorant debater.

60 comments:

  1. I think the comparison with America is quite valid.

    The question at hand is really if foreigners are allowed to settle in bought or unoccupied territories, eventually create a state where they are the majority.

    If the answer is no: then it is no to Israel, no to the US and spanish-dominated south-american states.

    If the answer is yes, then yes to the USA & south american states & Israel.

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  2. What you're failing to grasp is that I don't feel any moral obligation to defend the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the US. I believe such actions were/are/will always be wrong, whether they happen in Israel or the Americas or China (I also support Tibet).

    This is why you have failed to understand how meaningless such a comparison is. You can't appeal to American apple pie patriotism with me. I ignore emotional arguments that have no moral basis.

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  3. Well, but you benefit from those "crimes against humanity", so you legitimize them de facto.

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  4. A child of rape doesn't legitimize the rapist. I'm all for providing compensation to modern survivors of the atrocities committed against all people. Jews are paid reparations by Germany, and now it's time for Jews to pay back those whose land they took and stop the practice of ghetto-izing an entire population of people.

    I stand by my view that just because the Jews were persecuted in Europe does not mean the answer was to create a new diasporic population of non-Jews.

    This is tantamount to trying to excuse Israel's treatment based on the fact that other nations won't take the Palestinians in, the argument is, "But everyone else is doing it!" All I hear about Israel is how morally superior it is compared to its neighbors, and that is why I should support them. I don't see any difference between Israelis and Arabs, except of course for their military budgets, which allows Israel to be "successful," and is why I dislike them more in the end.

    Israel has "succeeded" in beating back the Arab world mercilessly, and they have also succeeded in making me completely lose any sympathy I might have for them, and probably succeeded as well in opening festering cultural wounds that will never heal.

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  5. Since you are well-versed in history of Israel/Palestine, you might perhaps be able to answer a question I have been wondering about for quite some time.

    What is the cumulative budget of UNRWA from its start till today (or last year)?

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  6. Clearly aid money to an impoverished people is equal to infrastructure and weapons of war to a nation given everything up front.

    I'm not sure why you're proud of the fact that the Palestinians are dependent on foreign aid to survive. Any idea how many aid ships have been sunk or captured, and how many aid workers wounded or killed by Israel, off the top of your head?

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  7. My question is genuine. I like to collect facts about this conflict, so I would like to know how much it is.

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  8. As is mine. I guess I just value lives and you value money.

    Let's see... 1.23 billion in 2010-2011. That's almost half of what the US gives to Israel. Oh wait, no... that's half of the military aid we give to Israel. Right, including the planes they use to slaughter civilians.

    I can't believe you're stupid enough to want to get into money on this matter.

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  9. On the uNRWA website, they say they have 1.2 billion $ budget for 2010.

    GDP of the palestinian territories, according to wikipaedia, was just under 13 billion dollars in 2009. In the same year, foreign aid (I suppose this just means what was donated directly by states, not UNRWA) was 1.4 billion, i.e roughly 10% of gdp.

    So 15

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  10. What is your bloody point? That Palestinians should be more poor and more destitute?

    I think your point is to distract from the facts that matter, like I said from the beginning.

    Israel is a travesty.

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  11. Yes, I just checked. USA gives around 2.5 billion a year to Israel in military aid. (I had 1 billion in mind...)

    "I can't believe you're stupid enough to want to get into money on this matter."

    Oh, I thought you were an intellectual and interested in facts. I am quite disappointed that you resort to expletives so quickly.

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  12. That isn't an expletive. You're a fucking idiot. That is an expletive.

    Bring something that doesn't bore me or shut the fuck up.

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  13. "What is your bloody point?"
    More expletives?

    I don't have a bloody point, nor an unbloody one. I just wanted to take this occasion to collect more facts. This is what intellectual debate adds to my knowledge: it gives an occasion to stumble onto questions, look up facts, compare, etc.

    However, I understand that your point is mainly emotional, so, understandably, you are not interested in facts. I was induced into understandig that you were interested in facts from the introduction of your article:

    "I consider myself a bit of a history buff. While those around me mentally masturbate to pointless fictional dramas, deriving some sick pleasure from watching fake cops catch fake criminals or fake friends going through fake dilemmas, I find far more interest in reading the accounts of events that actually happened.

