Confused by Israel Situation

[dubfordessert]

am i? maybe you're under-thinking it.

[garethom]

am i? maybe you're under-thinking it.

burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrn!

[Sexual_Chocolate]

am i? maybe you're under-thinking it.

eh

i doubt it.

[dubfordessert]

if your point is simple it should be easy to explain it.

saying my argument is "terrorist versus freedom fighter" is false - that's not what my argument is, i haven't said hamas are right or that they are freedom fighters

my argument is about who has power and power is an objective reality not a poll result.

[nowaysj]

Not to be firing rockets at dfd's iron dome, but maybe she is under thinking it? How can you look at this recent flair and not see Iran as a central player? I'm down w Israell being the aggressor relative to the Palestinians, but aren't these rockets fired into Israel an attempt by Iran to to probe/hector/provoke Israel?

[Sexual_Chocolate]

ok to help my point you wrote:

it is completely 100% clear who is the aggressor in this conflict.

is it really 100% clear to the average person of Palestine/Israel?

one side will always see what they're doing as 'right'

therefore who is fighting for freedom & who is fighting for terror? (in the eyes of the people involved)

[test_recordings]

[dubfordessert]

ok to help my point you wrote:

it is completely 100% clear who is the aggressor in this conflict.

is it really 100% clear to the average person of Palestine/Israel?

one side will always see what they're doing as 'right'

therefore who is fighting for freedom & who is fighting for terror? (in the eyes of the people involved)

ok, so your point is as pointless as i thought it was.

as i said, power is an objective reality whether people see what they are doing as right or not

zionists who want to annexe the whole of occupied palestine to israel believe they are "right". they are wrong in that belief

these "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" labels are irrelevant to the concept i am discussing, which is power.

[dubfordessert]

Not to be firing rockets at dfd's iron dome, but maybe she is under thinking it? How can you look at this recent flair and not see Iran as a central player? I'm down w Isreal being the aggressor relative to the Palestinians, but aren't these rockets fired into Isreal an attempt by Iran to to probe/hector/provoke Israel?

perhaps but like you admit, i don't think that changes the israel-palestine relationship fundamentally.

if you add iran to the situation, you would also have to add geopolitics in the middle east in general, whether iran is as correct to see israel as a threat as the reverse, and US relations with/activities in states other than israel

[Sexual_Chocolate]

ok to help my point you wrote:

it is completely 100% clear who is the aggressor in this conflict.

is it really 100% clear to the average person of Palestine/Israel?

one side will always see what they're doing as 'right'

therefore who is fighting for freedom & who is fighting for terror? (in the eyes of the people involved)

ok, so your point is as pointless as i thought it was.

as i said, power is an objective reality whether people see what they are doing as right or not

zionists who want to annexe the whole of occupied palestine to israel believe they are "right". they are wrong in that belief

these "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" labels are irrelevant to the concept i am discussing, which is power.

terror is power. correct?

each side fight for what they think will give their people the freedom they want.

[dubfordessert]

ok to help my point you wrote:

it is completely 100% clear who is the aggressor in this conflict.

is it really 100% clear to the average person of Palestine/Israel?

one side will always see what they're doing as 'right'

therefore who is fighting for freedom & who is fighting for terror? (in the eyes of the people involved)

ok, so your point is as pointless as i thought it was.

as i said, power is an objective reality whether people see what they are doing as right or not

zionists who want to annexe the whole of occupied palestine to israel believe they are "right". they are wrong in that belief

these "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" labels are irrelevant to the concept i am discussing, which is power.

terror is power. correct?

incorrect

each side fight for what they think will give their people the freedom they want.

an ideologically loaded statement which elides the complexity of the issues and masks the material implications of "fighting" in each case.

[Sexual_Chocolate]

lol you seriously dont believe terror doesnt hold value in terms of power?

[dubfordessert]

terror holds value in terms of power, but that is a completely different statement to the identity proposition "terror is power".

lol.

[Sexual_Chocolate]

yes but you knew EXACTLY what i was getting at when i said that.

no need to be a tnuc because i cant articulate myself in the same way you do.

