"The right in Israel now is unquestionably dominated by racist shitheads, but why should Israel be different from Russia, Hungary, Poland, Germany or the U.S.? It’s today’s fashion."

What Israel is doing isn't different from what other states have done in the past/ongoing, but your attempt to provoke "why should?" really shows which side you are on that question, with the racist shitheads.

"For over five decades, Israel has denied all rights of the Palestinians under its control, has stolen most of their resources – agricultural land, water and forced taxation which serves only the occupier. Tens of thousands of houses were destroyed, millions of trees were burnt or uprooted, tens of thousands of Palestinians were jailed for trumped-up charges, including thousands of children, and more than 15 thousand innocent Palestinians were killed by the IDF. Ambulances and medical teams were shot at and many were killed in the act of offering medical assistance. Schools and Universities were forced to close for years, and the vulnerable infrastructure of communication, water, health, education, electricity, roads, industry and food production and distribution were destroyed time and again in periodic attacks on Gaze and the West Bank, as well as those of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.

...The Israeli society have never been more conceited, racist and nationalist than in the last decade under Netanyahu. The four years of the Trump administration have greatly contributed to the illusion of total impunity, and the government has increased the tempo of land confiscation, illegal destruction of houses, and settlement building, proving that they intend to squeeze out as many Palestinians out of their country, and to make the life of the remaining ones so impossible that they will leave to wherever they may be able to. The process is over a century long, and succeeded in granting Israel total control over the whole of Palestine, so why doubt its further success?

...But now the streets are burning. Palestinians – those with the few rights still conferred on them by Israel, or their brothers and sisters in the ‘occupied territories’ (all of Palestine is occupied) who lack any form of rights, are now acting together against the atrocities of Israeli colonial control. What have they got to lose? Only their lives; and their lives are not safe under Israeli rule, for sure. They have had enough, much more than enough, for many generations, and those who advised them to wait, were false messiahs and snake-oil merchants."

https://mondoweiss.net/2021/05/israels-illusion-of-normality-collapses-may-2021/

Basically Sweden.

Apologist's crap. A moderate fascist is still a fascist.

but your attempt to provoke "why should?" really shows which side you are on that question, with the racist shitheads. — Saphsin

It really does? It really really truly does?Indubitably and forever more ? Are you sure? Will you send me a candy bar if you’re wrong?
Can I guess which side you’re on? Ready? Ok, here goes; you’re on the side of ‘reads a few lines of ambiguous text and , rather than asking a question or two to get clarification, simply goes with their first impression’.
How’d I do? Oh wait, you’d have to ask a question or two to know the answer to that.

We see here the results of the machinations of Perfidious Albion. You must say the Brits learned from it, though, as shown by their adroitness leading up to the partition of the Raj.

as shown by their adroitness leading up to the partition of the Raj. — Ciceronianus the White

Oh sweet summer child.

There was nothing ambiguous about it, you made your attitude very clear throughout this thread (making excuses) and then wrote in clear English.

"Will you send me a candy bar if you’re wrong?" You clearly haven't evolved past grade school.

Apologist's crap. A moderate fascist is still a fascist. — Benkei

You have to excuse me. I’ll need to know the secret handshake before I can join the authentic political radical’s club, where self-righteousness flows like water and real psychological insight is in perennial drought.

It's not radical to oppose Isreal's ethnic cleansing program. It's radical to not.

There was nothing ambiguous about it, you made your attitude very clear throughout this thread ( — Saphsin

You say it’s unambiguous and I say it’s ambiguous. How ever are we to get to the bottom of this? Perhaps by actually having a discussion about it? No, then you’d have to dismount your high horse and put your brain to work. But I know you can do it. I’ve read some
of your posts. There’s real promise there. So my first suggestion is that you attempt to summarize my
‘unambiguous position’ and we’ll see if it bears any resemblance to what I intended.

" You clearly haven't evolved past grade school. — Saphsin

Actually I learned everything I need to know in kindergarten.

"You say it’s unambiguous and I say it’s ambiguous. How ever are we to get to the bottom of this?"

The point doesn't differ if for instance, you were being sarcastic rather than rhetorical. Since the beginning you've been giving nothing but defensive excuses. Oh they're racist and do bad things, but I have all these things to add to it while you naive guys voice your opposition to what they're doing.

Oh yeah? Wouldn't be surprised if you turn out to defend that current fashion of racist states you think is worth mentioning.

"Actually I learned everything I need to know in kindergarten."

Not a good thing.

Oh sweet summer child. — StreetlightX

Irony, you see. I thought it clear they screwed up then and there also.

Or were you being ironic as well? Goddam irony.

it's clear that Isreal is a state with full agency

How is this determined? What would define a country lacking in agency? The United States is the most economically and militarily powerful country in the world, but it seems less able to direct even domestic policy than many other states (e.g. China would seem to have more agency in that regard).

