Solutions? Anything? Anyone? — tim wood
That's because they seek to attribute blame, rather than understanding that both sides are afflicted by religious identity. The solution is simple - accept that we are all human beings, evolved from animal ignorance over thousands of years, and that religion occurs in the course of evolution, for the political purpose of uniting hunter gatherer tribes in a multi-tribal social group.
It took primitive man 35,000 years to figure out that tribes who believed in the same God, and the same set of moral laws could live together in peace. The problem occurs when one civilisation established on this basis, comes into contact with another, similarly constituted civilisation. They then have the same problem they started with - and theoretically, the solution is the same as it was for hunter gatherers. But I'm quietly confident humankind will become extinct before adopting science as a common understanding of reality. — counterpunch
More like the is US an ally of Israel and Israel decides what to do. You see, client states get orders from their masters and here that isn't happening. For the US relations with Israel is above all a domestic policy.Israel is a client state of the US. Nothing they do happens without the latter's backing. The game to be played is a long one. — StreetlightX
Videos like these are also why the other unthinking line of justification - "Israel has a right to defend itself" - will be showen to be the hollow, cynical, joke that it is. No one with a working lung and spleen will ever be able to take it seriously again. — StreetlightX
Countries consist of millions of people interacting and consist of multiple different layers of government and in addition to those governments you have countless institutions which have their own rules and norms. To treat a country as if it were an individual person is just not a realistic description. Sure, there may be problems in certain institutions and not in others. Does that mean the entire country is just basically one person that we label as "evil?" Even powerful political leaders can't just press a button to make a certain problem go away unless it's totalitarianism. — BitconnectCarlos
Solutions? Anything? Anyone? — tim wood
It's a microcosm of the history of humanity in a sense. Thousand upon thousand of senseless deaths and for what? Pride? "Security"? Nationalism? And yet here we are. We're born after a very long time, live in the little blue planet we're burning up for a nano-second, and we'll return to nothing for ever. To be killed in such a brutal manner, for mere political theatre is digusting. — Manuel
Didn't miss it. Did it escape you that it was not responsive? But of course if you're right, why bother? Israelis and Palestinians, Counterpunch is sure it's hopeless, so have at it. And everyone else. save your breath. Is that your position, your "solution"? — tim wood
Did it escape you that it was not responsive? — tim wood
One problem Israel faces, aside from those already mentioned, is that it's an extremely paranoid state — Manuel
An immediate unilateral de-escalation by the Israeli government / armed forces. A stop to further expansion of settlements. — Echarmion
Well said. An author once said something along these lines: a thousand years from now, when the children's children's children look at this in the history book, will they see anything other than a tragedy? Death and destruction over such fantasies as religion and nations, which in due time will all disappear or morph unrecognisably anyways. — Echarmion
It's a gamble (a 'good' one, as far as murder goes), and if he wins, he'll take it as a vindication and things will get unimaginably bad. If it doesn't - I dunno, the Israeli political system will stay in it's current black hole and that could take it anywhere. — StreetlightX
Ok. But what is your deepest desire? Is it identical to what was behind your previous the most intensive debates? — Number2018
we need to determine if Zizek's line of thought still could be relevant. — Number2018
And I heard Finkelstein mention that the remaining option are to the right and to the far right of Netanyahu. If that's correct, that's pretty nuts. — Manuel
For a start; imo not enough. That is, it will take more than that. I think it will take fully embracing Palestinian self-determination and working toward its realization. But do you think, as I do, that 1) the Palestinians at least at the moment have little or no useful concept of self-realization, and 2) that their "allies" have crushed it out of them and are not interested in its return? — tim wood
And there's a potential irony in this: that to have peace, the Israelis will have to fight just as hard for the Palestinians and their interests as they now do against them - or even harder because in that event they will be dealing more directly with the real enemies. — tim wood
Yes. If we're still around by that time... — Manuel
They don't really care people are dying. They just want to signal their virtue. — counterpunch
But to say that morality doesn't properly apply in the context of international relations because states are not individuals is an evasion. — Echarmion
I was saying if if you're a neutral third party evaluating a regional conflict between two parties, how these two parties treat their minorities (e.g. Egyptian Jews, Israeli Arabs) is relevant in an evaluation of the conflict. If one party treated their minorities extremely poorly and the other party treats them less poorly but not in an ideal manner, then that should impact our evaluation. — BitconnectCarlos
It would be ridiculous to spend all our time and energy as a neutral third party denigrating the more humanitarian side and completely ignoring the other especially when the other treatment is ethnic cleansing. — BitconnectCarlos
Additionally, plenty of other countries have had racial problems but these problems have been improved on. There has been progress. We didn't advocate for the immediate destruction of these states that have/had racial problems either, we just work towards improvement ideally within established, democratic channels. — BitconnectCarlos
Meanwhile, people really are dieing. Why do we allow that to happen? — Echarmion
:up: Finally, sounds like you support the weaker oppressed Palestinians over the stronger oppressor Israel. Perhaps, Bitcon, you have a "moral conscience"? :roll: Irony of Ironies, isn't it? how behaving more like the enemy than the enemy you have become what you (claim to) hate most.Gotta support David over Goliath. — BitconnectCarlos
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