|
protests
May 3, 2024 10:09:22 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by Marshall on May 3, 2024 10:09:22 GMT -5
Eliminating Hamas is almost impossible. There are new Israel hating future terrorists created every day of the attack on Hamas.
I’m not saying that Israel should not pursue Hamas. Hamas is evil. But it is an impossible task to wipe it out.
I’m reading “Say Nothing” about the “Troubles” in the 60s & 70s in Northern Ireland. It is so incomprehensible what people do to each other in the name of religious differences. And there, both sides are “Christian.”
|
|
|
Post by epaul on May 3, 2024 11:23:50 GMT -5
Terrorists is a word that covers a lot of territory.
Is Hamas a lone wolf loony who plants bombs out of a crazed addiction to chaos and fear? Or is Hamas an organized entity with a political/territorial agenda? An entity that represents a group of people and believes it is acting, however desperately, on their behalf?
There is quite a difference twix the two. You can't punish the lone wolf as the lone wolf represents nothing and cares for none. But you can punish an entity that represents a group of people and has an agenda and hopes for that group.
And whatever else you might think Hamas is, and be right, Hamas is a rational actor. They have an agenda that represents something greater than themselves, a future country called Palestine. And they are willing to sacrifice greatly to achieve it. Rational actor does not mean that many/most within Hamas haven't become crazy and are blinded by hate, rational actor means as a group they have a plan and a goal for their people, however ill-defined at the moment. A better future than the present. A homeland. They are not a lone wolf crazy bent only on anarchy and chaos and some kind of strange emotional fix.
It is a mistake to assume Hamas does not care about the people they believe they are acting on behalf of. They are willing to make great sacrifices, but they carry a hope for a future for those they believe they represent. Hamas accepted that there would be a terrible cost for the attack they made on the Israelis living in what they believed to be stolen Palestinian land. If many in Israel now believe that in response they need to make that cost far greater than any Hamas imagined, I don't blame them.
(we bombed the bejesus out of two countries, one of which had nothing to do with it, in response to an attack that, per capita, was small in all regards compared the attack Israel suffered... and while there is much to be said about our response, there haven't been any more attacks from that quarter on our homeland for the last 20 some years)
If many in Israel believe they need to make the cost to Hamas and to the people Hamas represents and acts for so great that none with a living memory will consider such an attack on Israeli soil again, I don't blame them. A "measured response" was the cost factored by Hamas to support the attack. If Israel decides that this time a "non-measured response" is called for, I will not condemn them from safely over here far away from the shoes they walk in.
|
|
|
Post by epaul on May 3, 2024 12:24:36 GMT -5
[Rational actor does not mean that many/most within Hamas have haven't become crazy and are blinded by hate...]
|
|
|
Post by epaul on May 3, 2024 12:37:50 GMT -5
And if Democrats are pro Israel, then how do the Republicans "make hay" By misrepresenting, exaggerating, simplifying, distorting, lying. Politicians and pundits have their means. You don't need a straight rake to make hay
|
|
|
protests
May 3, 2024 15:54:39 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by millring on May 3, 2024 15:54:39 GMT -5
Eliminating Hamas is almost impossible. There are new Israel hating future terrorists created every day of the attack on Hamas. I’m not saying that Israel should not pursue Hamas. Hamas is evil. But it is an impossible task to wipe it out. I’m reading “Say Nothing” about the “Troubles” in the 60s & 70s in Northern Ireland. It is so incomprehensible what people do to each other in the name of religious differences. And there, both sides are “Christian.” www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/horror-humiliation-gazaThe current secularist has a strange tolerance -- bordering on fascination -- with the exotic religions it doesn't know, but it has a particular contempt for the religions in which it was raised and has rejected.
|
|
|
Post by Marshall on May 3, 2024 16:06:18 GMT -5
Hhhhmmm. There's a lot there to try to comprehend, let alone swallow.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on May 3, 2024 16:37:53 GMT -5
This current secularist finds Goldman's lumpy stew of assertions about what various religio-cultural populations think and feel not even halfway convincing. And stuff about "self-doomed, infertile, futureless post-Christians" is particularly strange--and interestingly reminiscent of the ethnic-politics assholes who fear that some other demographic will outbreed (and replace) them. What world does this guy live in? (FWIW, no ethno-cultural group lasts forever unchanged or unabsorbed. "O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark."** Fucking get over it.)