    Does this make me smarter than the average person? I’m going out on a limb here, and I’m going to say, “Yes.” I’m not naturally smarter, but I have made the effort to be informed, and I tend to have a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of events that happen in the past."

    Turns out this was quite misleading.

    ReplyDelete
  14. You have presented zero facts, and have instead sent me on a fact-finding errand because you're too lazy to do any research yourself.

    I have nothing to say to you unless you're actually here to present an argument.

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  15. "You're a fucking idiot. That is an expletive.

    Bring something that doesn't bore me or shut the fuck up."

    Sorry. Again: I was mislead by your introduction, where you presented yourself as a history buff. So I supposed that facts (or figures) would not bore you.

    But no offense taken. I'm a nerd. I hoped you were one too. Turns out I was wrong.

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  16. I have done this stupid dance many times. You have provided me with nothing new and you have bored the fuck out of me, hence all the fucks.

    ReplyDelete
  17. "You have presented zero facts, and have instead sent me on a fact-finding errand because you're too lazy to do any research yourself."

    You said you were a history buff, so I assumed you would know. You didn't. Fine. Even a history buff cannot know everything. The cumulative budget seems indeed a bit tricky to research, since one would have to look up all the annual reports and add up the figures, unless one has a source that presents the sum as such...

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  18. BY the way: I find your reaction quite interesting.

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  19. If the US gave $1 trillion dollars a year to Palestine, this would not excuse Israel from treating Palestinians the way they do.

    Your question is irrelevant on many levels. Even if we calculated all UN aid to Palestinians, there is outside aid we would be missing. NGOs, other nations, etc. But in the end, I have to ask: what is the point of tallying it up?

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  20. Also, tell me how many aid workers and members of the media Israel has killed. I did research, now it's your turn.

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  21. "You have provided me with nothing new"

    However, I would have been happy if you could have provided me with something new.

    Turns out this was not the case.

    No, hang on: I got new insights into the "discussion culture" of "history buffs" in america.

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  22. "Also, tell me how many aid workers and members of the media Israel has killed. I did research, now it's your turn."

    I am all ears. Since you did the research, the most economical thing would be for you to share your knowledge...

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  23. You try a person's patience and then you bitch about the results.

    Have you bothered looking up what I asked yet, or too busy moaning?

    ReplyDelete
  24. No, you do the work, you lazy, ignorant fool.

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  25. "what is the point of tallying it up?"

    Pure interest in those kinds of statistics. It could be considered as stupid as counting the stairs from my home to the main station, but there are nerds who are interested in these kinds of figures.

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  26. Your comments are serving only to derail. In one dozen comments, you have provided zero facts and attempted only to side-step the issue at hand, which is that Israel is the perpetrator of an ongoing civil rights catastrophe.

    Bring facts or an argument, or I'm considering your comments spam.

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  27. "No, you do the work, you lazy, ignorant fool."

    I do my work by practising english with you. That is my overall aim when posting on english-language blogs.

    By the way: Your reactions remind me a lot of many right-wing Israeli-american blogs. No, actually, you are worse. They do not start profanity when people ask innocent questions. In general, they start with expletives when dissenting opinions are expressed.

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  28. Do you realize that this entie ppost was about how irritating it is to talk to people who just waltz around the issue when discussing Israel?

    You are literally commenting in a post about how I hate when people do what you're doing right now.

    Does that register with you? I wrote this post about people like you.

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  29. "Bring facts or an argument, or I'm considering your comments spam."

    Oh, and here comes the censor with the big scissors. Anything but theist, I am disappointed. You just disqualified yourself as an intellectual.

    ReplyDelete
  30. You've left 13 comments and said nothing. Even if I deleted everything here, there would be no loss. Instead, all I have is your tripe filling my comments, and again, you not doing your part by researching how many aid workers and media members have been murdered in cold blood by Israel.

    You can choose to make a contribution to this discussion at any time, but you get hung up and whining about what I call you or asking me to do your research for you. Research, tell me something interesting, or even ask a question that isn't based on esoteric minutia.

