The UN continues to beclown itself.

This is inevitable in such a caldron of apartheid and oppression. To characterise this as the UN as a sympathiser, or colluding with Hamas is a distortion which plays into Israel’s hands.

Now the UN is compromised, a coalition of international funders of aid has pulled out. Who just happen to be Israel’s main Western supporters.

And 2 million Palestinians face imminent starvation.

Israel will be bellicose in its cries blaming others for the genocide now.

So in this morality of the Thunderdome,

I think we can see what you’re saying here.
This is what is going to have to be dealt with though. There seems to be a failure by “The West” and by extension Israel to understand Arabic culture and morality. This isn’t confined to this arena, it applies to all Middle Eastern situations. Also there is likely an analogous failure on the other side too.

As I've argued before, I believe the only way forward is to give Palestinians equal rights, forget the two-state solution, and turn Israel as it is now into a nation where both peoples can live together.

The Israeli’s won’t agree to this because it will result in Palestinians (Arabs) becoming elected into government at some stage. Due to the Palestinian population growing faster than the Jewish population.

I’m quite skeptical about your last claim. Whom/what is “modern civilisation” referring to? Why does “modern civilisation” have a duty “for global security and to right the wrong of the exile of the Jews and the subsequent exile of the Palestinians”?

It’s a moral argument. An argument about the concept that the Jewish people have been wronged by the world (civilisation). That the current conflict is a symptom of this wrong and that to resolve this crisis this wrong will need to be put right in some way.

“Modern civilisation” for me is the human world of the last 2000yrs or so. Or perhaps from the point of the exile of the Jews in 800 BC, or thereabouts*. This whole period of civilisation was involved in the wrong and the evolution of the psychology and narrative of the state, or geopolitics of this time.

If one doesn’t accept this moral argument then we are not anymore addressing the moral argument applicable to this crisis. That’s fine, but we will be ignoring an important facet of the issue.

As far as I'm concerned, my understanding is that the conflict between Israel and Palestinians has to do with state-nation formation over the same piece of land, by two competing nations historically bent on preserving their national identity and security at the expense of the rival nation.

Well I would agree that this is what we see before us now. However we can’t ignore the way this formation was handled by the powers at the time. Not to forget the moral argument and the history of the peoples involved.

So either the feud continues forever or one succeeds in being genocidal against the other, i.e. it expels or exterminates the rival nation, or one nation dominates the other by assimilation or partial citizenship (Jews have historically experienced all these solutions on their skin).

The implications of any of these outcomes for the wider region, or world security may be complex, or unforeseen .

Other powerful states can intervene to impose a solution which is convenient to them (because the instability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is detrimental to their interests),

Well we are witnessing the US hegemony at the moment. Which is only deepening the crisis and will likely have either of three outcomes. An unstable fortress Israel state. The failure of the Israeli state, or some wider conflagration.

The problem I would focus on is not the horror of zillions of Palestinian kids exploding under Israeli bombs or the historical traumas of the Israelis, but why we are powerless over this conflict.

Quite, and what do you put it down to?

* I accept that civilisation over the last 2000yrs or so is complex with a dynamic geopolitics and is not confined to The West. However I would argue that this whole period is involved in the development of the current global zeitgeist.

Here's a two-state solution and how to get there:

Yes, I agree, but it’s not happening any time soon. Unless it’s imposed from outside, that is.

Thanks for the confirmation that it was a fake video.

Yes, I agree about the achievements of Jewish people over the millennia and how the Diaspora has played an important formative role in modern civilisation. I welcome this and the continued contribution. It pains me that their exile has not yet ended as they don’t as yet have a secure homeland.
The Middle East has not been treated well by empire and before that the crusades and before that Rome etc. The Jewish Diaspora has been passed from pillar to post for millennia. Exile and persecution inevitably repeated over the centuries.
I fear that this rift, this trauma is deepening and when human frailty is taken into consideration (what I was saying about the trauma of the realisation of the human condition). The world and geopolitics of this time is not equipped to put this right through conventional diplomatic, or other means.

I agree with what Gershon Baskin said in an interview with Matt Frei yesterday (UK channel4 news at 7pm, 23/01/24). Unfortunately I was unable to link to the interview, here is a brief summary of what he said.

“ What is happening imposes a danger to regional and international security.
Time for UK, US, European nations to recognise the state of Palestine. Remove the veto on Palestinian statehood from Israel. International community needs to work with Israel, Palestine, and neighbours to work out regional architecture for security, stability and economic development.
“Israel will not have security if Palestinians don’t have freedom and dignity, and Palestinians won’t have freedom and dignity if Israel doesn’t have security.”

