EPTThings Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine - Page 139
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NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12043 Posts
On December 04 2023 07:03 JimmiC wrote: I read that, drones response and then his response again on the 3rd where it seemed to die. I think his response to Drone was good and I wish it had kept going because I’d like to learn a bunch more about the settlements. I wish he had more directly responded to the part about the ultra orthodox fertility rates as well. I took cerebrates story as like a here’s something that happens rather than, this is every time and the only thing. I wish their discussion had kept going to be honest, the details about the settlements are so charged that there almost never seems to be healthy discussion about it. I do not know if you took the time to watch the video I posted but a good percentage of it is them CYAing (covering your ass) on everything they say as to offend any one, and they barely get into it. That's interesting, thanks for going back. The main issue that I see with your interpretation of it being a "here's something that happens" story is that usually a "here's something that happens" story ought to be connected to the topic you're responding to, which, in the case of Drone's post, was Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Like you said, you wanted to learn a bunch more about the settlements. The problem here is that it's a completely unrelated story: it happens in the Negev Desert which is in Israel, and it's about Israel expelling people who settle on land that they don't own. There is also a mention of fertility which I'm not sure is relevant as I think Bedouins who have an appropriate amount of kids would also get kicked out of land that they're settling illegally, as far as I can tell it seems to serve a similar purpose to the fertility map of the world that has Africa in bright red that you sometimes see at the end of big televised debates on immigration. Regardless, this doesn't in any way give you more information on the West Bank settlements. So here's a conspiracy theory (an actual one for a change, as opposed to me observing material reality and describing it): let's say that you've set out to defend a cause, and you have some bad facts, such as the West Bank settlements, but you also don't care that much about facts and reality. It would be a poor tactic to defend the settlements on the facts, as you're not really going to convince someone. Something interesting that you could do instead is bring up this unrelated story, as it has some interesting characteristics: if someone doesn't look too closely, it looks like a related story because both instances contain Bedouins getting kicked off from their settlements. You could manifest into the world the notion that something that happens related to West Bank settlements (not every time and not the only thing) is that Bedouins are occupying land illegally and Israel is kicking them off, as opposed to the reality, which is that Israel is illegally settling occupied land. And then later on some other people in the thread, for example someone who is generally on your side but has some issues with the settlements, would start believing that. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3710 Posts
On December 04 2023 08:15 JimmiC wrote: Because it was a movement born on bringing a safe state for Jewish people who were accepted basically no where and exterminated in other places, your country included. So when many people are talking about how extremists are born with some understanding for Palestinians, they should have at least that for Zionists. That's one way to describe it. The way I see it Zionists are nationalists, and personally I don't care for that particular ideology. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States22985 Posts
On December 04 2023 08:18 Magic Powers wrote: That's one way to describe it. The way I see it Zionists are nationalists, and personally I don't care for that particular ideology. BreakThrough News has a reasonably good video about how the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has always been on Zionist's agenda. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Magic Powers
Austria3710 Posts
On December 04 2023 08:23 JimmiC wrote: They are, they were trying to get a Jewish nation as an explicit goal. The holocaust being a big boost to their membership for obvious reasons. Not that a ton of awful shit didn’t happen to Jews before that as well. Honestly I don't really feel like starting a lecture on the meaning and history of nationalism. I recommend reading up on it from Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/nationalism I will say that nationalism is one of the collectivist ideologies (of which I reject all of them). It also happens to be a quintessential pillar of fascism (which is why some people mistakenly think they're the same ideology). | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12043 Posts
On December 04 2023 08:33 JimmiC wrote: Out of context , if that was not the only post, maybe i could get on board with your theory, but that’s clearly not the guy we have here. He seems to painstakingly answer most everyone. I thought his story was like, here’s something I know about that is related and in happens in Israel and is not unique to the west bank. He also does not say it’s good or anything like that. I think if you were to use facts to refute the parts of his posts you disagree with and avoided using the unhelpful (and IMO incorrect) words you could have a much bigger and better impact. But you see it's not that it's "not unique to the west bank". It has no connexion to the west bank at all. In order to be less out of context, I can provide you a few other examples of arguments that he made that functioned in a similar pattern to this one if you want. I disagree that facts would have a ton of impact because the facts on this are, in my opinion, very straightforward. I generally don't think the people who are still standing with Israel at this point do so because they need something explained to them, I think the large majority of them have a solid notion of what's happening. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Cerebrate1
265 Posts
On December 04 2023 00:03 JimmiC wrote: I’m not sure the exact percentage but like 90% plus is him fact checking, which I guess is a form of defending. But regardless of any crime we have is western society the truth is just as important for the guilty and even more so for the accused. A case is far more compelling to the informed if it is built on facts. People getting mad at cerebrate need to take a long look in the mirror and decide why him fact checking gets them so mad. You should want your opinions to be based on facts and reality, no? Ya, that's probably most of my posts, at least until a debate begins. This topic is super emotionally charged for a lot of people (even people who are totally disconnected to it for some reason), so the media tends to pick an echo chamber they want to sell papers too and twist their stories to fit that narrative. If we want to have a proper discussion, we have to have shared definitions of terms and a critical digestion of the media before we even start. Obviously I'm pretty pro-Israel, but almost all of my posts are delving into a specific sub-topic rather than trying to take on the whole issue at once. Sometimes they don't even have anything to do with the broader topic. I think that's where a lot of the confusion comes from. A recent example was a discussion about how similar Hamas was to Nazi's. Someone mentioned that "tons of Nazi's aren't even antisemetic." I wasn't even following the meta discussion too much there, I just wanted to correct that one line that I felt was inaccurate. The following posts seemed to understand that I was taking a position on the larger discussion, when I really was not. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Cerebrate1
265 Posts
1) Quote: "I don't want to get into the altered definition of this term for this conflict, but regarding the quote being discussed, it actually proves the quote right (*Note: this is in response to me saying that Israel enforces strict Apartheid). There were tons of suicide bombings, stabbings, car rammings and other terrorist actions killing many Israelis in the Intifadas before the security fences and checkpoints were set up. Those mechanisms stopped the killings. It's literally an example of how Israel needs a strong defence to not have it's people killed." Cerebrate is arguing that Apartheid stopped the terrorist attacks and other violence. Obviously this ignores the fact that, since Israel occupied the West bank for the first time, illegal settlements popped up all over the place, all funded by Israel. Cerebrate purposefully leaves out the fact that these settlements constitute an act of aggression and a war crime under international law. In this way he omits the cause of the attacks. The Palestinians had every right to fight back against the settlements, but they had no means to seriously stop them because Israel's grip on them was too powerful. We can conclude that Cerebrate attempts to paint the situation as the following: Palestinian violence first, Apartheid second. However, the real order of events was Jewish war crimes first (supported by the State of Israel), then Palestinian resistance... ahem, sorry, "terrorist attacks" of course, and then Apartheid to quell the resis... ahem, sorry, the "terrorist attacks". Cerebrate could of course correctly represent the historic timeline if he acknowledged that it was Israel which started the aggression against Palestinians in the West bank, not the other way around. But with his pro-Israel bias this doesn't seem possible for him. Your larger point here is basically "who started it." This is a bit hard to pin down in this conflict because each side did things that the other reacted to. You're basically just coming from the Palestinian perspective, and me from the Israeli. Neither is strictly wrong, it's just a matter of perspective. My point here though was that the security fence and checkpoints reduce deaths (really from both sides cus the terrorists don't get the chance to suicide bomb), which has been shown statistically to be effective. 2) Quote: "I just wanted to pull this one out to point out that, whatever your definition of oppression, I have a hard time imagining it applying to anything between 1949 to 1967. Israel gave all the local Arabs full citizenship and rights and integrated them into society like any democracy would." (*Note: this is in response to me saying that Israel has never attempted to not oppress Palestinians) Cerebrate relativizes the oppression of Palestinians by pointing to a specific period in time during which it can be argued that there was no strict Apartheid. This is not a refutation of the argument, he just deflects from the point to attempt to prove that the State of Israel can act reasonably given other circumstances. However, as point 1) shows, this is in context of Cerebrate omitting the true order of events. Your quote that I was responding to was "that Israel has never attempted to not oppress Palestinians." This is an example of my fact checking a specific point rather than trying to make some sweeping statement. You can't accurately say that Israel NEVER tried not oppressing the Palestinians, when the first 2 decades of their existence, they pretty clearly didn't do that. If you want to say "recently" we could have a different discussion, but you can't use words like "never" and then just ignore sizable chunks of history. 