Nah, you’re thinking of the Kiwis.
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I agree, but intrinsic to the statement should be the deadening of any validity when taken out of context. Otherwise an audience may interpret differently.
So prefacing with “I feel the entire situation is disgusting and disagree with it all” and then seeding similar commentary into the logical construction ensures that the audience (me, here, obviously!) cannot take the view that the speaker is empathising with either side.
The risk being that the logical construct is seen as a rather clever way of supporting the situation.
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THIS!!! it’s also awfully convenient that this war erupted not too long after the formation of a reconciliation government between Fatah and Hamas, that the US has approved of. In the past decade the Israelis have been intransigent on nearly all fronts in regards to the West Bank and Gaza. They have kept building settlements that are deemed illegal by the international community. They have kept Gaza as an open air prison, allowing little to nothing of useful value in or out, and crushing their economy. and then there is that fucking wall, and the constant tearing down of houses in West Bank. Netanyahu has been on record arguing against a two state solution, against any recognition of the Palestinian right to exist in what the greater Israel proponents consider to be Israel proper… and he staffs his parliamentary coalition and his cabinet with noted extremists.
I’m not a Hamas fan, by any stretch (and frankly, I’m sick of anyone thinking that if I criticize Israel and the current administration, that I’m somehow “pro-Hamas”, ignoring the fact that there are other major political players on the Palestinian side, etc), but Netanyahu is not looking good by an stretch of the imagination at this point. I know folks who normally support Israel whole heartedly who are upset about this too.
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This is such a horrible thing, and it just keeps getting worse.
What we need to do is offer all the people in Palestine (and Israel, and everywhere else, really) who DON’T want to be part of the fighting the opportunity to have an amazing, peaceful, fruitful life somewhere else ENTIRELY rather than trying to cover up the blood in their holy land with the bodies of more dead children.
Sure, some people will stick to a chunk of dirt until the day they die, but that’s not the majority, and every human being should have the chance to live a good life without worrying about that sort of madness.
It’s completely feasible as long as people are creative about it and don’t play by exactly the same rules everyone else is.
Instead we have to watch the same horror…year in and year out. It’s criminal.
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The video is the best summary of the Middle East history that I saw in a long long time.
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You are underestimating the power of religion and family. Besides moving away from Israel is hard enough, moving away from Gaza impossible.
Long term Israel has a demographic time bomb.
Given that the Israeli arabs and ultra religious are reproducing like crazy.
What happens in 40 years when 40% of Israel are Sunni Muslim and 25 percent are ultra religious (both groups which happen not to serve in the military)
Stuff is going to get weird, really weird. Laws will get weird. Case in point, recently they legislated shutting down all 7-11s on weekends in Tel Aviv, the secular heart of Israel.
Personally I ran away from the madhouse, but I had the luxury of being able to do it being Australian born. Many others do not. And many that can do not want to tear away from their family.
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Nope, I’m totally not. You’re making one of those assumption-type-things, and you know what happens then! 
Most people just want to live decent lives and when given actual options they’re not going to trap their wives and kids in somewhere horrible just because it’s ‘holy’. I already allowed for the fact that a large number of people would stay, but most people don’t like living in what is essentially a walled low-resource prison camp, not when given an alternative that involves them living fruitful, productive lives where they’re treated with dignity and respect and have control over their own lives.
The solution I’m proposing isn’t just for Palestinians, it’s for everyone, and it uses existing legal structures that are extremely resilient, well tested, and don’t require any revolution that’s never going to happen, nor does it require some magical enlightenment before it works. It operates off of a system of psychological lures.
In a very readers-digesty nutshell, the idea is to combine existing proof of concepts.
-Valve, which demonstrates the effectiveness and profitability of ‘choose your own squad’ and ‘choose your own project’ structures combined with ethical hiring, even in a very standards-dependent environment.
- Mondragon, the world’s largest worker co-operative
- Monkeyspheres (i.e. Dunbar’s Number), the single biggest reason why society doesn’t work.
- Motivation, and the science and evidence therof.
- The fact that only a tiny fraction of actual person-hours worked actually contributes to anything anybody wants done.
- Citizen’s United, and in general the abusive power that’s given to corporations.
- Exploitable rules, and the people who exploit them
- The fact that a democracy of choice has significant advantages over one that’s stuck with everybody born in the same geographic region (i.e. national governments)
- The fact that a large collection of government-and-economies of choice has signifigant advantages over that.
Add in a number of other factors (there are of course a lot with any whole life solution, but we’re far past that point where there were more solutions than problems) and you have a seed…for a powerful collection of governments within a single multinational corporation, one that uses employment as a supplement to citizenship and doesn’t need people who cant’ adhere to a very basic ethical standard, one that can protect the people within, ‘hire’ people from practically anywhere, and completely turn the tables on the mess we’re in.
