Gyroscopic Investing

dualstow wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: This is so classic. The Israelis ...continued to demolish tunnels in Gaza.
... akin to Hamas fighters using the cease-fire to safely move rockets from storage into mosques and schools (which for all I know, they were also doing).
...
Why they even agreed to a cease-fire in the first place isn't totally clear to me.

Perhaps to destroy tunnels / and / move rockets out of storage? 

But then why would they violate the cease-fire within 90 minutes, unless 90 minutes was all the time they needed to move all their weapons? …Which would suggest that they are either very efficient, which is unlikely, or that their stockpiles are actually very low, in which case, breaking the cease-fire is even stupider, because they lost the three days they were going to have to smuggle more weapons in and arrange situations where the Israelis look like dicks due to their continued operations in Gaza. It's also a PR disaster for Hamas because now it's much harder for people sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians to pretend that Hamas is a reasonable negotiating partner and believe that the Israelis are just a bunch of genocidal butchers (who are mysteriously ineffective at it, kind of like the stupid/evil contradiction some people have for Bush and Obama).

Sometimes I wonder if some of them wanted the ceasefire to continue a bit longer while others couldn't help themselves.

As for the last part of your paragraph, the masses will always believe that the Israelis are butchers, Nazis, etc. Ask them for a motive and they come up short, except for the tired old blood libel.

There's a Reuters article about a recent rise in antisemitic attacks in England. The comments below all but blame the Jewish community outright for supporting Israel.

dualstow wrote: Sometimes I wonder if some of them wanted the ceasefire to continue a bit longer while others couldn't help themselves.

As for the last part of your paragraph, the masses will always believe that the Israelis are butchers, Nazis, etc. Ask them for a motive and they come up short, except for the tired old blood libel.

I dunno… After feeling a little too sure of my pro-Israel position, I've been doing a lot of reading on the history of the region and I have to admit I'm a little less certain than I was a couple of days ago. The Israelis surrendered a lot of the moral high ground in the 1967 war. It's easy to say that they were pre-empting an impending invasion, but it doesn't seem like the evidence is really there for that. The truth seems to be that the Israelis were involved in ramping up the tensions leading up the war about as much as the Arabs were.

All sides seemed to be spoiling for a fight as a result of the unresolved borders from the 1949 armistice and lessons learned in the 1956 Suez crisis (Israel agreed to be the aggressors in a failed British-French conspiracy to steal the Suez canal, and Egypt's president Nasser was left feeling invincible) and the 1960 Rotem Crisis (the Israelis were left feeling highly vulnerable due to an unforeseen buildup on the southern border, and Nasser felt like he could foil Israeli affairs with military braggadocio without having to actually attack). There were also a number of border skirmishes that unexpectedly escalated into small battles in which Israel can't morally claim the high ground due to at the minimum their own provocative actions (e.g. farming in the demilitarized zone with armored tractors). Then there's also the fact that the Soviet Union was feeding Syria bad intel about Israel's troop movements, warning of an impending invasion when no such thing was happening! And of course, these factors led to a rise in the level of the genocidal rhetoric coming from Arab leaders. Were they real threats, or just crude and blustery attempts by Arab leaders to wave the "biggest anti-semite" card to try to gain political power in the ongoing struggle over which country was going to be the de facto leader of the Arab world?

In other words, it doesn't seem so simple as Israel cleverly pre-empting an exterminationist invasion by monstrous butchers. Did the Israeli attack pre-empt an Arab attack? Perhaps. The Arabs were certainly mobilized for one. And such dangerous posturing can often lead to war, as indeed it did. But there's a lot of evidence they the Arab leaders weren't actually preparing to attack at that moment; they just meant to use the troop movements to frighten Israel. As a result, it was certainly going to be one of the most obvious attacks in history, and U.S. intelligence (which was shared with Israel) clearly showed that in such a war started by the Arabs, Israel would have crushed them even as the defenders. Of course, Israel started it first and crushed them even worse than predicted, taking an enormous amount of territory in the process. That act is where a lot of the fears of encroaching, expansionist zionism seem to come from, as well as the genesis of anti-U.S. sentiment, as a result of persistent rumors that the U.S. Air Force was participating in the opening strikes, spread in the Arab world to blunt the humiliation of being so decisively wrecked by such a small country with an air force literally a third the size of the combined Arab forces. The magnitude of the Arab countries' defeat was really humiliating, and was basically the cause of the Yom Kippur war. Honor culture and all. Even though they didn't win that one either, they at least didn't lose, which made them feel better.