3) He doubled down on the claim that ME countries have generally been warring with Israel. But the most recent case of a war has been between Israel and Hezbollah (not Lebanon, the state) in 2006. It wasn't between countries. Otherwise also none of the ME countries have engaged in warfare against Israel in the last 40 years. It's strictly a false claim. This was regarding the fact that Palestinians are the only ones who are actually serious about taking up arms against Israel, and the fact that they somehow happen to be the only ones being oppressed by Israel. He also attempted to paint the relations between Syria and Israel as an ongoing war. This is also false. He also makes little to no distinction between acts of terrorism and acts of war. Cerebrate therefore attempted to reframe Israel's history of fighting terrorists as a history of war against countries, and he did so in order to undermine the obvious correlation between oppression and resistance. This is another example of me fact checking your specific wording. I basically dealt with all of your points here already in my earlier lengthy post, but in short: your thesis was that "only oppressed people fight Israel," but you attempt to prove that by saying that "proper nation states haven't officially gone to war with Israel" which is a far cry from "no one fights Israel" in a region where half the armed groups aren't armies of internationally recognized countries. 4) Argued that Israel's existence is threatened because they're surrounded by enemy states, and that the threat would only increase if Palestinians had their own country without prior elimination of Hamas. In truth Israel has successfully fought against several ME countries at once and not only come out victorious, but it did so in an absolutely dominating fashion. Israel also has the US as an ally, and a gigantic nuclear arsenal. Therefore from a military perspective there is no realistic threat to the State of Israel. There is only a threat to some people of Israel at any given time due to terrorist attacks. That is an issue, but it's not something that requires bombarding Gaza. Furthermore, none of these ME countries have engaged in warfare with Israel since 1982. As I said the 2006 war doesn't count because it was not against the state of Lebanon, it was against Hezbollah. This means there haven't been any signs of aggression by ME countries in the last 40 years. It is not a coincidence that these countries are all not oppressed by Israel, while the only area (Gaza) which directs serious aggression towards Israel is in fact oppressed. The "fight for existence" argument is on very shaky grounds. It also somehow happens to be a claim that all bloodthirsty oppressors always make, and it never turns out to be true. Palestinians, much more than Israelis, could argue that they're fighting for their existence, because their land is being actively stolen and their houses are being bombarded. I think "never underestimate your enemy (especially if he makes it clear that he very much wants to kill you)" is a pretty fair line here, especially given Oct 7 literally just happened because Israel underestimated Hamas. Could Israel win another regional war? I agree that their odds aren't terrible. Do they want to create a situation that is ripe for that though? Hopefully we can all agree that war is generally bad for just about everyone and avoiding it in the first place is a good idea. Besides for which, I'm not sure "you promise not to go to war with us 5 minutes after your founding" is an unreasonable prerequisite for a two state solution. 5) Cerebrate claimed that Israel's strikes are pre-emptive because "the Arabs" are "building up to a war". Quote: "Unless you count pre-emptive strikes as the Arabs muster for war, Israel is not the one that starts those up." Oh, pre-emptive missile strikes can prevent a war? So ME countries or "the Arabs" have the capacity to seriously threaten Israel? But no wait, they actually don't have the capacity because Israel can just shoot down their weapons from afar? Incredible. Brilliant. That's an awfully convenient combination of strength and weakness both at the same time. Does this remind people of something? The enemy is both weak and strong at the same time. I'm reminded of another conflict in which people always apply the same reasoning. Cerebrate of course provided no evidence of "the Arabs" building up for war. Meanwhile Israel is actively engaging in warfare against Palestinians, a war that is yet again completely dominated by the overwhelming power of the IDF. This again leads back to the claim that Israel has to somehow be afraid of a multi-pronged attack from several directions. Oh really, is that why so much of Israel's military is tangled up in Gaza right now? Because Israel's back is so open and vulnerable? Interesting, fascinating. I said "Unless you count pre-emptive strikes as the Arabs muster for war, Israel is not the