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  31. This is a pretty piss-poor attitude. “Well, horrible things happened to my people, so I can do whatever I want now.” That is what I hear when I listen to people lecture me on the persecution of Jews while defending the existence of Israel.

    That would be my summary as well. I have watched a few documentaries and panels about Israel and, as in anything else, it's obviously not all black and white, but Israel is exaggerating for sure. Why did they have to expand their border, just to name that one thing?

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  32. ABT,

    I have tried a quick google search for murders committed by Israel, but I am having trouble finding a reliable source. Most sites, either for or against have clear bias' and I was wondering if you could send me a link to a site that has figures on how many aid workers and media people were killed by Israeli soldiers. It would also be helpful if I could find out the circumstances of the killings.

    This is not a challenge, I am not trying to argue with you. I am genuinely interested, I just don't have much experience with researching these subjects. Thanks!

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  33. I wrote a complete rebuttal to your nutty interpretation of the situation in the Middle East, but it is around 1500 words, which would be many comments in blogger, and I can tell that you have no understanding of Israel's position and you are so sold on your completely one-sided interpretation that you somehow see the most violent side, the side that answesr to terrorists, houses them among civilians, and then criticizes the Jews for fighting back.

    You further think the fictitious Palestinian people lost their nation, a nation they never had. You then fail to examine how they may have lost it, which means, became occupied by Israel instead of being occupied by Syria, Jordan, etc. and before that, Britain (and Saudi Arabia?). The nomads have never had an organized government, so they have always been occupied, and they are not a people, but many peoples with a common goal, and freedom or peace is not it.

    The Israelis are defending themselves against terrorists acts against children. They cannot return the land to the Palestinian government because there never was one. They cannot safely return the most strategic lands to Jordan, Syrian, etc., because those nations are still periodically trying to finish the job they started in 1967, and Israel would be foolish to assume that it would suddenly stop.

    I wish I could find a quote of the statement where Yassir Arafat said if the tribes would unite as a people, they could take the Holy Land back to its rightful owner (Allah, I presume).

    If the Palestinians did not house militants among civilians and constantly attack Israel, they would be left alone. Israel tried repeatedly, but the fictitious "Palestinian people" do what they do to gain world support, and oddly, enough, bringing terrorists and militants into the their children's homes, moving a war from the battlegrounds to the villages of their wives and children in order to prevent the enemy from striking them back, works. It is a win/win, if the Israel doesn't fight back, the war keeps coming and if they do they get condemned by a world of taxi cab drivers and dry cleaners who have no clue what their talking about.

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  34. @ John Myste

    Something in your comment is very ironic. You start by saying that you wrote "complete rebuttal to your nutty interpretation of the situation in the Middle East, but it is around 1500 words", implying that you have a detailed and complex opinion to express.

    Yet, your comment seems to boil down to a 'us versus them' mentality where there has to be a 'good guy', us, versus a 'bad guy', them.

    We all know, and I am sure you agree, that reality is much more complicated than that...

    So, in the case of Isreal, I won't even try to argue with you since you seem to know so much and I am just some random guy who watches documentary once in a while, but here's my concern with all this:

    When is it ok for a government to build a wall around a specific territory, preventing almost anybody from entering or leaving that territory? When is it ok to build a wall in another part of the country, regardless of the people living there?

    There are bad people on both sides, but one side is randomly shooting home-made rockets while the other is targeting a particular population using advanced military technology.

    I am all for the self-defence of Israel, but from an external point of view, the imbalance in power and the use of force seems to point to something more than just a fight against terrorism...

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  35. Rebbe: I asked largely as a rhetorical question. The number isn't significant to me, personally, and I question if such a statistic would be easy to find (I think you would probably have to find the data through carefully reading news articles going back decades). My point was primarily to get people looking, to see there are times where the Israeli army's callous tactics kill not just dirty brown Palestinians, but also sacred white Westerners. If people didn't devalue the lives of Palestinians to the level of animals on a farm to be slaughtered, I wouldn't even bother pointing out Israel kills innocent aid workers and members of the media. My point was primarily, "Look at how careless the Israeli army is." And they are a heavy-handed, over-reactionary bunch.

    John... you obviously didn't read anything I wrote on the matter. I specifically pointed out that the very concept of "nation" did not apply to Palestine, but that imaginary lines drawn on a map by Westerners does not define whether a people can be relocated through violence.

    It's not about "returning land to the Palestinian government," it's about ending Palestinian apartheid in the region. It's about tearing down the wall, ending economic sanctions, and no longer cutting a people off from the rest of the world.

    John, do you honestly have any idea how Israel was "formed?"

    Hugo: I often wonder if the Jews are the same people who supposedly gave the world the concept of, "An eye for an eye" when all I see is kids throwing rocks and the response is tanks rolling in under cover of heavy air strikes.

    There are good guys in this situation, and there are bad guys, and there are some on both sides, but it seems like the good guys on the Palestinian side pay a heavier price for the crimes of their fellow bad guys than the good guys on the Israeli side. It seems unfair, so I have no shame in supporting a people whose religion I simultaneously find appalling.

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  36. Hello everyone. I'm the idiot Bret was referring to in the above post. Bret challenged me to try and break down the "history lesson" I sent him by e-mail into a series of comments on the blog ("anything worth writing is worth reading"). I originally tried posting it as one big comment to:

    http://anythingbuttheist.blogspot.com/2011/03/israelpalestine-update.html

    Here it goes:

    Usually I wouldn't comment on a blog post by such a small minded, uneducated antisemite masquarading as as a morally superior anti-zionist, but I'm in a funny mood so what the hell.

    Of course starting out with an ad-hominem attack is probably just going to put you on the defensive instead of getting any meaningful insight through so I'll balance it out by saying we probably have a lot in common even though I live in Israel and my family comes from Jewish ancestry. Heck, I'm writing this from a settlement beyond the "green" line, what you would probably think of as occupied Palestinian land! Great weather we're having BTW.

    If you've stereotyped everyone that lives here as flag waving theists you may be surprised to learn that I too am an atheist, and my sense of identity doesn't really involve any form of tribal nationalism. I view myself as a relatively sane conscious sentient entity, a Western humanist and a member of the human species. In that order.

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  37. (continued from above post)

    I happen to live in Israel but find Zionism every bit as absurd as any other form tribalism rooted in god-delusional theistic mind viruses. I believe Israel to be very inconveniently situated in the middle east. That Israel's national identity is based on false shared myths. I'd even go as far as saying that the particular brand of monotheism that modern Judiasm grew up from was inherently evil. The whole notion of an angry male jealous sky god creator that gave genocidal precedence to "his" people over other ethnic groups, it just doesn't sit well with me. According to the bible, in their original conquest of Israel the Hebrew tribes exhibited all the tolerance and morality of the Nazi party in Germany. Pagan cities such as Jericho were destroyed. Everyone put to death down the last man, woman and child. By divine decree no less. Karma's a bitch though and the universe doesn't really care whether or not a community believes itself to be "chosen" by divinity. The rebellion against the Roman empire still failed. The Jewish vassal state was dismantled and the remnants of the population kicked out to suffer through a nearly 2000 year long diaspora. Ironically the Jews that didn't blend in were often hated and treated poorly due to intolerance by people infected with Christianity and Islam, Judiasm's theistic demon spawn. Judiasm's children may have mutated a bit and blended in with local culture but the seed of holy righteousness coupled with intolerance (compared with previous Pagan religious beliefs) survived to germinate new and improved forms of intolerance.

    In other words, the jews in the diaspora who didn't assimilate into the local mutated versions of monotheism were made to suffer by the very same form of intolerance their ancestors pioneered in the "hold land" centuries earlier.

    But not just the jews. The human race suffered. Countless wars fought. Millions butchered in clashes between populations infected with subtly different versions of intolerant monotheistic mind viruses. A stupid waste that demonstrates just how true the saying goes that insanity while rare in the individual is the rule in large groups.

