I don’t think it was intentional on his part, but his view does illustrate how laziness and ignorance result in a fucked up view of things. It’s something I hope he returns to, and treats with more depth, because it seems like pretty fertile territory. His acknowledgment that he treats one child more favorably than the other and that the favored child is the metaphorical Israel–which shouldn’t be controversial but probably is–says a lot. I’d like to see him return to this with more about how he as the U.S.A. parent contributes to his children’s fighting.
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The Zionist-Arab conflict has been going on since the late 19th century when the Jewish-Nationalist movement started focusing on the idea of creating a modern Jewish country in the Middle East, and started to really pick up steam with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. But that particular sliver of land has been a source of international conflict for thousands of years.
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I think the joke was that Americans see them as crazy because they feel they are in the dad role and just want the kids to shut up. True that does come after saying the current conflict is a thousand years old so it miss the mark if not the humor.
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Thanks! So I was only off by a hundred years 
I actually had no idea that the concept of a Jewish state started in the 19th century. I love history.
Islam has barely been around that long.
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I learned almost everything I know about Israel/Palestine from reading My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragety of Israel, by Ari Shavit, around the time I was making a half-dozen business trips to Ari’s promised land. The original plan of the Zionists was to buy chunks of what is now Israel and establish Jewish communities there. Shavit says it was a beautiful idea, and a beautiful time, when Jews and Arabs worked together as neighbors.
Things really went downhill, not so much after Balfour as after WWII, when the British kicked the Palestinians out of Palestine to make room for refugees of the Holocaust. Then the Six-Day War resulted in Israel capturing a large amount of territory, which they felt (and many still feel) should be theirs because they won it in war. Things have gone further downhill now that the ultra orthodox have discovered Zionism (the original Zionists were mostly secular Jews), and have decided that the Bible what gives them title to the land in the West Bank.
The book taught me that the situation is very, very complicated. My experience in Israel taught me that the racism against Arabs* is virulent and deep.
*“Arab” or “Israeli Arab” generally means Palestinians or people who ended up inside Israel but would have become refugees if they, like many Arabs, had been kicked out.
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Thank you! 1940 and on I have a fighting chance of knowing what I am talking about, but before that? I’d need Wikipedia at the very least 
No. No it hasn’t, not meaningfully or any more or any less that just about any geographic region on earth.It’s pointless cherry-picking, I could point to parts of France and Britain and say, “They’ve been in conflict for thousands of years” and be equally accurate. It’s stupid, especially when the combating factions swap out periodically.
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cough the Aquitaine?
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They seem neither particularly edgy in the grand scheme of comedy nor particularly original or unique.
Now the Brass Eye Pedophilia special in that media climate, the insane hysterical climate that spawned it because it need to be satirised, that was a bold and brilliant move.
This just seems a little uninspired. Comedians have been doing variations on that material for years now.
Americans watch Brass Eye and The Day Today they are not optional viewing if you are into comedy.
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Yeah, don’t you know we’re in the middle of a media panic about children? Louie ought to be lynched for even suggesting today’s parents are overly protective. That kind of attitude might make some parent think it’s ok to let their child go out and play alone.
Think of the children, Louie!
Yes, very complicated. One group took land from another. Why can’t the Palestinians just be satisfied with their little reservations? Boggles the mind…
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Sometimes you feel like a nut.
Sometimes you don’t.
I think the region in question, Palestine/Israel, was relatively stable for a long time under the Ottoman Empire, actually. In the 19th century, the sons (I think it was) of Muhammad Ali Khedive of Egypt did invade there, and from then on, you had some conflicts happening, primarily because the ottoman empire itself was changing in the mid-19th century, undermining traditionally, religious oriented centers of power (and no religious leader was a fan of that, whether it was Muslim, Christian, or Jewish). Additionally, Europeans are becoming interested in this part of the empire, politically and economically.
So, still no real centuries long conflict over religion, even when the wars manifested themselves in terms of religion. There was generally something else going on.
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There’s a great story on This American Life about young people who realize they’re pedophiles and their attempts to live normal lives despite it. Dan Savage had a pedophilia expert on his show as well, talking about the notion of it being ingrained and the many ways people try to get help for it.
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That was my take on it too. He starts off with the usual tropes about the conflict (“100os of years”, “both wrong”, “crazy Palestinians” etc.) and then turns it into a commentary of how the US is “the parent” that favours one of the “children” whilst exacerbating the conflict itself.
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Thanks Allison.
Thanks! Very interesting.
At the end of This AmericanLife. Luke Malone’s further [reporting on the story] (https://medium.com/matter/youre-16-youre-a-pedophile-you-dont-want-to-hurt-anyone-what-do-you-do-now-e11ce4b88bdb) is mentioned.
he’s only revealing existing truths. Asking the question is the problem here.