one that starts those up." (Nothing to do with the comparative strength of those forces in my quote btw, not sure where you got that.) I understand that you believe that non-military action is equivalent to starting a war, but I don't think it's unreasonable for me to hold that they aren't. That said, every war that I can think of backs up my quote: 1948: 5+ Arab states invaded Israel 1967: Israel pre-emptive strike as Arab forces were mobilizing for war 1973: Arab states surprise invasion of Israel 1982: PLO attacks Israel from Lebanon 2006: Hezbollah takes Israeli soldiers hostage 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023: Hamas variously fires rockets, takes hostages, makes incursions into Israel and kills people, etc You might be able to argue one or two of these, but the general pattern that the non-Israel side is the one who starts the military engagements is pretty clear. 6) Quote: Your rationalization of why Palestinians haven't taken peaceful routes is not contradictory to my statement that they haven't taken peaceful routes. I've acknowledged before that they may have reason to be violent. "I agree with you that great leaders are not always the things that create movements. Quite often, popular movements simply thrust someone into the lead of what the people were already were headed towards. The issue with Palestine is that there is neither a great peaceful leader nor any popular movement of peace. There are dozens of different ways to start a non-violent movement and none of those is happening or has ever happened to any real degree in Palestine." This claim yet again tactically misleads by reframing history. Since the conception of the State of Israel (and before) there have been a number of Palestinian leaders who were willing to come to the table on peaceful terms. However, since day one the more aggressive Palestinian resistance groups were actively undermining these efforts. After the State of Israel was conceived, the Israeli leaders have made no attempts to negotiate or make any other diplomatic efforts with any Palestinian leaders to continue debating a two-state solution. The debate was strictly over. This was in spite of neither Jews nor Palestinians generally being at fault for the escalation of the tensions that led to the Zionist takeover. The State of Israel has since never had a movement to seriously consider negotiating with Palestinians on eye-to-eye terms. It is unsurprising that Palestinians could therefore not be expected to peacefully surrender the lost land, and therefore the tensions continued. Eventually this led to an (actual) war between Israel and several other ME countries, which Israel won convincingly. And yet again Israel engaged in the same acts of aggression as before: stealing land. With such a consistent history of land being stolen from them, it's completely understandable that Palestinians by and large saw Israel as an aggressor that can't be reasoned with. Cerebrate however attempts to put blame squarely on the Palestinians yet again. Your claim that "there have been a number of Palestinian leaders who were willing to come to the table on peaceful terms" is more interesting to me though. Perhaps you have more information on this point than I do. If you can legitimately provide sources about these peaceful leaders, I would revise my stance. | ||
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Cerebrate1
265 Posts
On December 04 2023 06:16 KwarK wrote: The idea that “it wasn’t stolen from the people living there for generations because the new occupants had the legitimate ownership obtained from the British colonial administration” seems a bit of a stretch. I wonder how many people making that argument unconditionally accept British ownership rules elsewhere. My suspicion is that in general they don’t recognize the authority of the British colonial administration to declare who owns land but that in this instance it’s convenient to make an exception. I mentioned this before, but yes, the world pretty much does recognize the legal authority of the British over their territories. Half of the countries in the Middle East and Africa had their borders drawn by previous colonial powers. I'm not claiming that this is morally justifiable (in a lot of cases they were clearly working in their own interests against the locals, like how they gave most of the Middle East to cousins of the guys with oil and divided up the land of the Kurds multiple ways so the oil guys would give them better deals). But in terms of international law, those borders are accepted. If you don't say this, you would have to say that Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc are all illegal countries with illegal administrations and borders. Nobody says that, so the people who only start to doubt this legal standard by Israel are the ones using double standards. | ||
KwarK
United States42250 Posts
On December 04 2023 12:25 Cerebrate1 wrote: I mentioned this before, but yes, the world pretty much does recognize the legal authority of the British over their territories. Half of the countries in the Middle East and Africa had their borders drawn by previous colonial powers. I'm not claiming that this is morally justifiable (in a lot of cases they were clearly working in their own interests against the locals, like how they gave most of the Middle East to cousins of the guys with oil and divided up the land of the Kurds multiple ways so the oil guys would give them better deals). But in terms of international law, those borders are accepted. If you don't say this, you would have to say that Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc are all illegal countries with illegal administrations and borders. Nobody says that, so the people who only start to doubt this legal standard by Israel are the ones using double standards. You just gave a list of places that had domestic popular revolts against the British installed monarchies (Jordan excluded). | ||