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  38. (continued from the above)

    Fast forward a couple of thousand years to the 19th century. "Palestine" as Mark Twain who visits the area in 1867 describes it is a barren desolation. There is no Palestinian people (yet). In fact, Arabs in the middle east at that time in general don't have a sense of national identity. Local tribal identity, yes. Allegiance to the extended family, yes. But sorry no nationalism. The modern concept of a nation state is imported into the region mostly thanks to Western colonial conquest by the British and French.

    Meanwhile, one facet of the religious intolerance seeded thousands of years earlier in the Mediterranean has festered into a form of pervasive antisemitism that has infected most of Europe, where Jews are feeling increasingly unwelcome. These is the ground in which the seeds of Zionism are planted. Jews are hated, discriminated against, periodically butchered. They're looking for refuge. Israel is mostly desolate. Historically there have been good relationships between Arabs/Muslims and Jews, at least relative to Christianity (e.g., look up Golden age of Jewish culture in Muslim Spain) . So Zionism seems like a good idea. The Turks who control Israel don't mind too much anyhow as long as key individuals in are being payed to be friendly by Rothschild.

    Fast forward a few decades later the Turkish empire has collapsed. Nature abhors a vacuum and so Arab national identity starts rearing its head. A flood of relatively well educated European Jews fueled by a sense of manifest destiny are bent on nation building and have bootstrapped a minor economic miracle. As the economy improves tens of thousands of Arabs immigrate from neighboring regions. These are the ancestors of the bulk of the "palestinian" people.

    In Syria, leaders of the pan-islamic movement dream of creating a united Arab country spanning the entire middle east including what we now know as Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Jordan. The national ambitions of a few hundred thousand pesky infidel Jews are getting in the way though. There is no negotiating with the Arab leadership though. Arab nationalism and "Palestinian" identity are being cynically flamed to block any peaceful resolution. All proposals that include a Jewish sovereign nation are rejected outright. Why negotiate when you believe you can just annihilate the fledgling Jewish state by force. Arab national leadership (look up "Haj Amin al Husseini") allies with the Nazis. A murderous pact is drawn. The arabs will assist the Nazis in their military campaigns in the regions and when Romel reaches Israel will help deliver the Jews into the hands of the Nazis in an orderly fashion to be slaughtered in local death camps.

    Luckily for the Jews the Nazis don't get that far, and a few years later they somehow manage to survive simultaneous invasion by 5 arab armies. It's a brave feat, though perhaps not as surprising once you consider the technological and cultural gap between the Arabs and the Jews at the time.

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  39. (continued from the above)

    Modern Israel is an outpost of Western civilization. It's far from perfect, but it's a paradise compared with its backwards Arab neighbors still stuck in a culture of desert honor and local tribalism. Over and over again, despite being vastly outnumbered in people and raw resources this brave little Western outpost beats back the tide of hostile Arabs bent on total physical annihilation.

    Note the moral gap. If they only could the Arabs would have gladly served the Jews up to the Nazis without any moral qualms. More recently, elected palestinian organizations such as Hamas have openly declared their intentions to destroy Israel and sanction the cold blooded murder of defenseless women and children. "When Palestine is liberated the trees themselves will cry out to the holy warriors to come kill any Jew hiding behind them". That's from the Hamas's official manifesto. OTOH, Israel's military could easily annihilate the Palestians who are virtually defenseless in comparison. But it's unthinkable that would actually happen because any nutjob who tried giving that order would be immediately arrested. Either that or civil war. I served in the Israeli military. They drill into you what sort of commands are illegal (e.g., intentionally attacking civilians). And don't get all self righteous with me about civilian collateral damage. Intentions matter. Military action happens in the chaos of the real world where enemy combatants intentionally blend themselves in with the civilian population. Shit happens.

    Modern jewish culture may be descended from ferocious genocidal Hebrew tribes, but it mellowed out a lot in the Diaspora. Arab culture on the other hand has become more violent and radicalized in what I think is a response to the Western cultural invasion that they perceive as threatening their traditional culture and values.

    If forced to pick a side any sane, well-informed Western individual should be rooting for Israel, not the Palestinians. Not that it really matters who you root for. Israel isn't asking the rest of the world for permission to exist or taking popularity polls.

