tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post6324603269997786346..comments2023-11-27T23:30:40.341-05:00Comments on Anything But Theist: Last Post on Israel For A BitAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-82540303515205599752012-04-21T23:34:40.766-04:002012-04-21T23:34:40.766-04:00http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/0...http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/004/029/disgusted-mother-of-god.png<br /><br />@Bret -slow clap-Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-63687306190971847262011-08-29T02:30:04.132-04:002011-08-29T02:30:04.132-04:00You mean through passive-aggressive statements and...You mean through passive-aggressive statements and ad hominem attacks? No, I got that covered. I have so much to learn from you... why not share your effete enlightenment?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-76486155679176787642011-08-29T02:28:30.795-04:002011-08-29T02:28:30.795-04:00I have an opinion on the matter, but I saw here an...I have an opinion on the matter, but I saw here and in earlier posts that you are not quite receptive for opinions that are not exactely the same as yours, so I do not think it is worthwhile discussing my opinion with you. You do not know much, you think you know it all, and you cannot even sustain a debate in a way adults would.Bloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-55327039232651668282011-08-29T01:41:02.841-04:002011-08-29T01:41:02.841-04:00And I would say you're obsessed with me, and y...And I would say you're obsessed with me, and you're not adding much of anything to the discussion. Do you have any real opinion on the matter, or did you just come to bitch?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-25357079913936536942011-08-29T01:40:10.934-04:002011-08-29T01:40:10.934-04:00I did not say you were an idiot, I would rather sa...I did not say you were an idiot, I would rather say that you are quite pretentious and that there is not much behind your claims of being an expert or knowing your stuff. That's all.Bloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-21832119312451950532011-08-29T00:51:08.878-04:002011-08-29T00:51:08.878-04:00So I'm an idiot who knows more about the situa...So I'm an idiot who knows more about the situation in Israel than you. What does that make you?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-91660550311943388032011-08-28T20:52:46.165-04:002011-08-28T20:52:46.165-04:00True. But over here you would not need to be an ex...True. But over here you would not need to be an expert on Libya in order to know that benghazi is a city in Libya. It is just part of general culture.<br /><br />I suppose it is all just a question of reference values. When you claim that you are smarter than the average person, you probably refer to the average shown here.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WBtyG2OJvw&feature=fvwrelBloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-20169180666154200922011-08-28T20:36:52.601-04:002011-08-28T20:36:52.601-04:00I didn't claim to be an expert on Libya, so it...I didn't claim to be an expert on Libya, so it makes perfect sense to me.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-7592717949729290932011-08-28T20:18:52.804-04:002011-08-28T20:18:52.804-04:00BY the way: I am no subject of Her Majesty the Que...BY the way: I am no subject of Her Majesty the Queen of England and English is my third (or fouth?) language.Bloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-4840484722840512472011-08-28T20:16:56.812-04:002011-08-28T20:16:56.812-04:00OK. So now at least I know what to expect when you...OK. So now at least I know what to expect when you claim "I consider myself a bit of a history buff." "Does this make me smarter than the average person?" “Yes.” (while the rest of the world are "idiots").<br /><br />It's not about you forgetting that Israel's main airport is "Ben Gurion". It's about you not noticing that Benghazi is a city in Libya (that was all over the news in recent times) when you wrote it down.Bloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-65720929646955186772011-08-28T20:08:55.900-04:002011-08-28T20:08:55.900-04:00I didn't say I was a whizz (or a whiz, for tha...I didn't say I was a whizz (or a whiz, for that matter, but maybe this "whizz" you speak of is how you perfect Europeans write it, like colour or theatre). I said I have studied the conflict, not that I committed every last detail of it to memory.<br /><br />I said what I was told as I remembered it, that a woman made this claim to my wife. I did not conflate it to be anything more than how I heard it. The fact is, you can ignore that one minor detail if you decide it is a fabrication, and the rest of what I wrote still stands. But I will be happy to look into the claim and post whether I find it to be baseless.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-6949985708784922962011-08-28T19:59:21.655-04:002011-08-28T19:59:21.655-04:00Well, it is nice you corrected it, but you claimed...Well, it is nice you corrected it, but you claimed that you were a real whizz about this region. Allow me to tell you that this claim is not quite credible.Bloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-1365216819353832372011-08-28T19:54:33.351-04:002011-08-28T19:54:33.351-04:00It's sad that a correction doesn't seem to...It's sad that a correction doesn't seem to be good enough for your royal highness.<br /><br />And if you want to know what we in America think of Europeans... we don't.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-45991938554258376712011-08-28T19:50:59.809-04:002011-08-28T19:50:59.809-04:00You googled it and wrote Benghazi?