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Cerebrate1
265 Posts
I'm glad you mentioned that thread in particular, because I had noticed that several people (even before this) understood something different from those posts than I had intended. First, I realize that I accidentally conflated the Israeli Beduins with Beduins outside the Green Line. The issues are related, but not exactly the same, so I apologize for that. Ok, but diving in: Drone brought an article that discussed Israel demolishing a number of "structures" in the West Bank. I was trying to say this in a roundabout nicer way before, but that lead to confusion, so for the sake of clarity: those structures are illegal settlements. I plan to have a longer discussion later about what constitutes a "legal settlement," if there can even be such a thing, but the things that Israel calls "illegal settlements" are usually pretty cut and dry. If you go to some random unclaimed hill, set up a structure, and hang out there occasionally, that is illegal and it does not magically become your property. This is not an Israel specific thing, pretty much every country has laws against squatters. Imagine going to your local park or wildlife area, setting up shop, and calling it yours. Your local government won't like that. It's not the top priority of most countries, but obviously within the context of this conflict, land claims are politically volatile to say the least, so Israel regularly dismantles illegal settlements to maintain the status quo. (For those of you who want to jump down my throat right now about how Israel builds what they call "legal settlements" and disrupts that status quo, again, we can discuss that later, but let's get this point down first.) The first illegal settlements were all the ones built by extremist Israelis. The State of Israel realized the problematic nature of these structures and dismantled/s them. However, since then, Palestinians realized they could use the same tactics and started building their own illegal settlements. Israel demolishes those too. All that said, my mentioning of the high birthrates of Beduins was actually my attempt to help justify their actions. I generally try to empathize with all players on the geopolitical chess board. If you don't understand where someone else is coming from, you can't properly predict their actions or influence them. Perhaps ironically, I actually have a more humanistic outlook on even Hamas than most posters here. A good while back I was debating with someone here about whether Hamas could be influenced. They took the position that Hamas are basically unthinking animals while I disagreed. Regarding the current topic, I probably have more positive views on large family sizes than most posters here. I also think that if the Beduins are simply becoming too numerous, that could contribute to the illegal settlement issue. I happen to think that providing a home for your family is much higher on the morally justifiable ladder than trying to grab land so your race/religion can have more dominance in the region, so I chose to view the Beduins in that way. I have heard of opposite cases where Beduins have a home in a city and just set up tents in random places to claim land. That would make the situation less difficult to me, but I don't know what the numbers are like each way, which is why I said that it is a sad situation. | ||
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Cerebrate1
265 Posts
On December 04 2023 12:33 KwarK wrote: You just gave a list of places that had domestic popular revolts against the British installed monarchies (Jordan excluded). That just proves that international law does not always lead to popular results, not that the international community doesn't accept them as law. I'm sure you aren't trying to argue that the borders of Jordan (decided entirely by the British) are illegal and illegitimate and need to be redrawn. In which case, you agree with me. | ||
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KwarK
United States42250 Posts
On December 04 2023 13:41 Cerebrate1 wrote: That just proves that international law does not always lead to popular results, not that the international community doesn't accept them as law. I'm sure you aren't trying to argue that the borders of Jordan (decided entirely by the British) are illegal and illegitimate and need to be redrawn. In which case, you agree with me. I actually don’t agree with you. Your argument seems to be “look, if we’re going to deny the British colonial office as a source of ultimate territorial authority then that’d strike at the entire moral underpinning of monarchy as a source of political legitimacy”. But I’m just not that much of a monarchist. Whether or not they need to be redrawn is a separate matter but they’re not intrinsically just just because Britain drew some lines on a map. The people who live there are ultimately the source of any sovereignty. | ||
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Salazarz
Korea (South)2591 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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