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  40. (continued from above)

    Ultimately the ability of a nation to defend its sovereignty is the only thing that gives it a right to exist. Nations have no divine right to a land. Borders change. The Earth's crust doesn't care which particular tribe of bipedal apes are crawling on top of it. Neither the "Jewish" people or the so called "Palestinians". Jews have exactly the same rights to live in Israel as Europeans have to live in the Americas. Might makes right. Maybe that offends your sensibilities but that's how history has always worked. People like you just provide proof to Zionists who believe antisemitism as some sort of incurable mind virus that will never go away, but just take different and better disguised forms when outright naked Jew hating is unfashionable enough to force crypto-antisemites to rationalize their deep seated hatred of Jews in the name of a bogus morality while carefully cherry picking who to apply it to. For example, Israel-bashing is very popular in some "elite" intellectual circles in Europe for example, but I don't see those same Europeans bashing the US for taking over "native american" lands. Or Russia for their brutal military campaigns in Chechnya. By comparison Israel treats the Palestinians with silk gloves. But Israel is an easy target. It's this tiny little country that has offended Arab honor a few times too many by demonstrating the superiority of Western civilization and technology. Israel can be trampled on. It has no real power in the world scene. It doesn't really care how many toothless anti-Israeli UN resolutions are announced. On the other hand, Arabs are important. They're very particular with their honor. They have oil which the rest of the world is hopelessly addicted to. Backing the Arabs is just good politics. Israel's only real resource is its people. Unfortunately a type of people who infuriate the world by believing they are very special in the eyes of the allmighty alpha and omega. Espousing that kind of belief publicly is like painting a great big bulls eye on you. Such an easy target.

    Anyhow, for those frothing at the mouth for Israel's destruction, please try to keep in mind that Israel has a shit-load of nukes. Enough to annihilate every major city in the middle east several times over. The nuclear program was designed to deter the Soviet Union, which used to support the Arabs in its proxy war with the US during the cold war. So like it or not Israel is probably here to stay in one form or another, regardless of how much disguised Jew hating pseudo-intellectuals such as yourself despise the fact. Pending nuclear Armageddon of mutually assured destruction once other countries (e.g., Iran) in the region also get their hands on nukes.

    Don't fret however. You're just wasting all that negativity. Israel will probably persist for years after the current batch of antisemites (sorry "anti-zionists") are dead. Like a potentially malignant tumor that is too dangerous to try and operate on. But trends in demographics (anti-zionist ultra-orthodox jews have much larger families) makes it likely in my mind that at least as an outpost of Western civilization Israel won't survive for very much longer. In 30-40 years it's probably going to be a much more religious, piss poor corrupt third world country. With tons of nukes and a sense of divine right. Everyone sane with marketable job skills will have fled elsewhere by then.

    Who knows, if they wait long enough all those anti-zionists might even get their wish and see Israel collapse into itself and the Arabs taking over without a nuclear exchange that turns millions into radioactive ash. But I don't see how replacing a relatively secular western nation with a more religious and probably dysfunctional Arab/muslim nation is going to do the world any good.

    Peace out.

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  41. (Ah, blogger seems to have dropped one of my comments. The following should have gone before the last comment.)

    Modern Israel is an outpost of Western civilization. It's far from perfect, but it's a paradise compared with its backwards Arab neighbors still stuck in a culture of desert honor and local tribalism. Over and over again, despite being vastly outnumbered in people and raw resources this brave little Western outpost beats back the tide of hostile Arabs bent on total physical annihilation.

    Note the moral gap. If they only could the Arabs would have gladly served the Jews up to the Nazis without any moral qualms. More recently, elected palestinian organizations such as Hamas have openly declared their intentions to destroy Israel and sanction the cold blooded murder of defenseless women and children. "When Palestine is liberated the trees themselves will cry out to the holy warriors to come kill any Jew hiding behind them". That's from the Hamas's official manifesto. OTOH, Israel's military could easily annihilate the Palestians who are virtually defenseless in comparison. But it's unthinkable that would actually happen because any nutjob who tried giving that order would be immediately arrested. Either that or civil war. I served in the Israeli military. They drill into you what sort of commands are illegal (e.g., intentionally attacking civilians). And don't get all self righteous with me about civilian collateral damage. Intentions matter. Military action happens in the chaos of the real world where enemy combatants intentionally blend themselves in with the civilian population. Shit happens.