Basically a global effort (UN) to put Israel and Palestine into special measures until a solution can be found and worked towards. This would need to be maintained indefinitely, for generations until something concrete is established.

Our modern civilisation has a duty here, for global security and to right the wrong of the exile of the Jews and the subsequent exile of the Palestinians.

All these core assumptions deserve to be investigated and questioned as applied also to the conflict we are discussing. They all are potential sources of mystification.

I’m thinking more of anthropology rather than mysticism here. A study of human nature and how humanity and civilisation come to terms with human nature.

These terms include the trauma of this realisation and the post traumatic psychological effects.

Regarding the Jewish people they have struggled with exile for at least 2,900 years. This trauma has been repeated and reinforced numerous times since.

In terms of civilisation ‘a people’ is associated with a homeland. A land where their identity and sense of belonging in a world of people’s is rooted.

Something is happening, has happened, in which the Jewish people are repeatedly exiled, without roots, persecuted.

What is going on here?

What is missing for the Jewish people?

In the literature it's known as "the hard problem of calling the Jews".

Yes, are we getting to the nub of the issue here?

Are we dealing with a traumatised psyche, not just of the Jewish people, but of civilisation as a whole. Why is the concept of genocide so worrying? It must have happened many times in prehistory, prior to modern civilisation.

And how does it happen that listening to both sides - or trying to - attending to the news, and thinking about it, is crap?

We have to wade through propaganda, vested interests, media control and bias and try to remain unbiased ourselves.

I suspect that the Israeli government is looking to reduce the number of children in Gaza. By dropping mines that resemble cans of food on a starving population.

https://x.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/1749801408566583732?s=20

Yes, but if we refer to the diaspora of the Jews across the world, we are talking about the ethno-religious group,

Yes this is the group I was referring to. The Jewish people as a whole, an ethno-religious group. If I were referring to the aggressors in Israel I would likely say Zionist, or Netanyahu’s government.

Zionists

No that doesn’t work. Because it refers to people involved in establishing the Jewish homeland in Israel. This leaves out the wider Jewish diaspora across the world.

And yet Netanyahu’s words and actions do impact the lives of everyone in the world who identifies as a Jew, or of Jewish heritage.

When I speak of these people, how would I refer to them without using the word Jew?

What I think is important most of all, is to stop talking about "the Jews" as though it is some monolithic entity.

Yes, I see this. How do you suggest we describe these people and groups of people?
I would use alternative terminology, but don’t know any other.

I am aware of the circumstance where there are a large number of people of the Jewish diaspora around the world who would distance themselves from actions of the Israeli state. But how would I refer to them?

I agree. There is a problem here though. Israel is in a hole and by default all Jews are in a compromised position.

There is a peculiar feature of racism and accusations of racism. They are very sticky, even to use the word taints one with racism, (it’s not so sticky on a philosophy forum because it is treated as a sociological concept). Every time the accusation of anti-semite is used, it brings along a whole juggernaut of baggage, disrespect, contempt, distrust and taints the speaker with racism.

So to an extent, using the phrase anti-semite is counterproductive and deepens the rift between Jews and everyone else.

This raises the issue of the fate of the Jews and how they adjust to and are treated by and in civilisation as a whole. (I may start a thread about this as it is the elephant in the room)

It gives lots of wriggle room and lets apologists etc off the hook. While shutting down any discussion of the predicament Israel and therefore the Jewish diaspora find themselves in.

Who is the leader of your race/religion? Who do I go to if I need to speak to, e.g., the leader of the black people? Take me to your leader so you can become blameworthy through him.

That’s a weak and nebulous response.

Let’s turn that around, say I’m a concerned Jew who is the representative leader of my people who I can go to and implore him/her to show restraint in Gaza?

Judaism is an ethnicity... it's an ethno-religion. It accepts converts but does not actively seek them out. There are many different sects.

Then why the equivocation?
When I said the Jewish people I was referring to the ethnic group. Which should have been obvious to you.
This equivocation is used widely to accuse people critical of Israeli action of anti-semitism. The Jewish lobby around the world is using it as a smokescreen, a sleight of hand to excuse the Jewish people of accountability for the reckless behaviour of Netanyahu.

Cakeism again.

Would be Assad or Raisi be representative for Arabs? When Assad kills 500,000 of his own people does that represent Arabs around the world? Netanyahu is the head of state in Israel and nothing more. He is not a rabbi. He holds no religious post. Jews are not blameworthy through his actions.

Blah blah blah…. Netanyahu is nothing to do with the Jewish people. He’s just some despot in the Middle East, nothing to do with us.

Cakeism.

