Comments on: A little of this and a little of that — and, of course, an Open Thread http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/ Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts. Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:47:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Charles Martel http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-150010 Charles Martel Sat, 22 Dec 2012 01:48:12 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-150010 Danny, what’s also interesting here is how the concept of “evil” is applied. I suppose that you could make the case that, based on the ethics of Judaism (and Christianity), the Israelis are being naughty. Notice, though, that you have to appeal to the tenets of both religions for the accusation to have traction.
 
Fortunately for the Palestinians, nobody can ever really accuse them of violating Islamic ethical principles. Everybody is hip to the fact that Islam can justify any atrocity—the Qu’ran and the hadiths are chock full of murderous admonitions. As they sang so lustily in Damn Yankees, “Whatever Allah wants, Allah gets.”
 
What are we to make of this? Simple: The people with an actual ethic that forbids evil are always to be held in lower esteem than people who don’t.

]]> By: Danny Lemieux http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-150006 Danny Lemieux Sat, 22 Dec 2012 00:02:15 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-150006 You beat me to it, Hammer. Ah…the right of return. And…do all the Jooos that were evicted from Arab countries between 1948 and 1957 get the right of return and economic compensation as well? I must have missed that UN resolution.

 

]]> By: Danny Lemieux http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-150005 Danny Lemieux Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:17 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-150005 The Palestinians have been quite open about their desire to exterminate the Joos since the late-19th Century (when Jews were the largest population group in Jerusalem). They have never denied or withdrawn their commitment to genocide against Jews. They never disavowed their links to and collaboration with the German Nazi party in its efforts to exterminate Jews before and during WWII.

It was Palestinians (PLO) that pioneered the concept of global terrorism specifically targeting civilians.

The Jews have been making concessions to the Palestinians ever since the Oslo accords, which the Palestinians violated beginning Day-1. The Palestinians never stopped their terrorist attacks against Israel, nor (more recently) their rocket attacks, nor educating their young that the Jews should be exterminated.

President Bill Clinton had a deal on the table whereby the Palestinians would have statehood and 95% of the territory they (publicly) claimed they wanted. The Palestinians turned it down. It is the Palestinians that insisted on the status quo as long as Israel continues to exist.

Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel enjoy full rights of citizenship and the highest per-capita standard of living in the Middle East (actually, they enjoy more-than equal rights, as they are not compelled to serve in the Israeli army). This is not the case for any minorities living in the Palestinian territories.

Gaza also has a border with Egypt. Nobody mentions that. Why doesn’t anybody question why Egypt has economic and military border controls in place on the Gaza border and, more importantly, why?

The UN is full of resolutions against Israel. However, there have never been UN resolutions against Arabs (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) attacking Palestinians, nor of Arab countries ethnically cleansing their countries of Palestinians (Iraq, Kuwait).

So, spare me! There are a lot of other people all around the world far more deserving of sympathy than the Palestinians. 

]]> By: Charles Martel http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-150004 Charles Martel Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:58:20 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-150004 JL, I went to the link you provided, hoping for the best. Alas, the writer fulfilled his own prophecy: He sits in a cozy office on the East Coast of the United States and offers a peace plan that has little to do with reality:
 
 
Jewish settlements on the West Bank will be halted immediately. Those settlements will be disbanded over the next two years, their settlers repatriated, and the land turned over the Palestinian Authority.
 
 
Possible to do, however the writer fails to mention what reasonable quid pro quo Israel would expect from the Palestinian dictators. Perhaps a cessation of rocket attacks, with the proviso that a resumption of said attacks would negate the halt on settlement dismantlement?
 
 
Israel will sponsor a motion in the United Nations recognizing the sovereign and independent State of Palestine, with Ramallah as its capital.
 
 
Good luck with the Ramallah suggestion. Radical Palestinians will never accede to it and will point to the Israeli proposal as yet another slight to Palestinian dignity. (At this point, which is pregnant with opportunity for the writer to offer suggestions as to how Hamas and the PA’s terrorists might be deposed, he is silent.)
 
 
Israel will establish its permanent capital in Tel Aviv and turn over the City of Jerusalem to the United Nations to be administered as an international protectorate with full, unhindered access to citizens of both Palestine and Israel.
 
 
Ah, the United Nations, not only mankind’s last and best hope, but also its most moral and efficient. Kid rape, graft, anti-Semitism and physical cowardice aside, the UN can certainly knows how to keep the peace between the two warring tribes (remember the spiffy job it did in Rwanda and the Balkans?). The writer’s unstated hope is that the feckless UN would be able to call on American military power to give its refereeing some real teeth. Very unlikely as long as the most anti-Israel/anti-Semitic U.S. president ever is in power.
 
 
What the Palestinians call the “right of return” cannot be literally fulfilled, but will instead be negotiated economically. How that will happen will be subject to those negotiations, but it may include a lump sum payment to Palestinian families who can trace their roots to what is now Israel, or it could include a commitment by the government of Israel to shift some percentage of its foreign trade with other countries to the new Palestinian state.
 
 
The air of unreality thickens. The right of return is the bedrock Palestinian negotiating point. The assumption that the Palestinians’ terrorist masters will agree to modify the demand would in reality end their reason for existing: the total elimination of Jews and their state. As Bush 1 was fond of saying, “Not gonna happen.”
 
 
Since we’re talking about an economic settlement, a question comes to mind: What, conceivably, could the Palestinians produce that anybody would be interested in buying? Random body parts? Explosives? For-hire honor killings? Wait a minute. . . I seem to remember that the Israelis left some really spiffy greenhouses in Gaza to help jumpstart an agriculture industry. I’ll bet those lovingly tended greenhouses are really helping the oppressed can’t-get-an-economic-break Palies get a foot into the modern economy! I mean, no culture ruled by a manipulative, all-seeing dictatorship could be stupid enough to allow a gift horse like that to be totally wrecked. Am I right?

]]> By: Ymarsakar http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-149998 Ymarsakar Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:24:55 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-149998 Btw, the Left operates both as a death cult, a religious theocracy, and a criminal organization. So when people in the know talk about people being part of the Left, we’re really talking about it in terms of.. say, a shopkeeper being part of a criminal organization because he pays his protection dues or the local sharks will come in and knee cap him.
 
So to speak. It’s not meant to imply you are part of them because you want to be, you voted for them, you call yourself a Democrat, or anything “political” in nature. The Left is not, and has never been about “politics”. Something people are just beginning to be aware of, given Leftist propaganda in the schools and against the masses.
 
The way this is enforced is not by anyone here. It gets enforced because the Left themselves will punish you if you are part of them, but don’t behave according to their standards. There is no such thing as freedom when you are part of the Left. You do as you are told, or else. You may believe you are doing what you believe is right, but that’s only a side effect of the death cult brainwashing, so to speak. It’s not that people in the Left care about Israel or Palestine (formerly Judea). It’s that unless they speak the right words about Israel being killers, they will be punished by the Left. The latter is a lot more scary than the former.

]]> By: Ymarsakar http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-149997 Ymarsakar Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:20:24 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-149997 Hehehe. The Left’s propaganda knows no bounds. Or decency.

]]> By: JL http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-149993 JL Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:08:52 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-149993 Oh please, Mr. Lemiuex. We all know what you were implying. Stooping to the use of a technicality to get you off the hook is the height of dishonesty.
Therefore, I suppose it’s unsurprising that your tactics in argumentation follow a similar suit. First of all, I am not “anti-Israel.” To make that case is to slander the English language and to, again, remove any doubt regarding your reliance upon a simplistic dichotomous view of the world. Additionally, bringing up “people you know” who are “anti-Israel” but not on the left does nothing to further this discussion, and you know it. You only bring it up to impinge upon my credibility and the credibility of my argument, by subtly hinting that I must either be an anti-Semite or an ignoramus. Man, you’ve just got false dichotomy built upon false dichotomy. 
Regarding what you say about a double standard, I’ll repeat that I said earlier: my voice is much better used criticizing the Right from within, under the assumption (perhaps a false one) that such an endeavor would be more fruitful than going to HuffPost and arguing with people because at least members of Right and I share some basic premises. Or so the theory goes. As a result of this approach, much of my criticism will focus on Israel in my discussions with people on the Right, precisely because they are already in lockstep approval with anything Israel does. If I were having a conversation with a Hamas apologist, much of my ire would be aimed at the destructive and villainous actions of that particular group. 
 
And no, I did not attend UW.
 
Now on to my “solution.”
 
First of all, I will point out that one does not need to have a “solution” to criticize an action as immoral. I don’t need to have the answer to every potential back-alley abortion or unwanted baby carried to term to make the observation that abortion is morally reprehensible. In fact, even if back-alley abortions were carried out or babies were abandoned shortly after birth, obvious flaws in any potential “solution,” the fact that “abortion is morally wrong” would not change.
 
Similarly, I don’t need to have some fool-proof solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict to make the claim that “Israeli policy is evil”, and frankly, there isn’t one. But here’s the key: A poor solution put forward on my part is a reflection of just that; a poor solution. It is not a reflection of the moral dimension of what is currently going on there.
 
The key to peace in Israel/the Palestinian territories involves two ingredients: undermining the legitimacy/attraction of Hamas and having the Israeli administration abandon its short-sighted, draconian policies.
 
 
For the first, I’ve already made my case that economics play a large role. Hitler wouldn’t have had such appeal in post-WWI Germany if the German economy hadn’t been decimated, and Hamas wouldn’t have such pull in the Gaza Strip if the Palestinian economy wasn’t in such shambles, largely as a result of Israeli policy. Israel severely limits Gazan exports: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gz.html (what's the rational for that?). Israel makes it unbearably difficult for Palestinians to travel/work between the two territories/in Israel. Israel controls Palestinian utilities and natural resources, although this is a bigger problem in the West Bank than in Gaza. There’s also the fact that Israel occupied these territories for decades, installing absurdly bureaucratic policies regarding licenses and permits that ought to make any free-market capitalist cringe. But no, the economy in the Strip must suck because the Gazans tore down some greenhouses. Ahh.
 
The second ingredient I put forward requires a shift in the Israeli administrations mind-set. Currently, the Israeli policy with regards to the Gaza Strip and Hamas is one of maintaining the status-quo: keep the Palestinians impoverished and desperate, and “mow the grass” when needed. As I said before, I find this take deplorable. It is resolutely short-sighted and Machiavellian. It will never bring peace, and only continues an awful cycle of violence that will ensure armed resistance and “death to Israel” remain popular options in the Palestinian territories.
 
The difficulty is that such a shift requires Israel to adapt, at least temporarily, a mindset that flies in the face of “realists” and zero-sum game theory fanatics. In other words, it might require Israel to make “concessions.” Consider this classic example. Two farms border each other, and along the border is a particularly nasty bog, a bog that is home to all sorts of nasty insects and pests. Clearly, both farmers would benefit from clearing the bog and ridding themselves of the associated nuisances, but here’s the catch. Clearing the bog costs money (or in our real world case, “power and leverage”). Because both farmer fears the double whammy associated with clearing the bog by themselves (they temporarily lose while the other side gains), neither does anything and the bog and its associated problems continue to fester. But both sides are worse off then they could be. Now, obviously cooperation might be the optimal outcome for all involved, but as the two farmers hate each other, that’s unlikely to happen. Furthermore, one of the farmers is completely impoverished (lacks power and leverage) and contributing to the project isn’t much of a possibility. In such a case, the more well-off farmer can choose to maintain the status quo, probably running the other farmer into financial ruin, or he can take a loss in the short term for the betterment of all involved in the long term. If IR is just a game and the goal is to win, then the first approach seems like the right one. But if life is not a game, and people’s well-being matters (YES! Even foreigners and Muslims!), it’s obvious which approach is the “right” one. But I guess it all depends what we mean by “right.” What’s morally correct or what’s in the “best interests” of one nation state at the expense of another. You guys can decide.
 
For more on this idea, read this:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvox-nova.com%2F2012%2F11%2F19%2Frisking-peace-a-thought-experiment%2F&ei=ruvUUJDLA83yqQHHpYH4DA&usg=AFQjCNFDVDqIIVOFsNTWdwm8-riKET3vfQ&sig2=RHpvoW207JOWtkKE5DMkMA&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.aWM

]]> By: Danny Lemieux http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-149919 Danny Lemieux Thu, 20 Dec 2012 08:32:18 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-149919 Whoops! I think that I just put two-and-two together: you didn’t learn your history of the Middle East at the U. of Wisconsin – Madison  (“Bezerkley of the Midwest”), did you?
 

]]> By: Danny Lemieux http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-149917 Danny Lemieux Thu, 20 Dec 2012 08:30:36 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-149917 You might want to reread what I wrote, JL. I never mentioned you by name.

Fact is, though, your position exactly mirrors the propaganda of the Left. I have met some very anti-Israel people on the not-Left as well – they tended to be either rank ignorant of the situation in the Middle East, in that they swallowed anti-Israeli propaganda whole, or they were rank anti-semites. Either way, they use a double standard by which they judge Israelis versus those that oppose them.

But, like Charles the Hammer says…give us your solutions…!

 

]]> By: Charles Martel http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/18/a-little-of-this-and-a-little-of-that-and-of-course-an-open-thread/comment-page-1/#comment-149912 Charles Martel Thu, 20 Dec 2012 05:42:23 +0000 http://www.bookwormroom.com/?p=25711#comment-149912 If current Israeli policy is evil, what would make it good? I’m always curious when somebody can point to what Israel is doing wrong but neglects to say what it could do right.
 
What specific steps would you recommend?

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