We don't understand how we move a finger. We just move it.

So if you now go "up" to things as complicated as emotions and music, our understanding is almost zero. We have no clue.

It's not clear how emotions interact with a mind like ours. You can say that about the soul if you want, but it amounts to saying something like "This phenomenon S, is energy for this thing we have mind".

I don't know what that means.

I think you'll need a more clear definition or idea of what a soul could be, and how such a thing could possibly be energy for the mind.

Just watched a good interview with Gideon Levy live.

I'll put a link here once it's available.

That's why we're here and not some other place, to ask questions and argue about stuff! :cool:

I think we use words such as "soul", "spirit" and the like to attempt to highlight one or another aspect of the mental. Thus you can say "that got to my soul", "that's a spiritual experience", etc. I don't think "soul", "spirit" and so on pick out independent aspects of the world.

If I had to make up a definition of soul, it would be something like the emotive aspect of something touching my experience in a specific way. So I'd say a song reaches my soul, because it interacts with me in a very specific way. I would not say that a song reached my mind. While strictly true, it's a strange statement to make.

But, I could be quite wrong about all of this.

No rebuttal? :joke:

Sure thing. Hope you find a satisfying answer.

Mona Lisas & Mad Hatters - Elton John

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tRgYfQ48A0

I simply meant to say that whatever spirit is, falls under the category of mind. Spirit is another aspect of what we broadly consider the mental.

And no, I do not think mind is an illusion at all. Mind is the most immediately known feature of existence we have as sentient creatures.

A question in the lyrics of a song.

:cool:

Apologies for the late reply, have been away. (and in all honesty somewhat trepid about getting myself involved in a 28 page Israel thread...) — coolazice

No need to read it actually.

Only thing required is curiosity and/or interest. ;)

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters." — Antonio Gramsci

Nice line. And correct, we're living in quite unique times, all over the world...

So whats your short answer to define Spirit? — dimosthenis9

Mind-stuff.

I'm done with you, you're not speaking in good faith.

Go argue your Zionist lunacies with someone else.

We are talking about today, which is what matters.

After the 70's it's impossible for Israel to be destroyed. Nor would the US or the EU ever allow it.

What you think that Israel as last resort for not giving up land they are stealing should start WWIII!?!?

There are literally no words to describe such a consideration. Nothing.

It does not. Repeating this claim does not make it true.

There is no existential threat for Israel.

Created by Hamas killing its opponents and firing rockets into Israel.

Do you want Hamas to be allowed in to Israel to directly massacre the Jews? — Andrew4Handel

Did I say this?

On the other hand, killing people in an open air prison is perfectly fine for you.

But Hamas. Hamas. Yeah, those Hamas fighter jets and bunker bombs are an existential threat...

Has anyone destroyed your whole neighborhood, limited your caloric intake and prevent you from leaving an open air prison?

Which is a case in point of supreme lunacy.

Total insanity and evil.

Israel need psychiatric treatment. This is paranoia on steroids.

But you don't recognise Hamas as a terrorist organisation trying to destroy them or the previous attacks on Israel by it's neighbours an effort to destroy them? Israel won it's territory like most countries in a war it did not instigate. — Andrew4Handel

I recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization which is a flea against the massive terror organization that is the IDF.

Hamas cannot destroy Israel. If they could, in some dreamland, they would be destroying themselves too.

Yeah, sure. I don't like nation-states either. But that's what exists.

So by your logic, Israel asking other countries to recognize that it has "a right to exist" is also non-sense, which is true. Not state has such a right.

The survival of the Jews is apparently not high on your agenda. — Andrew4Handel

Again false. I want Israel to be safe and continue existing. It is a unique country with promising aspects to it.

But going down this road is creating monsters. And worse of all will lead to massive suffering for Israelis. It's a self-fufilling prophecy, we're in danger, we need to expand and attack or we'll get bombed. They do this and then get attacked. Yeah, no kidding.

Those who support Israel now support not only the misery they inflict on others, but also support the death and hatred for Israel which can only increase with such acts. So, actually, despite what you may say, you are supporting Israel's own misery too.

Yes I agree with the bold part.

As for the rest, total lunacy and paranoia.