And yet we are left with a vacuum of leadership of the Jewish people. A people spread across the world, devoid of a homeland. A people who do now have a homeland thanks to it being accepted and recognised by the international community. But when it, the state of Isreal breaks international law, becomes an international pariah and indiscriminately slaughters a captive people of another ethnicity intending to annex their land.

Oh, it’s nothing to do with us, that land over there in the Middle East. That’s just some despot. Oh and by the way don’t criticise me for feeling insecure when someone points out I’m Jewish, or links me to this despot. You’re an anti-Semite.

Cakeism all the way.

Judaism is both a religion and a people, but not a race. One can't convert to a race, but one can convert to Judaism.

The difference here is that Judaism is an ideology, a lifestyle. The Jewish people are a genealogical group, a biological lineage.
It’s not complicated, this equivocation is often encountered in relation to Jews.

Who speaks for black people? Who speaks for the Arabs? No one has appointed Netanyahu "spokesperson for the Jews."

A black, or Arabic leader from a black, or Arabic country would step forward and speak.

Who speaks for the Jewish people, who is leading now that a Country of Jewish people is under threat and has been taken to the International Criminal court?

Who represents the Protestants? Or the Muslims? Does the President of Iran represent the Shia and are all Shias answerable for his actions?

You are equivocating a people with a religious movement. I said the Jewish people. This is a racial group, it just happens to correspond also to the members of the Jewish religious group, but I was not referring to the members of the Jewish religious group, but to the racial group.

Who other than Netanyahu speaks for the Jewish people and to be more pertinent, who conducts foreign policy, provides security for this group? Because there is a serious failure of leadership here.

Netanyahu does not represent the Jewish people. He is the prime minister of a state, not a religious authority.

Then who does represent the Jewish people here? Ask someone in a neighbouring state who represents the Jewish people here?

Or do we have a vacuum of leadership/representation of the Jewish people?

You could also say it's analogous to the last days of the Third Reich in that the war is already decisively lost,

I would say that this part of the analogy fails. The war from the viewpoint of the Arab world is not lost, or over.
Israel is bolstering support for Hamas and other anti-Israeli groups who will revisit this issue in the future.
In terms of living alongside their neighbours in peace, Israel has lost. They have become a pariah state which is insulting their neighbours in every way and on every level. They are overtly hostile, while conducting collective punishment and unspeakable horrors on a captive Arabic population. Their status and position in the Middle East is now under threat and possibly unsustainable

If Israel is going to remain in its current form it will become an isolated fortress, bristling with weapons. The only alternative to this outcome is for Israel to remove the extremists from Government and extend the hand of friendship and compromise to the Palestinians. Even then it will be a long and difficult road. The first (an isolated fortress) would be vulnerable, unstable and reliant on being propped up by the US.
The second is almost inconceivable at this point and could fail and descend into further wars at every turn.
As I see it, Israel has already lost and Netanyahu, who represents the Jewish people, in this, has blood on his hands.

It's relevant in "the end justifies the means" thinking prevalent in typical right wing thinking.

Interesting, but I assumed that Genocide was so grave a crime that nothing excused it, no excuse was sufficient to justify committing it.

The Israeli’s claim that the attack on 7th October was a genocidal act, therefore they are justified in committing genocide as a response(they vehemently deny they are committing genocide, while insisting that 7th October was a genocide).

It looks like they are engaging in cakism, (having your cake and eating it), which we are familiar with in U.K. re’ Boris Johnson.

Yes Israel didn’t offer a defence. They seem to think that 7th October is relevant. It isn’t.

Qatar is one of biggest helpers of Hamas... that's why the relationship. So you prefer that other countries assist Hamas too???

Only in that Qatar has conducted successful negotiations between the two sides.

Regarding Hamas, there is always now going to be an attack force like Hamas and there is always going to be a negotiation with such a force for a peace to be reached, there’s no other way.

The fact that large scale humanitarian aid doesn’t seem to have got through is worrying. The international community has repeatedly offered aid, which has not been delivered as far as I know for many weeks.

Yes, they broke the rules the moment they withdrew food water and medicine from a captive population.

Also I think the term genocide might need to include the destruction of a country. The buildings, infrastructure, farmland etc.

I doubt Israel would survive for long the Samson option.
Qatar has done good work, but I doubt it will change anything.

If Israel is going to survive they should look at a map and reflect on who their neighbours and near neighbours are and how many there are.

Hamas aims to eliminate Israel/Jews; Israel aims to eliminate Hamas. Perfectly proportional. In the long run it works out better for the Palestinians who will no longer be oppressed by Hamas. Call it liberation.

Liberation if they survive as a people.