It’s good enough to work here in the U.S. and power through a number of corporate efficiencies while expanding (particularly in Health Care, a field I strongly wish to emphasize down the road) and it’s positively dangerous in the hands of orphans, refugees, and other people who aren’t raised to expect some payment for every good thing they do. And we even have a technology to add that allows us to pull in all those people and provide them with a very high standard of living without having a negative environmental impact, the Wearable Holodeck.
Nobody’s come close to poking a hole in it in over a year (though some have provided some excellent ideas that have helped!) and now it’s just a matter of getting it put together in a way that people with influence, power, and/or platforms can digest so they can run with it. I’m more a troubleshooter myself and am more the sort who gives up on explaining things and prototypes them, if this wasn’t too big for me to do on my own it would have already happened, because once it has legs there’s nothing that can stop it.
No fighting, no drama, just a peaceful step into a better life as easily as one would take a job at Wal-Mart. Sure, making a Co-Opernation is a bit unusual and radical, but these are serious problems and there’s no good reason for all these people to be struggling and dying, is there?
I figure @doctorow, @frauenfelder, @xeni, and the rest don’t read these forums, but I for one am kind of hoping to kick it off here, since we address a whole bunch of their passions and have actual, practical solutions rather than just some feel-good pipe dream.
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Malaysia post independence provides a wonderful example of mixed religions demographic change.
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Here is a French reporter apparently being used as a human shield. He’s talking on live TV as Hamas launch rockets towards Israel within feet of him, so that he has to run to avoid the retaliatory strike.
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Nice. Lovely tactics. /s
Here is Israel trivialising the conflict
Holy Moly. That represents some considerable distance from sanity.
That was produced by the government of Israel?
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Didn’t Nina Paley get sued/C&D’d/harassed by Andy William’s estate?
It’s a satirical programme that is aired in Israel (that episode is from 2010) but meh facts
The terminology used on both sides is very telling and depressing.
On Israel’s side we have:
Hamas soldiers = Terrorists
Civilian casualties inflicted = Human shields
Fallen soldiers = Heros
Rockets fired towards Israel = Acts of Terror
On Hamas side we have
All casualties = Martyrs
Israeli army = Zionists
Isralies = Zionists
The thing I find particularly depressing is the way the democratic media in Israel handles all of this. Every fallen soldier gets at least 50 words or so and a picture in the daily paper. I wish they legislated that every Palestinian child that fell as “collateral damage” also got an write up in the paper together with photos, very quickly the madness would stop.
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Even here you can often just look at who the conflict is between.
When people excuse these incursions, you often hear Israel versus Hamas. That tells a clear enough story: a democratic country full of peaceful men, women, and children versus a terrorist organization that indiscriminately fires rockets, that even made harming them a founding principle. No question who to cheer for there; the thousand deaths are almost not part of it.
I imagine you could equally well say Palestine versus Likud. Now it’s a country of blockaded, impoverished, and malnourished civilians repeatedly invaded and shelled by a right-wing party that denies their state and is ready to kill any number for its objectives. What couldn’t you forgive in a conflict like that, you know, now that we’ve left out the people rockets might actually hit?
This thread title says Palestine and Israel: each country named, sensitive to everyone whose lives might be affected or ended by the fighting. It also just so happens to tell a story of a conflict that can’t be “won” short of genocide, one that ultimately can only be resolved by stepping things down instead of up, oddly enough.
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Yep. That’s the only way to go about this.
Edit:
It’s always worth remembering the today’s children are tomorrow’s combatants / antagonists / supporters.
There’s this clear quote:
Israeli and Palestinian children grow up feeling that they are destined for conflict with their neighbours
and
Children have been the victims of indoctrination, school closures, medical problems and post-traumatic stress as a result of the conflict
Referenced at Children in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict - Wikipedia
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A confession from an (Arab) Israeli soldier:
- As a child, the soldier’s grandmother would wake in the night screaming with the memories of Auschwitz.
- As an adult, he says he recognised the same scream from the Palestinian woman whose young child was shot dead by the IDF for violating a curfew.
- The curfew was imposed to mark a Jewish religious holiday.
- The army shot the child and then the next day surrounded the house to prevent a funeral being held during the religious holiday.
- They arrested the dead child’s father at dawn and took him away blindfolded.
- The soldiers parents called him to congratulate him, as the radio in Israel had denounced the dead child and the father as terrorists
- The soldier rationalises that he’s conscripted to act in the same role that the SS filled in Germany 70 years ago
- The soldier points out that the NYPD train with the IDF - the same tactics that the Israelis use in Palestine are being learnt by the American police force.
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This is a satirical comedy show in Israel, and is kinda old (so is not related to the current round of rocket attacks by Hamas). What are you guys smoking?