Israel has nukes and the US as an ally. Any country that seriously attacks Tel Aviv or Haifa would be flattened.

Heck, Israel wasn't far from using them in the Yom Kippur war, which is could have prevented in 1970.

Israeli's already live in what was called Palestine. They should not steal the lands of what remains of Palestine.

Now that they're there, yes.

Palestine one race? Short term I suppose.

I don't think it is feasible in the long term. But now, short term planning is the only way to move forward.

Israel withdrew their settlements by forcing the settlers out. — Andrew4Handel

They made a big show of it. Embarrassing really. As if the settlers were going to be placed in refugee camps in Israel. :roll: They didn't belong in Gaza in the first place.

After that Hamas took control and killed the Fatah opposition. They forced Israel to have a blockade as self defence and their charter calls for the extermination of Israel. Hamas is collectively punishing Gaza. — Andrew4Handel

Hamas won a democratic election in Gaza. Israel did not like the results and punished Gazans for voting Hamas in.

What do you want Israel to do? — Andrew4Handel

Withdraw as stated in resolution 242. Give Palestinians a state, autonomy. Risk peace for a change. If, under given circumstances they launch rockets again, then Israel would be defending itself. It cannot defend itself in a territory it is occupying.

What Israel is doing now is nothing short of monstrous.

Fight back against what? Israel left the the Gaza strip making it a Jew free territory and Hamas used it to fire rockets into Israel. When has Hamas tried to negotiate a peace? — Andrew4Handel

Against the strongest army in the Middle East? A country with nuclear weapons. Again, they withdrew because that territory was not beneficial to Israel, not out of good will.

When has Hamas wanted peace?

https://peacenews.info/node/3849/hamas-has-offered-peace

On 21 April 2008, hard-line Hamas leader Khaled Meshal told reporters in Damascus that the organisation was willing to a ten-year truce with Israel on the 1967 borders, without formally recognising the state of Israel: “We agree to a [Palestinian] state on pre-67 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital with genuine sovereignty without settlements but without recognizing Israel. We have offered a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, a truce of 10 years as a proof of recognition.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/01/hamas-new-charter-palestine-israel-1967-borders

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/hamas-offers-peace-deal-with-israel-1.1007111

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-israel-hamas-idUSTRE6B02ND20101201

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Hamas-would-accept-Saudi-peace-plan-spokesman-2844179.php

And etc. etc.

Hamas has created the prison. After the Israelis withdrew their settlements on the strip they have launched non stop aggression and murdered their political opponents including Fatah. — Andrew4Handel

This is false. Hamas has no control over the territory. No control on the blockade. They don't even have the control of being able to leave Gaza.

Israel only withdrew there settlements because they could reap no benefit from the land, not due to good will.

Hamas is ugly, but they fight back and give the people in Gaza a modicum of dignity. If Israel doesn't like Hamas, they should not have helped create them in the first place. Again, the Marxists at the WSJ can confirm this:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847

:up:



Yes you're right. It's mostly a way of talking about how people are trapped in an open air prison and being massacred. All while going through Covid and caloric restrictions.

Albright is worse than trash.

"Property is theft" — Andrew4Handel

Yeah, ok.

In today's world, property means people's livelihood and sense of identity.

Finkelstein and Amira Hass look at this stuff with utmost care. The Israeli media seems to accept it as a fact. This all point to your suspicion being correct. So yes, plenty of evidence, much of it in Hebrew. Won't be long before we get stuff in English. That is what is happening, alongside the Palestinian pent up anger at being treated like garbage.

So yes, another Netanyahu massacre, combined with long felt grief by the native population which is also causing internal fighting within Israel.

And human shields too.

Israel needs a strong left. They don't have one and this can only lead to more monstrosities.

Amira Hass, Ilan Pappe and Gideon Levy can only do so much. And if one doesn't see things the way they do, you're going to have to rationalize how your state can do such things...

Damn.

I don't know how'd I'd live after something like that. No words.

Yeah sure, being killed is trivially, not good. Within the possible reasons for why one could be killed, there's some room for honor, altruism and the like.

What Israel is doing now is horrific and senseless. They are not even winning any favors in the PR department outside of fooling themselves. If they continue like this, there will come a time when even the US elite can't put up with it anymore, if only to save face.