Whether the Gazan’s as a people survive this offensive seems not to matter to the Israeli’s. The collective punishment and limiting of aid demonstrates this.

To starve an entire captive population so as to restrict the resources of a small number of militants is disproportionate. To reduce a whole country to rubble for the same reasons is disproportionate.

And counterproductive.

But if an idea means the semantic elements, then animals definitely lack the possession of the mental concepts and abstract ideas based on linguistic expressions.

Yes, this would indicate though that ideas are both semantic, abstract etc and part of conscious and subconscious mental processes of life, as we see in animals.

Perhaps the intellectual, analytical, contemplative thinking of humanity is just a thin layer on top of the more mundane thinking which is intrinsically part of life. Maybe people think that this thin layer is more important in life, the quality of life, than the mundane because it is such a concern for people. When seen in the round it is of very little importance other than in the advantages it offers in aiding survival in a competitive environment.

This brings me back to the thought that animals may have as rich, or richer life experience than people. Even though they might not be self conscious of the fact etc.

My train of thought leads to the realisation that living beings “think” and to reduce these thoughts to chemical (and electrical) reactions in a physical body, is to ignore sentience and self consciousness and reduce living beings to zombies.

This reduction also makes a separation between human thought and animal thought, which I don’t think exists, although there is clearly a distinction in the level of self awareness in the thinking process between humans and animals. To assume that because animals are not intellectualising like humans that they are not self conscious and consciously thinking is to deny their level of sentience and understanding of their life, world and existence.

My contention is that animals experience life in very similar ways to humans, but without that additional layer of intellectualisation. So their life and experience will be just like ours minus the intellectual thought.

I think experience can be abstracted as ideas, but experience itself is not ideas. Ideas are the mental entities which has been abstracted in thoughts.

Right, so thoughts are the product of mental activity. While experiences don’t necessarily involve mental activity for them to be experiences.
Is there a cross over, a grey area here, or a clear distinction between the two?

“Cats appear to think”
I bring up cats because they are doing things which we do, but without much abstract thought, if any.
So they are having experiences, learning from them and modifying their behaviour in response to them absent thought. Or with minimal thought.
Secondly we have much more in common with cats and therefore all mammals, than one might at first think. Indeed the only difference might be a layer, or level of intellectual thought.
Therefore if human thought includes mental activity other than intellectual thought, by definition cats and indeed all mammals are thinking too.
We can also conclude that they are doing something akin to intellectual thought without being self consciously aware that they are intellectualising. Because we can observe strategic, social and territorial behaviour.
In essence I’m saying that instinctive behaviour is very much thought, thinking.

How would these people who are explaining away thinking describe what a cat, or for that matter, a spider spinning a web is doing?

Provided it is understood which of your 4 categories (assuming what you say about British empiricists is a separate category) of idea is being discussed this should be straightforward.

I would point out there is a grey area where experiences become ideas. Do you see experience as fitting one of the categories?
Also there is the position of instinct in this. My cat has an instinctive response to sudden movement. But if it’s a familiar movement, or sound my cat doesn’t have the same response as to an unfamiliar movement. Has the cat thought about this, or is it a learned instinct? What is it about the cat which enables this behaviour/experience, to an highly sensitive degree?
Is the cat thinking and if so, is it all thought, or is there a cut of point?

The issue seems to be with your definition of idea. Do you mean every product of brain activity, or every product of thinking?

Fingers crossed they won’t.
I see Russia as a failed state now. I expect it would be Washington versus Beijing. In which case I don’t see it happening.

Yes, that sounds about right. I was thinking of three fortresses. North America, Europe and the region of China. The rest of the world would be cut loose.

Hopefully nuclear bombs won’t be thrown into the mix.

I noticed that, they are talking about all the water on the planet boiling off into space.
I didn’t mean to be that alarmist.

What I was thinking of by runaway is when the tipping points and feedback loops become triggered and fall like dominoes. Releasing, (or stop removing) greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere which dwarfs the amount we have been releasing by burning fossil fuels. Once that point is reached life will become very tumultuous and difficult.

I don’t think we can know what that means. But what we do know is sea level will rise more rapidly to a maximum of over 90 metres. Ocean ecosystems will collapse, most land ecosystems will be under extreme stress, many will collapse. Growing enough food to feed the population will become impossible. And this will last, or get worse for thousands of years.

It may be out of date terminology these days. Or climate scientists don’t mention it because it’s too scary and might be counterproductive to efforts to raise awareness of the issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect

Yes insects could inherit the earth. It largely depends on which animals become extinct and which survive. It may only be bacteria though if the warming gets to much.