Well, over her...You googled it and wrote Benghazi?<br /><br />Well, over here in Europe we never believed that you americans were particularly good at geography... ...or languages for that matter!<br /><br />You seem to be no exception. You sure you do not want to give the US back to the injuns?Bloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-87672182846010865152011-08-28T19:02:54.746-04:002011-08-28T19:02:54.746-04:00I wrote this when my wife wasn't home. I asked...I wrote this when my wife wasn't home. I asked her again and she corrected me. I tried to google what I remembered (I knew it was beng-something) while I was originally writing this.<br /><br />My mistake.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02504734487692109101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-89735325768004229202011-08-28T18:29:13.792-04:002011-08-28T18:29:13.792-04:00"My wife met a young woman whose grandfather’..."My wife met a young woman whose grandfather’s land was taken, and it can no longer be given back because Israelis built the Benghazi airport on top of it." <br /><br />Wow, I did not know that those evil Israelis did even chase people from their homes to build an airport in Libya.Bloedelnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-13080336773827879842011-08-28T08:59:24.994-04:002011-08-28T08:59:24.994-04:00Phillip I agree that choosing the middle ground be...Phillip I agree that choosing the middle ground between two relatively common opposing viewpoints is not a reliable heuristic for truth seeking. <br /><br />What I meant was that one side is likely to be right on some things and the other side to be right on others. Not necessarily in equal proportion, but it should take more work to form an educated opinion on a subject than deciding which camp to belong to (e.g., for Israel or against it).<br /><br />And of course we are all products of our environment in some sense. I've been influenced by living most of my life in Israel and maybe that biases me towards a pro-Israeli viewpoint, but at the same time it makes me more qualified to comment on Israeli society and culture. For example, it's hard to be really anti-Israeli on the issue of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict when you know, as a fact, just how much Israel wants peace and just how much of a sacrifice it is willing to make for any credible chance at it that doesn't lead to the state's destruction. So sure, the results of the peace process so far may be tragic, but that's not for lack of wanting or trying.<br /><br />Yes, the Palestinian people are oppressed, if by that you mean that they don't have the freedom to realize national ambitions that are in direct conflict with the viability of the Israeli state. But who's fault is that? Wars were fought. As is customary in these matters, the losing side paid a tragic price. That would have been the case regardless of which side won, though I would argue that the Jews would probably have been much worse off had it been the other way around.<br /><br />Finally, saying that Israel was formed on land owned by the Palestinians seem to assume that ownership of land is something external to a sovereign state that protects and enforces property rights. But ownership is just a convention in the economic protocol of modern societies. Legal ownership has to be ultimately backed by the force of the state. If the state fails (e.g., Bolshevik revolution) land ownership may be redefined or even abolished altogether.<br /><br />I've commented on this before:<br /><br />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.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-64185263788579079962011-08-27T00:07:55.464-04:002011-08-27T00:07:55.464-04:00Anonymous, your reply is kind of hilarious given B...Anonymous, your reply is kind of hilarious given Bret's reasoned explanation above. If nothing else, he's at least proven that he's anything but a simple-minded person that gravitates to the edges and sees in black and white. Your inability to recognise this casts doubt on your own pronouncements. Well done, you've identified that there exist contrarian leftists and Christian bigots and simpletons who see in black and white, but you still need practice in determining who is actually deserving of those titles. It seems obvious that if anyone is biased in this issue, it's you ... an Israeli.<br /><br />I don't know where you're living now, but I'd speculate you're suffering from a lack of perspective from only ever having lived in Israel and the US, if I had to guess. You seem to think that the truth of things can be gotten at by occupying some kind of middle ground between what you call the false left/right dichotomy; by not supporting one side too often, but rather by supporting whichever side happens to be correct on a particular issue. If that's your thinking, you've got it wrong because that way, your belief of what is right is determined, as Bret so often points out, by the extremes of the debate. Your median view is determined by how far to the left or right someone is willing to push an issue. The true way of finding what is right in any given issue is to ignore the left/right spectrum altogether and look at it on its own merits, not to count up how often you've fallen with the left and how often you've fallen to the right to make sure you're not just a follower.<br /><br />Issues in the US are so distorted by its ridiculous far right that opinions that are absurd in the rest of the world qualify as reasonable there. In America, it's a mainstream opinion that public healthcare is a bad thing, while the rest of the world already has it to great benefit. In America, it's a mainstream opinion that the market is being 'strangled by overregulation', but when a conservative American politician featured on an Australian political TV show last week and suggested this, the entire rest of the panel and the audience (including a member of Australia's conservative opposition) literally burst out laughing at the suggestion because if anything, the market is drastically underregulated. It's getting a bit like the Soviet Russia jokes. In capitalist America, money spends you!<br /><br />So let's step outside of the fucked-up psychosis of American politics for a moment. Here in Australia, the opinion of any average, educated, 'reasonable', left-leaning centrist is that, of course, both 'sides' of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have done wrong, but that, yes, the Palestinians' land was taken from them wrongfully and that they are being oppressed by the Israelis.<br /><br />Also, I've written on the issue of strongly held and voiced opinions Bret was talking about at my blog, lukewarm manifesto, if anyone's interested:<br /><br />http://lukewarmmanifesto.blogspot.com/2011/07/so-open-minded-that-our-brains-drop-out.htmlL Phillip Lucashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01939087357837897029noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5721082653718997788.post-80070070372070950352011-08-26T16:42:08.741-04:002011-08-26T16:42:08.741-04:00For the record I did sit down today and try breaki...For the record I did sit down today and try breaking down my original 6 page correspondence with Bret into a series of comments you can find here:<br /><br />http://anythingbuttheist.blogspot.com/2011/08/history-lessons-from-idiots.html<br /><br />Now to the point. I'm still looking for a satisfying explanation for your extremely unbalanced outlook on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Here's another shot in the dark. Maybe you're not an anti-semite or a knee-jerk contrarian. Maybe you're just simple-minded. The kind of person that gravitates to the edges. To one extreme, emotionally charged viewpoint or the other because they can't stomach ambiguity or they're just bored by it. It has to be black and white. Love or hate. You're either on one team or the other. Pick a side!<br /><br />Reality with all of its subtle complexities just doesn't do it for you. You've built up a simplified, distorted map of the conflict in your head and now as far as you are concerned that map is the road.<br /><br />Thing is, I've lived in Israel all my life. Though I'm not optimistic about its chances for peace I know just how badly Israelis want it. <br />They're willing to make big sacrifices. Short of packing their bags and taking a hike. Unfortunately that seems to be the only thing that would truly appease the other side.<br /><br />Israel is so desperate for peace that a few years back it even deluded itself into thinking it could pull out of "occupied" regions unilaterally. That turned out so badly (e.g., Hamas Islamic fundamentalist terrorist state) it pretty much destroyed the political left. <br /><br />I remember the optimism in the 90s. I remember how people spoke back then about "peace for land". We all wanted so much to believe in the peace process. To break the cycle of violence. <br />You can doubt as a smug outsider all you want but it's the simple, lucid truth.<br /><br />Why that hasn't worked out is complicated. I don't think the intentional stance is helpful in understanding the situation. Attempts at assigning blame or picking a side miss the mark.<br /><br />My pet theory is that it ultimately comes down to incompatibility between cultures that breeds suspicion and mistrust on both sides and makes even the most simple communication difficult.<br /><br />But not because Israel is the evil oppressive apartheid you imagine it to be. Maybe that makes for a simpler, more compelling story, but it's just wrong.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com