From this point to whenever that may happen, will take lots of senseless deaths.

Wonderful song. :)

Fool in the Rain - Led Zeppelin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I57nIP0vc44

Now reading:

An Outline of Philosophy - Bertrand Russell

Up next:

Enemies of Hope - Raymond Tallis
Pure Invention - Matt Alt

Do you have a more preferred reason for being killed? Just wondering. — Book273

You think that among the reasons a person could die or be killed from, political calculations for a group of politicians is particularly noble or decent?

The point is that these murders are particularly onerous, given the situation.

Defending one's home or family and dying for them seems to me to be as good a reason as possible for dying. But killing people in the largest open air prison in the world is pathetic.

I haven't looked into Israeli domestic policy in some time. I too was under the impression that Netanyahu's rival recently, Benny Ganzt (?), was more moderate. So I'm unclear too, but I tend to trust Finkelstein.

As for a source, it's quite a long video, all of it interesting but the relevant point here begins around 55:38:

https://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/norman-finkelstein-on-israel-in-2021-the-katie-halper-show

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

Yes. If we're still around by that time...

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

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.

And to do this on top of the recent peace deals with other Arab countries, such as the UAE, is dumbfounding.

Well, I think the line usually given for attacks such as this one would be something like "We destroyed the enemies communication center." Or the classic "human shields" answer.

One problem Israel faces, aside from those already mentioned, is that it's an extremely paranoid state. They keep actually believing that some Arab country will come and wipe them off the map. As if any Arab state would do that considering the fact that Israel's army is vastly superior and it has nukes to boot.

The US and the EU wouldn't ever come close to dreaming about something remotely close to that ever happening.

So under this paranoia they strike southern Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and kill Iranian scientists out of fear. Which then acts as self-fufilling prophecy when they get hit back on occasion.

In any case the most fanatic of all Arab states is Saudi Arabia. Rhetoric aside, at the top level, there is mutual understanding and maybe even friendship of interest with Israel. So that can be ruled out too.

Eh. If it's the Abrahamic God, no thanks. That would be a nightmare. Most of us would probably go to hell. I'd prefer not to burn for eternity. It's a bit long.

There are other Gods. I don't know. What is better some strange life after this or eternal sleep?

As Mark Twain said:

"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

Put like that, maybe it's not so bad. Heaven knows there are situations here in life much worse than not being. In any case, fear and pain are for the here and now, not before or after.

Have they bombed any UN schools yet?

Can't say I'm surprised but its awful.

:clap:

Excellent post.

There's only so much horror anybody is willing to see before your start losing a PR battle. Some people here aren't bothered by caloric restrictions placed on the people of Gaza, these will never be startled even if they carpet bomb the whole of Gaza and kill every last person with white phosphorus. But as you said, once the PR battle is lost, the clock begin to tick and there's no stopping that.

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 this 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 disgusting.

As you said, maybe these deaths will eventually mean that they will be able to get a state and live in peace. I think it may be possible.

Agree about Yang. He's on the wrong side of this one, as are almost all Democrats. But it is changing. About time.

Novel Explosives - Jim Gauer

A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James

2666- Roberto Bolaño

V. - Thomas Pynchon

Buddha's Little Finger - Victor Pelevin

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World - Haruki Murakami

Member - Michael Cisco

A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

With the Covid situation a lot of countries in the Middle East are struggling more than usual. So who could possibly help the Palestinians now? Turkey? Egypt? Looks unlikely.

The US is still behind Israel. Biden on foreign policy has not been a big change, which is sad.

After a night of violence where Molotov cocktails were thrown at Arab homes in Jaffa, clerics are urging locals to remove any identifying symbols of Islam from their homes in order to protect them from anti-Arab attacks.

According to locals, some people have taken down decorative Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr decorations, such as moon crescents.

Meanwhile in Haifa, it appears that some Arabs are moving Muslim symbols from building facades, after residents claim they saw youth painting entrances to Arab homes in red. Women who wear the hijab head covering are also reportedly scared to leave their house.

These latest events join calls on social media to boycott Arab business in the cities.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-gaza-flare-up-heavy-rocket-fire-from-gaza-bombards-be-er-sheva-ashdod-1.9810782

It's almost a civil war inside Israel.