I don't think you can divorce any nations actions from their history, and agency is often illusory.

slow burn genocide

That's a good description. It's genocide of the soul. Israel can deny claims to genocide in its conventional sense, since Palestinians have one of the highest birth rates in the world and are suffering from an obesity epidemic on par with the United States, rather than being starved out. This is the new world we live in. Providing food is now cheap enough, and mass exterminations now considered untasteful enough that the new method is a slow execution by the restriction of any access to freedoms or meaning. A restriction to a life of constricted opportunities and constant harassment, with the lack of any meaningful rights. This "genocide of the soul," is somehow considered acceptable enough for Israeli voters and Israeli allies. It is, if possible, even more morally repugnant than the Chinese attempt to forcibly absorb minorities, because it doesn't even envisage eventual parity, even after murdering the culture of other group.

Here we go again. — Manuel

Wait, what? I thought Jared Kushner brought peace to the middle east?

Damn! I hate when that happens.

Both are to blame for reciprocating atrocities but, between oppressor and oppressed, who can be responsible for the cessation of oppression? And, therefore, who is ultimately to blame for not fulfilling that responsibility?

Yeah. He failed, damn media. :joke: Then we've had repeated massacres in Gaza: 2008, 2012, 2014 and now probably this one. Maybe the ugliest one yet, what with all the world having problems to deal with by way of pandemic and financial troubles.

It's just a massacre. In the Israeli military, they refer to "mowing the lawn" in Gaza. Every few years we gotta teach them whose boss and put them in place. Which just increases the odds of it happening again.

The links in the OP are quite reliable on the whole. Just click on the headline in Haaretz and you'll get hourly updates. Bad day today.

:clap: :100:

I very much appreciate the historical context of the early Zionist movement. I should have been more precise with my attributions and said 'post-1967 Zionism' instead. I've corrected my previous posts where my meaning needs to be made clearer.

One will notice that I wish to be just to the [Israelis]: I do not want to break faith with myself here. I must therefore also state my objections to them. One pays heavily for coming to power: power makes stupid. The [Israelis] — once they were called the people of thinkers: do they think at all today? The [Israelis] are now bored with the [ethical], the [Israelis] now mistrust the [ethical]; politics swallows up all serious concern for really [ethical] matters. [Der Judenstaat, Der Judenstaat] über alles — I fear that was the end of [Israeli justice]. — TI: What the Germans Lack (sect. 1)

(Emphasis and substitutions are mine.)

"How is this determined? What would define a country lacking in agency? The United States is the most economically and militarily powerful country in the world, but it seems less able to direct even domestic policy than many other states (e.g. China would seem to have more agency in that regard)."

If you can give evidence if they're forced to do this to the Palestinians because of constraints, you should say so. Agency is the absence of constraints, or at least lacking enough to rightfully attribute blame. If they're politically obligated to do so for instance, well, that means the citizens are to blame as well as the state. Israel is one of the few countries where I think there may be truth to that. But the things Israeli state is being criticized for in this thread, why would you suggest they don't have agency?

The U.S. has poor domestic state capacity after suffering from the toxic effects of financialization, but also because it's filled with political elites unwilling to even to try to implement them. But it did have the capacity one time with willing political elites, it was able to implement some successful industrial policy in the 40s

Since the beginning you've been giving nothing but defensive excuses. Oh they're racist and do bad things, but I have all these things to add to it while you naive guys voice your opposition to what they're doing.

Oh yeah? Wouldn't be surprised if you turn out to defend that — Saphsin

This is ostensibly a philosophy site. I’m aware
that political philosophy and straight out political fights are also a part of what goes on here. I tend to avoid the political discussions because they tend to be muddled and over generalizating. This inclines participants toward a mentality of us against them , of who’s right and who’s wrong, without bothering to examine the context of arguments or the worldview through which they’re filtered.

For the record , I don’t give defensive excuses. I’m a post modernist who rejects moralistic approaches to understanding social value systems and political actions. I don’t give excuses because I have never met a side in a political dispute who couldn’t give legitimate s sincere moral justification for their acts and positions. So I don’t defend any side against their opponents. I defend all sides. This doesn’t mean that I dont prefer certain ways of thinking , certain worldviews to others, but I don’t blame others for falling short of that thinking. I attempt to move with them from within their perspective to a more effective thinking that they can endorse.

From a philosophical vantage, you could say I am positioned well to the left of you, if you maintain a moralistic politics.

I’m more than happy to relate my comments on Israel to this larger philosophical approach, because I am eager to define the philosophical position that grounds your stridently felt moral indignation.

For starters, I identify with Ken Gergen’s social constructionist approach:

By and large identity politics has depended on a rhetoric of blame, the illocutionary effects of which are designed to chastise the target (for being unjust, prejudiced, inhumane, selfish, oppressive, and/or violent). In western culture we essentially inherit two conversational responses to such forms of chastisement - incorporation or antagonism. The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways") requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique answerable). However, because in the case of identity politics, there is no preestablished context to situate the target in just these ways, the invited response to critique is more typically one of hostility, defense and counter-charge.

