Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

What’s your point, then, in citing Netanyahu’s culpability in response to my point about Hamas’ culpability in creating a situation in which murderers could commit murder?

I stipulate, as does every person who’s moderately read on the subject, to his culpability in creating a situation in which murderers could commit murder.

So tell me why, after having no substantive response to my prior points about Hamas being the sole bad actor here as having initially committed murders, why you offered “But what about Bibi’s negligence and opportunism?”

Was W at fault entirely for 9/11? Al Qaeda was like a natural disaster? He should have compelled us to be ready, and the US deserved it because we left Afghanistan to rebuild itself after helping it to push out the Russians?

You seem to want to refute my excoriating Hamas. Okay. But you can’t get there by citing Bibi’s failures and opportunism. So, then, what, if you’ve one, is the basis for you objecting to my assertion that Hamas is entirely at fault here because it murdered civilians. What’s your defense that that was not and is never an acceptable behavior?

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

You seem to want to live in a world where one party is right and the other is wrong. (As someone else said on Twitter recently, one thing that die-hard supporters of both Israel and Palestine agree on is that if you just read enough history and go back far enough, you will learn that one side is right and the other is wrong.)

This exchange started with someone saying they support Israel. I said, I do too, but IMO part of supporting Israel is pointing out when it makes mistakes. Bibi is not "culpable" for Hamas's murder and torture of innocent civilians, but there is no denying that he has made a number of decisions, both for his own political benefit and out of his view of what is best for Israel, that made the Hamas threat to Israel worse. You just agreed.

You say,

Well, three things. One, I disagree that Hamas is the "sole" bad actor here, because Israel has done a bunch of things over time that I think are bad actions, including, for example, letting soldiers shoot unarmed civilians and then covering it up, and seizing Palestinian land for settlements. Two, your word "initially" does a lot of work in framing the current situation as if nothing that happened before the last two weeks to get us to where we are -- e.g., it exonerates Israel for making a series of decisions that blocked a path to peace and empowered Hamas. Three, I don't see why a conversation about how we got to where we are should ignore what Israel has done. Ignoring facts is not the way to support Israel.

You can choose to pretend that Israel has steadfastly and generously offered Palestinians a path to self-sufficient nationhood, negotiating reasonably and in good faith, only to be betrayed by irrational acts of terrorism. Have the self-awareness to realize there is much more to the story.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I want to separate the issues. What Hamas did was uniquely reprehensible. I don't think it improves the discussion to note that Bibi enabled this. The focus for the moment should be on what Hamas did. Shifting it allows for consideration of something heinous in a broader context in which the grievousness and severity of it is obscured.

These killings were bloodthirsty in a manner (Manson Family-esque) that sets them apart from all the killings done by both sides previously. For this reason, they need to be examined in a vacuum more than they do within a broader context.

Yes, he enabled Hamas to acquire significant power and was negligent in sustaining vigilant security. Nobody, however, ever guessed they'd then use it to commit something that looks like the country was attacked by a band of Jeffrey Dahmers.

Looking at it literally might help. Israel is a bad actor in doing what you've cited.

Hamas is a psychotic death cult indistinguishable from Isis in doing what it has done.

Both are bad. One's many orders of magnitude worse, so significantly so that comparison of the badness of the two isn't warranted.

Again, what Hamas did was so disturbing and psychotic (clinically) that it is the start of something new. It's a new era for Hamas/Israel confrontation - one in which Israel is now at war with not a political movement, or even a terrorist movement, but a group of homicidal maniacs.

Agreed. But when a thing as new, bizarre, and disturbing as what Hamas did occurs, there must be a recognition that we're in a new dawn. Things are different, and the present does not at all resemble the past. A crime as insane and severe as Hamas' is not of the same stripe as the "bad" things Israel and Hamas have done to each other in the past. And it shouldn't be so treated. One of the two combatants has lost its mind, is in the criminally psychotic bucket with Isis.

I fully agree that Israel has many sins on its hands here. But it has tried, at least. Every time it would seek to get to a solution however, Arafat would demand a right of return, which he knew was a deal breaker. He did it intentionally, because he didn't really want a solution any more than Bibi or Hamas.

These are all lamentable bad acts. But again, they do not even approach the mental illness and depravity displayed by Hamas last week.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

This is all twaddle. If you can't handle complexity or having more than one thought in your head at a time, then by all means, keep things simple and clear. Also, don't talk about the Middle East with anyone.

Oh, come now. A few posts ago you were explaining how everyone in Hamas should be rounded up and executed. Did you only come to that clarity in the last two weeks?

You have some need to keep equating and comparing them, a need I don't share.

I don't think it's true or useful to say that. Hamas is quite rational in its way. Iran too.

Yassir Arafat has been dead for almost twenty years. I appreciate your need to dumb things down for moral clarity, but the idea that Israel tried for peace and the Palestinians were the obstacle is too simple even for an episode of West Wing or Madame Secretary.