** T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"
|
|
|
Post by epaul on May 3, 2024 17:41:55 GMT -5
Not a bad gig writing for the fringes. Identify a set of fears, find a set of examples half-real and embellished to taste to feed them, and then write, write, write as much as you can sell. Easy money.
I sometimes fear one of these crafters will dig up a bunch of my writings on the Maki Boys. He will use them to establish such fear that the Federal government will be compelled to send troops and tanks to seal off every road into and out of Newfolden until they can build a Trumpian Wall around the place to safely contain the Maki Malady.
Every morning, a dozen cases of Grain Belt will be tossed over the wall along with cartons of fried pork rinds, pickled eggs, and deer sausage. Not a bad life, all in all, but all based on a fiction.
|
|
|
Post by billhammond on May 3, 2024 19:34:08 GMT -5
Meanwhile, in the canine protest world:
|
|
|
Post by Cornflake on May 4, 2024 10:04:44 GMT -5
John McWhorter, a Columbia professor, made some interesting comments:
I share the campus protesters’ opinion that the war in Gaza has become an atrocity. Israel had every right to defend itself after Hamas’s massacre, which itself was an atrocity. However, the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, with uncountable more left maimed or homeless, cannot be justified....
Beyond a certain point, however, we must ask whether the escalating protests are helping to change those circumstances. Columbia’s administration agreed to review proposals about divestment, shareholder activism and other issues and to create health and education programs in Gaza and the West Bank. But the protesters were unmoved and a subgroup of them, apparently, further enraged.
Who among the protesters really thought that Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, and the board of trustees would view the occupation of Hamilton Hall — and the visible destruction of property — and say, “Oh, if the students feel that strongly, then let’s divest from Israel immediately”? The point seemed less to make change than to manifest anger for its own sake, with the encampment having become old news....
In our times, when the personal is political, there is always a risk that a quest to heal the world morphs into a quest for personal catharsis. Keeping in mind the difference will get the Columbia protesters closer to making the changes they champion.
|
|
|
protests
May 4, 2024 16:26:55 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by millring on May 4, 2024 16:26:55 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by theevan on May 4, 2024 16:32:56 GMT -5
This current secularist finds Goldman's lumpy stew of assertions about what various religio-cultural populations think and feel not even halfway convincing. And stuff about "self-doomed, infertile, futureless post-Christians" is particularly strange--and interestingly reminiscent of the ethnic-politics assholes who fear that some other demographic will outbreed (and replace) them. What world does this guy live in? (FWIW, no ethno-cultural group lasts forever unchanged or unabsorbed. "O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark."** Fucking get over it.) ** T.S. Eliot, "East Coker" I found that part of the article particularly interesting because it echoes my observations of the current set of young adults. Christian or not. I fear they'll be ill-equipped for the coming set of crises.
|
|
|
Post by Russell Letson on May 4, 2024 16:58:04 GMT -5
What does being "infertile" (which isn't what Goldman really means in his rhetorical flailing) have to do with being "equipped for the coming set of crises"? Would having children help us face the social chaos that climate change promises? With any luck, we will be gone before the worst of it hits*, but if we were twenty years younger, we'd still be in the shit right along with everybody else, with or without children.
If the "current set of young adults" has handicaps in the coping-with-crisis department, they're more likely a matter of lacking practical skills and the kind of education that allows intelligent analysis of conditions (including political conditions--despots love the poorly educated).
* Though it looks like earlier estimates of the arrival of really bad shit were optimistic.
|
|
|
Post by millring on May 5, 2024 5:26:44 GMT -5
That education doesn't seem to be going too well.
|
|
|
Post by millring on May 5, 2024 6:20:12 GMT -5
Then Israel doesn't have the right he so graciously allows it does to defend itself.