    Modern jewish culture may be descended from ferocious genocidal Hebrew tribes, but it mellowed out a lot in the Diaspora. Arab culture on the other hand has become more violent and radicalized in what I think is a response to the Western cultural invasion that they perceive as threatening their traditional culture and values.

    If forced to pick a side any sane, well-informed Western individual should be rooting for Israel, not the Palestinians. Not that it really matters who you root for. Israel isn't asking the rest of the world for permission to exist or taking popularity polls.

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  42. @Bret,

    I actually assumed you did not respond to my comment, as I received no email notification. I don't have time to address your well-expressed concerns now, but I will whet your appetite.

    You asked if I have any idea how Israel was formed. I have studied the issue is some depth and know quite a bit about it.

    In my younger days, I not only read books about the early establishment of Israel (admittedly inferior time life books, but books, nonetheless, but I studied the Jewish People and their history, and to a lesser degree, Yassir Arafat. I followed the PLO’s movements closely.

    For a brief period of a few years, I even followed, not just the conflict, but the political system in Israel almost as closely as I followed our own, up to, and including reading Sha'ar La 'Mathil, an Isreali Newspaper, in Hebrew, a language I have unfortunately mostly forgotten through lack of use.

    I was trying to vent without getting into fallacious details, because how Israel was formed is completely irrelevant to what is happening now, or should be, which is the point I was trying to make. However, I reject the theory that Israel has less historical claim to the land than the fictitious "Palestinian people." If you start at 1967, my point is very obvious. If you go back to 1948, it gets a little murky. If you go back to 1917, it becomes a cloud of confusion, and you back before that, you are insane. I acknowledge that this fact is not germane to the current situation, but incidentally, I reject it the claim of the “Palestinian People” as valid, not only because the group they claim to be has no more of a claim then the Jewish people, but also because there is no such thing as a “Palestinian People.”

    I have much on my plate right now, but I can see that you (and Tom Harper) are passionate about this topic and as this is the second time I vowed to stay out of the hotbed of disagreement, it seems I will not be able to.

    I will respond in due time. Please be patient. It has just been added to my list of pending posts. I will reference your arguments, though not by name unless you want me to, in which case I will link to them.

    The post will not be on Mysterious Things. It will be a political Post at John Myste Responds, using, among other things, your article as a source for claims made.

    Unfortunately, I have very little time to work on original posts, so they come slowly. I am always posting rebuttals to non-sense at Saving Common Sense, Fair and Unbalanced, Mad Mikes America, etc. and that takes up a large amount of my time.

    You have been added to the list, this list:

    1. Satire arguing in favor of Trickle Down Theory and the Rich Man’s Chin.

    2. My liberalism: If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. Letter to Emerson. Includes false attacks on me and Self-Reliance statements, coupled with defense of intellectually honesty and not having to have the answers.

    3. The crucifixion Story (Satire).

    4. The Father vs. the Son: a Heavenly Debate (Satire)

    5. Paul’s Faith (scholarly)

    6. Foibles of God. Foibles of the Christian Gods (started, satire).

    7. Abortion (Fallacies both sides use, critical thinking, logical)

    8. Hunter’s Folly (opinion)

    9. The Truth Shall Set You Free – Openness (Literary)

    10. The "Facts" Prove Nothing (Critical Thinking)

    11. The Palestinian Conflict (see: http://anythingbuttheist.blogspot.com/2011/08/history-lessons-from-idiots.htm) (Political).

    ReplyDelete
  43. "Also, tell me how many aid workers and members of the media Israel has killed."

    Here are the statistics for the media workers:

    http://cpj.org/killed/mideast/israel-and-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/

    13 Journalists were killed in "Israel and the occupied Territories" since 1992.
    8 died in crossfire/combat
    in 3 cases, the motives were not confirmed
    1 was killed while participating actively in riots
    http://cpj.org/killed/2002/issam-tillawi.php

    1 was murdered by palestinian troops.
    http://cpj.org/killed/2007/suleiman-abdul-rahim-al-ashi.php

    In Iraq, 53 Journalists were killed in crossfire since 2004.