I get it. You're on Team Israeli, so you are going to absolve Israeli and you want to talk only about how bad Hamas is.

I don't think that is a particularly interesting conversation, and it's not what I mean when I say I support Israel.

"Lamentable". But Hamas is worse. I guess "lamentable" is something.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

The last time Ty was so certain about how Israel was bad was maybe 10 years ago. There were rocket barrages coming into cities so Israel bombed shit. Ty helpfully explained the rockets were no threat to anyone, more like a mosquito, and the bombings were a gross overreaction. I guess he was informed by the same newspaper's opinion pieces?

Meanwhile, my daughter was in Israel for her Birthright trip and they cancelled the Tel Aviv part because it was unsafe. I begged Ty to pass his big knowledge on to the Israel gov so my kid could see the city, but he either did not make the call, or they didn't listen{sad face}

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Yes, that time i was wrong, but if memory serves this time..... well, come to think...... I was wrong.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I could throw this right back at you. Looking at the whole of it illuminates nothing regarding a radical change in tactics by Hamas. If you can't handle the process of spotting and dissecting the most salient issue, then by all means, keep farting the line, "We must examine all in context."

By the way, I don't have any issue with examining it all in context. One can do that and at the same time look at the particular issue of Hamas' recent slide into depravity. I happen to think it's unnecessary to do the former here, but I don't object to it as long as it's not done to obscure consideration of the latter, or worse, normalize it within that broader context.

Yes. Because Hamas drifted into death cult status with ISIS, it must be treated like ISIS. If all Hamas had done was lob bombs into Israel, as it had in the past, a proportionate similar response would be all that was warranted. So no -- I very much did not think Hamas deserved to be executed prior to the recent attack. Now, I do.

You're compelling me to do so by responding to the argument that what Hamas did was uniquely extreme and outside the bounds of normal war within this or any other conflict by saying "Well, Bibi set the stage for it." As I have noted in numerous prior posts, I don't think that issue has anything to do with examination of Hamas' singular actions here. But if must stipulate that Israel does not have clean hands here, which I do, it is only fair to note that its are slightly soiled, while Hamas' are now soaked in blood.

That's fair. Barbarity is not automatically insane. It can be a very deliberately considered device.

(I think psychotics can be rational, FWIW. But that's not how I was using the term.)

The last useful talks were during his tenure. And he created the wedge that renders all future talks pointless - a demand for right of return.

I'm happy to talk about Israel's past misdeeds. I just don't see that as anything near as important an issue as the shift in Hamas' tactics. The brazenness and violence of it indicates either desperation among Hamas' leadership, or the Iranians, or perhaps a belief Israel is uniquely weak because of the political infighting. Probably all three. It also signals that the Gaza Strip will never be part of any two state solution as long as Hamas is there.

Of paramount interest will be how MBS reacts after this hopefully cools down a bit. If he resumes normalization of relations with Israel, Hamas and Iran will have shot their shot (Israel will not allow this to happen again) and missed. That would be a dagger in the heart of Tehran.

Is that even in question? You're not suggesting that Arafat's and Bibi's cynical politics are on par with ringing a festival and murdering ravers, murdering families hiding in safe rooms, and raping women in front of their friends and families and then killing them?

If badness is a mountain, Arafat and Bibi are at base camp. Hamas, like ISIS, sits at the peak.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

What is it about this topic that makes people speak in false absolutes? No, it was not uniquely reprehensible. History is absolutely riddled with atrocity.

Removing complexity accomplishes what, exactly?

Arafat has been dead for almost 20 years.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I was responding to the question of supporting Israel, and despite all the heat you're generating, you're not exactly illuminating about Hamas's change in tactics. Is anywhere here supporting Hamas?

Not what I said. Thanks for clarifying that whatever you were saying was based on a misunderstanding.

You forgot to say that he created a permanent impasse by dying and leaving no one for Israel to negotiate with.

What's the principle that explains why Jews should have a right of return to a country that did not exist until 1948 and where their ancestors may never have lived, while Palestinians should not have a right of return to the country where they did live? I am interested in your answer both to the normative question of principle, and also in your answer to the pragmatic, positive question of how there could ever be a durable peace if the fundamental bargain is so unfair to Palestinians. At the risk of stating the obvious, is it not basically this imbalance, and Israel's refusal to negotiate about it, that prompts young Palestinian men to join Hamas and slaughter innocent civilians?

You are the one who finds it impossible to discuss these issues without comparing the relative "badness" or culpability of each side. I keep saying I'm not interested in that. Not sure why you don't get it.