He frames it as an eye for an eye. It's not that. It's a war declared on Israel. And as we are demonstrating nightly on our news and in statements by our administration, (and by the moral equivalency he has drawn) Israel is not the bully here. We, and the international community that always rises up against Israel, is.
The Palestinian people were/are overwhelmingly in favor of what even he frames as "Hamas's massacre" (not invasion. Convenient to his argument, he frames it in non-war terms). And as has been illustrated time and time again, the "ceasefires" we demand are merely times used to stop Israel from defending itself long enough for its enemies to regroup and rearm.
I don't pretend to understand why the international community overwhelmingly hates Israel. But that hatred is so palpable and dependable and predictable that Hamas was able to stage their entire invasion on the absolute certainty that the world would turn on Israel the minute Israel defended itself.
It's too easy to put that hatred of Israel on a religious plane (and I think that is a large part of it. In an increasingly secularizing Western world, it is the religions with which we believe we are most familiar that we seem to reserve the greatest contempt for. And secularization does not appear to believe in live and let live where religion is concerned.) But I suspect it has more to do with the economic philosophical schism that has divided the Western world for the past two centuries. And it appears that Israel is a too good example of the supremacy of freedom of Western thought. That must be pounded down.
|
|
|
Post by aquaduct on May 5, 2024 8:48:28 GMT -5
Then Israel doesn't have the right he so graciously allows it does to defend itself. He frames it as an eye for an eye. It's not that. It's a war declared on Israel. And as we are demonstrating nightly on our news and in statements by our administration, Israel is not the bully here. We, and the international community that always rises up against Israel, is. The Palestinian people were/are overwhelmingly in favor of what even he frames as "Hamas's massacre" (not invasion. Convenient to his argument, he frames it in non-war terms). And as has been illustrated time and time again, the "ceasefires" we demand are merely times used to stop Israel from defending itself long enough for its enemies to regroup and rearm. I don't pretend to understand why the international community overwhelmingly hates Israel. But that hatred is so palpable and dependable and predictable that Hamas was able to stage their entire invasion on the absolute certainty that the world would turn on Israel the minute Israel defended itself. It's too easy to put that hatred of Israel on a religious plane (and I think that is a large part of it. In an increasingly secularizing Western world, it is the religions with which we believe we are most familiar that we seem to reserve the greatest contempt for. And secularization does not appear to believe in live and let live where religion is concerned.) But I suspect it has more to do with the economic philosophical schism that has divided the Western world for the past two centuries. And it appears that Israel is a too good example of the supremacy of freedom of Western thought. That must be pounded down. I can't like this enough. And that's pretty much my take. War sucks. But when you decide to throw that gauntlet down, finish it or it only continues to kill and maim. As far as I've seen, Israel's been pretty generous with warnings and open escape routes (that Hamas closes on their side). War kills indiscriminately. It's nice if non-combatants can get out of the way, but with Hamas being buried like the cowards they are, under hospitals and such, civilian casualties are inevitable. And Hamas counts on it. Go Israel! The other side openly wants to drive you into the sea, bury them all the way to Hell if necessary. The long term peace that can be achieved by showing strength and the courage to wield it is worth it.
|
|
|
Post by james on May 5, 2024 13:09:49 GMT -5
Rabbi Brous, who went to see the UCLA protests, delivered another passionate Shabbat sermon which follows on from the previous one posted.
|
|
|
protests
May 5, 2024 13:17:22 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by millring on May 5, 2024 13:17:22 GMT -5
We recognize the "I've got black friends" trope when the bad guys resort to it. Not so much when it allows us and our friends adequate cover.
|
|
|
Post by james on May 5, 2024 13:32:42 GMT -5
I appreciate that video is not everyone's preferred medium. (And 25 minutes is a bit of a chunk of a Sunday). There are transcripts of the YouTubes.
Don't know quite what Millring is driving at. That might be a good thing though.
|
|
|
Post by james on May 5, 2024 21:58:07 GMT -5
|
|