[magma]

the average Israeli & the average Palestinian

that is the level im talking about

i don't really know what point you're getting at tbh.

im talking about the POV that the average person living in that area has on the situation

(probably shouldve mentioned that in the OP)

i dont think i need to go in any deeper than that tbh.

*semi-related ramble warning*

When it comes to international politics, the millennia of history involved, especially around the cradle of civilisation which has more political history than any other part of the world, it's really very difficult to think "too much".

The average person is more-or-less a moot concept, especially when you're talking about populations of tens of millions with all sorts of different relationships to a conflict. As an outsider, it's all a bit futile... of course conflict is awful for civilians on both sides, but you only end conflict by reaching the "real" reasons for it and resolving them - individuals might boil national competition down to anything... it might be viewed as a religious crusade, territory expansion, defending the homeland, terrorism or merely protecting immediate family, they might think it's about rights for women or ending slavery or they might think it's part of a larger struggle which will need neighboutring nations like Iran or Syria to involve themselves... all that really matters when seeking resolution is that there are two populations fighting over a tract of land or cache of resources who both believe it should be theirs - in Europe, we went through more than a millennium of war, invasion and counter-invasion to reach our comfortable borders - we're only a century down the line from Europe's borders being controlled by enormous and mighty sprawling empires which had to be ripped apart by two World Wars for true stability to be found - for us to tear up the map of a volatile area of the Middle East, redraw the borders and expect it all to be ok in a matter of decades is almost certainly pretty short sighted.

Once stability of borders is achieved, countries start to realise their differences were much shallower than they'd ever considered. Without English settlements in Normandy and Brittany, France becomes a trading partner. The centuries of cross-Channel war may have been experienced by the "average" Briton or Frenchman as a war over culture, over language, over "ways of life", religion or the Right of Kings... but in reality, as with most things, it was a border dispute. Without the British Army patrolling Belfast, terrorists from the ROI stop bombing the mainland and enter Parliament to fight for changes.

Stability is difficult to achieve quickly without a fairly extreme police state and then it doesn't often last into the long term as the borders are drawn by politicans rather than naturally shaped by the Peoples occupying them (see USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Northern Ireland, Korea). Long term stability often seems to be, unfortunately, most reliably achieved through long term conflict and struggle.

I have literally no idea what anyone's supposed to do. War is awful, especially with mismatched sides; but I have a feeling that there's only so far you can go with getting people to accept borders that centuries of their culture say are inadequate. Our part of the world has benefitted from the struggles of hundreds of generations before us... perhaps the same needs to be allowed to happen elsewhere. In this instance, it strikes me that both sides are acting pretty logically and predictably. If I was Palestinian, I'd probably be cheering the rockets. If I was Israeli, I'd probably be cheering the bombing raids. As a neutral, I just want to ball my fucking eyes out.

tl;dr I don't have the faintest idea, but I'm fairly sure it's not a matter where thinking less is a very good option.

[Sexual_Chocolate]

tl;dr I don't have the faintest idea, but I'm fairly sure it's not a matter where thinking less is a very good option.

read the whole thing. and tbh thanks for not trying to flame the fuck out of how i think the situation might be for the people of the 'promised land'.

[dubfordessert]

yes but you knew EXACTLY what i was getting at when i said that.

the fuck? no i didn't. i can only respond to what you write, i'm not a telepath

to me "terror is power" implies that using terrorist tactics means having power. it CAN (but does not necessarily) give you leverage, but that is not anything like the same thing

no need to be a tnuc because i cant articulate myself in the same way you do.

i have no problem with how you articulate yourself, i do have a problem with you substantially changing your claim after i've responded to it and calling me a tnuc because i don't have a magic crystal ball

[dubfordessert]

tl;dr I don't have the faintest idea, but I'm fairly sure it's not a matter where thinking less is a very good option.

read the whole thing. and tbh thanks for not trying to flame the fuck out of how i think the situation might be for the people of the 'promised land'.

if you honestly think i have been flaming you then lol. go ":roll: you're overthinking it" when i ask a legitimate question about your point and expect me to do what? start adding kisses to my posts? paypal you some thankyou money?

[wilson]

Sliding towards a locked thread here ladies and gents.

[Sexual_Chocolate]

jesus christ

what are you more interested in dfd?

arguing with me or being right?