Rhetorically, the practical effect of your insistence that we only talk about Hamas's change in tactics, and about how Hamas is worse than Israel, is that Israel gets a pass for whatever it does, because Hamas is worse, we completely ignore what Israel has done to make things worse than they could be, we ignore the many Palestinians who aren't in Hamas, and we get no closer to any kind of solution. Bombing and invading Gaza to try to eliminate Hamas is not a solution, much as invading Iraq because of 9/11 got us ISIS.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I'm not going to respond to this, because I'm having a hard time not responding in a way that I wouldn't regret later.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

STP. I handled it for us. YAWIA

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I know the feeling. I'm considering whether or not people have strong feelings on what kind of garlic to plant. I've got mostly hardnecks going in, some Music, some Ukrainian and Romanian varieties, but most people are a lot more used to the softneck stuff, especially California Garlic, and its much more gentle taste. To tell you the truth, I say screw the Californians and their weak little garlic.

There, I said it.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

Arafat created a permanent impasse by dragging Barak and Clinton thru a peace process that was 90% done, only to back peddle at the last second and demand what he knew would blow up the deal - right of return. He conveyed to Israel and the world that the PLO was not and would not negotiate in good faith for realistic two state solutions.

There isn't one. You know my view of religion, so it won't surprise you to hear that any claim to the land based on that is void in my opinion. So then we're left with the law of power. The Israelis did live in the area historically and received and held the land for the last eight decades. Not unlike the Native Americans here, who will never get back that which was lost, nor will the Palestinians. Time marches on and the realpolitik has been for a long time (indeed, embraced by Egypt, Jordan, and soon, Saudi Arabia) that Israel is there to stay, as a Jewish state.

You can argue the Brits fucked up the boundaries, the state should have been elsewhere, whatever. It is what it is. It's there, and most of the Palestinians who lost land are long dead, and their families could have received equivalent land or money under various different deals, but have refused.

And finally, perhaps most importantly, what did those Palestinians lose? Desert. They'd not done anything with it and it wasn't worth anything. The Israelis made the state of Israel into what it is today, because they installed a liberal democracy. Would the Palestinians have done so? No.

Yeah, it's unfair, but any more unfair than giving generations long removed from Israel a right to return to it and reclaim something that's been improved 100X only by the hard work of the current residents?

I totally agree with you that it's a really messy situation. I don't like the law of power ruling any more than anyone else, but if you look around this country, are things much different? We're never giving reparations to descendants of slaves or land back to indigenous peoples because it's just not realistic, and too much time has elapsed for the concept to have any validity. Israel, Northern Ireland... these places are the same.

You can't give the Palestinians back the land, so that means the only thing you can give them is money. How? I don't know.

Yes. I agree. But I also think it's a lack of a future that drives them into Hamas. Rather than disengage, Israel should have subsidized more of the industry that was growing north of Gaza and given aid to the area itself. The more Gazans worked with Israelis and made decent wages, the more money Gazans had, the more its people would develop a sustainable economy as opposed to a welfare state dependent on Iranian money.

We fucked that up. The Israelis fucked that up. We should have tried to buy off/improve these people (those two are not mutually exclusive). Instead, Sharon cut it off, and Netanyahu encourage Hamas for his own political gain.

We piss away so many billions on bullshit around the world. Why we haven't thrown a few billion at placating/improving the Palestinians baffles me.

I've said why. I think Hamas' recent attack is depravity. They've not been depraved before.

We can talk about both, as we are here. But when something so grotesque happens that the perpetrator deserves to be globally condemned in the harshest possible terms, noting in immediate response that the victim isn't exactly blameless is a counterproductive diversion.

An imperfect analogy is the George Floyd thing. In the fallout of that a number of stories cited the fact that he had a long criminal record, that he came from a poor background, that police were ill trained, etc. All these things were true. But IMO they all detracted from what needed to be assessed in a vacuum - the cold blooded killing of the man. That first had to be processed. And I think it had to be seen for nothing more than the brutality it was. Because it was so shocking. Among all the other takeaways that would follow, this had to be front and center, and stand alone: A guy was choked to death under a police boot on camera while three other officers watched and did nothing.

I still cannot figure out how that horrific event occurred. And similarly, I still cannot figure out how Hamas soldiers raped mothers in front of their families and shot them.

An event of depravity is always part of a bigger book. But needs its own chapter, devoted to nothing else but it.

Re: Implanting Bill Gates's Micro-chips In Brains For Over 20 Years!
 

I thought the failure of the process happened when Rabin was assassinated by a right winger after Netanyahu and the opposition branded Rabin a traitor and Nazi and paraded a coffin around their rallies and Hamas similarly branded Arafat and openly attacked him and his supporters. From that point on, it was just a slow death for the Oslo accords.

By the way, a right of return, to the Palestinian state in a two state solution, is likely most important to Lebanon and Jordon. 70 years of dealing with refugees has a bit of a destabilizing effect. The right of return is much more an intractable issue in a one state solution, or in Netanyahu's one state and its controlled territory approach.