In its critical moment, social constructionism is a means of bracketing or suspending any pronouncement of the real, the reasonable, or the right. In its generative moment, constructionism offers an orientation toward creating new futures, an impetus to societal transformation. Constructionist thought militates against the claims to ethical foundations implicit in much identity politics - that higher ground from which others can so confidently be condemned as inhumane, self-serving, prejudiced, and unjust. Constructionist thought painfully reminds us that we have no transcendent rationale upon which to rest such accusations, and that our sense of moral indignation is itself a product of historically and culturally situated traditions. And the constructionist intones, is it not possible that those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy? As we find, then, social constructionism is a two edged sword in the political arena, potentially as damaging to the wielding hand as to the opposition.”(Social Construction and the Transformation of Identity Politics)

Don't really know what kind of glue you're sniffing in order to interpret things this way, but it must be pretty strong. — Maw

The reason I responded that way was because you said you felt a tinge of self-disgust when other Jews were acting poorly. I just didn't understand why you felt self-disgust.

Unless the irony is lost on me, you're playing the racist card I see. That doublespeak is mighty MAGA/QAnon of you, BC. — 180 Proof

You misunderstand me, I am playing the 'both claims have about the same level of absurdity' card.

"I’m a post modernist who rejects moralistic approaches to understanding social value systems and political actions. I don’t give excuses because I have never met a side in a political dispute who couldn’t give legitimate s sincere moral justification for their acts and positions. So I don’t defend any side against their opponents. I defend all sides. This doesn’t mean that I dont prefer certain ways of thinking , certain worldviews to others, but I don’t
blame others for falling short of that thinking.
From a philosophical vantage, you could say I am positioned well to the left of you, if you maintain a moralistic politics."

The point of politics to improve the world and end suffering, that's why I bother spending time on it rather than plenty of other more pleasurable activities I'd rather do. The way to alleviate suffering in this case is to end oppression of the Palestinians. That is morality, and you are not to the Left of me for lacking it.

:100:

The point of politics to improve the world and end suffering, that's why I bother spending time on it rather than plenty of other more pleasurable activities I'd rather do. The way to alleviate suffering in this case is to end oppression of the Palestinians. That is morality, and you are not to the Left of me for lacking it. — Saphsin

The foundation of politics is philosophy, also the name of this site, and I’ve heard nothing about it from you so far.
As far as being beyond good and evil , I don’t mind being in the company of phenomenologists , Nietzsche, Derrida, Gergen , post-steuxturalists, radical
constructivists and many other philosophical
positions that recognize the limitations of a moralistic thinking.

For the sake of understanding people, you have to see them amorally. Judgement closes the door on understanding. All you'll need to know is facts that serve the judgment.

But to live without judgment is inhuman. Without judgment you can't act.

The reason I responded that way was because you said you felt a tinge of self-disgust when other Jews were acting poorly. I just didn't understand why you felt self-disgust. — BitconnectCarlos

I very clearly stated that it's hard not to feel a tinge of self-disgust and cultural dissonance after internalizing 30 years of pro-Israel propaganda, part of which has emphasized the importance of American Jews supporting Israel, despite the state of Israel undeniably functioning as an apartheid regime and an occupying force which has brutalized Palestinians. I shared a video, and I can't believe I have to repeat this again, of Israeli Jews cheering, chanting and dancing, at the holiest site in Judaism as a fire broke out near the third holiest site for Muslims, and after Israeli rockets killed 30 Palestinians and at least 10 children. What else can be expected when half of Israeli Jews (48%) say Arabs should be transferred or expelled from Israel. So no, this isn't just an instance of "Jews acting poorly". I didn't say "Jews acting poorly". Learn how to fucking read and process information.

Tbh, and this goes beyond philosophy and I'm not trying to be intentionally mean, but you just sound like an honestly miserable person. I've had disagreement with others but I don't get the same sense of vicious bitterness through their writing like I get through yours. Have you considered therapy or medication? I feel zero reason to engage with you if you're going to write like this.

but you just sound like an honestly miserable person — BitconnectCarlos

That's exactly correct, if I sound like a miserable person it's because I interact with dogshit illiterates, such as yourself, who filter videos of Jews cheering death and destruction after rockets murdered several dozen Palestinians and nearly a dozen children into braindead commentary like:

If every time a Jew did something bad it caused me to feel self-disgust I'd just permanently be in a state of grossness. — BitconnectCarlos

and:

Guess there's shitty people everywhere. — BitconnectCarlos

That's exactly correct, if I sound like a miserable person it's because I interact with dogshit illiterates, such as yourself, who filter videos of Jews cheering death and destruction after rockets murdered several dozen Palestinians and nearly a dozen children into braindead commentary like: — Maw

We've established it was a misunderstanding. Most people recognize this and move on.

"Dogshit illiterates" aren't to blame either for why you're miserable. You are to blame for why you are miserable. Nobody is forcing you to react in the way that you're reacting. The recovery process begins when you acknowledge this.

:fire: