Helloplite said:
Come back when you have any proposals? What is this sort of reprisal? This is a discussion on a forum - no one here is qualified to make concrete proposals, or has access to the right circles required to make a proposal viable. In fact, this sort of attitude and response to my comments betrays a contempt for the concept of debate and the relevance of deliberation. No, I will not concede to your bullying.
I have never said that "Jews aren't people" if you paid any attention to what I said. On the contrary, I am quite aware of the humanity of the Jewish people. It just so happens that Palestinians are people also. Lumping everyone together and deriving positions from an assumed generality is the pinnacle of bias.
Now what you described here, on how propaganda in education is implemented to radicalize and perpetuate hatred was actually part of my earlier academic explorations (on modernism, the state, and the employment of propaganda narratives of ethnicity, religion, identity and nation). It is something I am critical of. So step down from your mighty horse and stop assuming everyone who is not showering Israel with praise is somehow malevontly inclined towards the people who live in that country.
All I said is that solutions to intractable conflicts require stepping down from both sides - alongside new ideas, new people, and strong will to restructure institutionally the systems. Yes, it is very vague but I am not the one drafting or handling these negotiations. What have you done to fix this problem, that gives you the right to berate others for not providing precise solutions? |
It's not people criticizing Israel that bothers me. It's people making observations or suggestions when they don't know what they're talking about or that would make things worse. As for what I do, a lot of my job is dealing with issues directly stemming from this particular conflict. I've worked with NGOs, journalists, people at the UN, even a British military leader. I've seen first-hand the BS which is spouted about this conflict, how facts that don't fit a particular narrative are ignored by mainstream media outlets, how the media is manipulated, the double standards that are applied, and how foreigners in general make things worse whenever they try to 'help.'
This isn't academics. Real people are dying, and ignoring, twisting, or making facts up, or basing what needs to be done mostly on current power dynamics instead of the actual problems, is not going to help at best and could easily make things worse. Israel will have to make concessions and sacrifices under any peace agreement. Academic theory is all well and good, but you still have to take into account the fact that these are 2 very different societies with values that are different from each other and from your own, each with their own eccentricities.
It's very easy to tell Israelis and Palestinians from thousands of miles away what they should or shouldn't do. But in the end, it's Tel Aviv that will have to endure incessant rocket attacks and innocents in the West Bank that will get bombed in response when the fantasies of ignorant westerners blow up.
Do I think the Palestinian side is the one that needs to make the larger step towards peace? Yes. But that's from observing the history of the conflict from the last 25 years. Israel's leadership has agreed in principle to a Palestinian State and has sought to negotiate borders and security arrangements, and in the mid-2000s was prepared to unilaterally withdraw from most of the West Bank before Hamas' takeover of Gaza proved that that wouldn't work. The other side still cannot accept the existence of a Jewish state and the demands of its most moderate leadership amount to the destruction of Israel. When the Palestinians have a leadership that actually cares about their own people then I think peace will be possible, even if the society remains largely anti-Semitic.
Te Palestinians are victims. They were pawns of the Arab states for decades, and of the Soviet Union. Now the Soviets are gone, the Arab states have pretty much abandoned them, their leadership is divided between genocidal lunatics and corrupt old men who care for nothing other than lining their pockets and staying in power, and they're still being used as pawns by Iran and radicals in the west who are using them as a weapon against the US. And on top of that, the world as a whole has countenanced their being held in refugee camps for decades and actual Apartheid carried out against them in many places throughout the Middle East.
The OP is a perfect example of the sort of thing I cannot stand. It says that Israel passed a law declaring itself exclusively Jewish and banning Arabic, when not only does the law not do anything of the sort, it explicitly says that Arabic has a "special status." Is the OP lying, or is he just ignorant and falling for propaganda? I don't know, but in the end it really doesn't matter. It's spreading misinformation that a lot of people are predisposed to believe, and this sort of thing unfortunately can have deadly ramifications outside of the Middle East, especially in Europe, where Jews are often afraid to walk outside wearing anything that would give away the fact that they are Jewish.
So yes. I want people to actually know what they are talking about when they deal with this issue, because if there were fewer lies, not only would it be easier to come up with a workable solution in the Middle East, but there'd be fewer Holocaust survivors murdered in Paris, fewer Jews assaulted for wearing yalmukes in Berlin, fewer attempts to ban all pro-Israel thought at universities, and maybe more energy would be devoted to ending the far worse humanitarian situations around the Middle East and the rest of the world instead of focusing so much effort and hatred on what would otherwise be a relatively minor border conflict. There are people who are crazy enough that seeing a headline 'Israel is Apartheid' and reading about Israel banning Arabic would set them off to go and attack and maybe try to kill the nearest Jew. So when I see threads like this, I cannot help but wonder if this is what is going to cause the next attempt to bomb a Jewish museum, shoot up a Jewish school, or just someone to go and shout every offensive slur in the book at a group of Jewish kids walking to school. This is a very real problem that I have been dealing with for years. These lies kill.