    In Russia, 76 journalists were killed since 1992-

    In Columbia, 76 journalists were killed since 1992.

    But since you mentionned that statistics were boring, I am sure that all this is of no interest whatsoever to you.

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  44. Any stats on foreign aid workers killed? More than 13 have died at a time during various incidents in my lifetime.

    ReplyDelete
  45. Can you remember the incidents and when they were?

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  46. I recall one was aboard a Turkish aid flotilla, which I believe happened just last year.

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  47. By the way: most of the UNRWA workers, for example, are locals. I doubt the Unrwa, if they have statistics on their aid workers killed, make a difference between "local" and "foreing".

    By the way, among the 13 journalists killed where 1 Italian, 1 English, 1 Lebenase, the others, were not "foreign" as far as I can tell.

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  48. It matters to you where someone who is killed is from? I mean, it matters in a statistical gathering sense, but a death is a death.

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  49. In the flotilla incident 2010, 9 persons were killed (that was less than 13 last time I did math, but I might have missed somehting).

    What are the other incidents you remember?

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  50. "It matters to you where someone who is killed is from? I mean, it matters in a statistical gathering sense, but a death is a death."

    It seems to matter to you, since you asked about FOREIGN aid workers. I suppose that those statistics are more complicated to come by than overall aid workers.

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  51. I'll tell you what, you can count Israeli aid workers.

    And I guess 9 dead aid workers isn't enough to care, just enough to nit-pick details about my wording.

    You're basically an asshole who's more concerned with semantics than the fact that you support state terrorism.

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  52. And if you want to be a cunt about wording, maybe your problem is you are searching for "foreing" aid workers, which isn't a fucking word, you ignorant shit.

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  53. Well, you just claimed that you remember severall incidents where more than 13 aid workers were killed at a time.

    One more time, I errounously trusted that there was knowledge behind what you said. But you seem to know much less about the situation than you yourself assume.

    By the way, that turned out to be typical of americans. In a school performance test, students in different nations were asked to do the test and then they were asked how they viewed their performance.

    US student viewed their performance best and did worst.
    Students from a far east country, I think it was South Corea, did best and viewed their performance worst.

    or, as they say in German: Sie haben eine ausgebildete Einbildung und eine eingebildetet Ausbildung.

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  54. I doubt South Corea did anything, because that isn't a country.

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  55. No, I searched for "aid workers killed", without foreign or foreing.

    Oh, and over here verbal aggression and dirty speech are the typical apanage of people who have nothing in their brains. I cannot tell whether this applies to the US, but it certainly seems to apply to you: no arguments, let's curse.

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  56. might well be. Perhaps it was South Korea...

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  57. Here is a page with statistics about humanitarian aid workers killed in the world.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_humanitarian_workers#Countries_with_the_highest_number_of_aid_workers_killed_.281997.E2.80.932003.29

    Israel is not on the list, so one could assume that less than 5 aid-workers were killed from 1997 to 2003, and less than 12 from 2003 to 2008.

    This is all I can say for now. There are some links to institutes who seem to have more precise statistics, but their documents are not freely available.

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  58. It might be an easier topic to research is Israel did not suppress media coverage of such events.

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  59. Here is an article stating that 10 aid workers were killed during the Gaza war.

    http://news.change.org/stories/aid-worker-fatalities-in-2009

    As I told you, it does not specify whether they were foreign or local. So I am afraid I will not be able to answer how many foreign aid workers were killed.

    As for Israel suppressing information: no, I do not think that little Israel can tell big UNRWA which information to publish or not to publish in their reports.

    There seem to be fatalities prior to 2008, but not many.

    This article, for example states, that one UNRWA aid worker was killed in 2002 and that it was the first fatality since 2000. Again, it does not state the nationalty: your errand to find out the number of FOREIGN aid workers' fatalities is difficult to fulfill.

    ReplyDelete
  60. http://reliefweb.int/node/97167

    Sorry, I forgot the link..

    ReplyDelete

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