I'm not sure Israel was in the wrong in 1967, but I'm no longer certain they were in the right. That's the awful thing about this godforsaken part of the world. Sometimes nobody's right and conflict is simply inevitable because people who mistrust and hate each other live in close proximity. 

So you found out Israel is not impeccable, flawless or infallible? Welcome to the club.  It's been a while since I read about '67 or '73, but I look forward to those chapters in the Lozowick book. Lately, I've been wandering in the desert with the Jews after meeting Emperor Hadrian. While I find those pages interesting, I've never gone back that far in a debate with anyone about Gaza.

I'm kind of coming from the opposite direction as you. The last book I read about this topic was Fortress Israel by Patrick Tyler. If you believe that book, Israel is basically a loose cannon, armed to the teeth -- sorry for the mixed metaphor, but if moda can say "they painted themselves into a pickle", I think anything goes here. (Hi moda. It did make me smile.  ) -- and full of dangerous hawks and cynics who relish the idea of destroying Arabs. The book has been heavily criticized, and not just by evil zionist swine like me. The one before that was by an ex-Mossad agent who defected to work with the Palestinians. Victor Ostrovsky was his name, I think. His first book is called 'By Way of Deception.'

I can confidently say that the truth lies somewhere between Patrick Tyler's book and the fantasies of Leon Uris. That is, Israel has gotten its hands dirty plenty of times. But it is still a state worth preserving and defending, and if we're grading on a curve, I think it's better morally than a great deal of other nations.

Yaacov Lozowick is the first author I've read who defends the settlers, or at least some of them. I'll be interested to see what he has to say about 1967.

Reub, your last post vanished! I agree with you, anyway.

I didn't want people to think that I had an opinion.

Reub wrote: I didn't want people to think that I had an opinion.

lol! At least you went with a neutral thread title!

Some more links about this mess...

Justifying Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza

which has a link to

Who Bears More Responsibility for the War in Gaza?

Jan Van wrote: Some more links about this mess...

Justifying Israel’s Slaughter in Gaza

This extremely one-sided article focuses on the innocents who have been killed in this conflict (tragic) while seemingly ignoring why there even is a military conflict: because Hamas fighters dug tunnels under Israel and used them to kidnap and murder three Israeli children. So if you want to talk about innocent deaths, this episode began with Hamas deliberately targeting civilian children for kidnap and murder. And that's to say nothing of the thousands of rockets they've deliberately launched into populated areas for the past five years.

Leaving all that out seems to paint a picture of the Israelis as zionist butchers intent on committing a very piecemeal, ineffective genocide against the Palestinian Arabs. As usual, this doesn't pass the smell test. If Israel really hated the Palestinians so much, why wouldn't they just bulldoze the whole place and kill everyone? As the Author even points out, they certainly could. They could do it tomorrow! It's like the whole evil vs stupid thing all over again. If they're really so evil that they murder Palestinian children with reckless abandon, what explains why they're so bad at it?

In addition, from the second link:

What matters to me, and what is often ignored, is the overall moral and political context in which this and past conflicts have occurred.

[...]

Israel’s founding in 1948 began to address the terrible wrongs that Europe’s Jews had suffered. It provided a state and what seemed like a safe haven. But Palestine’s Arabs, who had made up the overwhelming majority of the region, and who believed after the promises of World War I that they would gain their own state, came instead under Jordanian and Egyptian rule after Israel won its independence.

This is ignoring a major part of the "overall moral and political context." In referring to Israel's founding without that context, the author makes it seems like a bunch of Jews just showed up, said "we're here, we're Jewish, get used to it!" and started stealing land from the Arabs. In fact, what actually happened is that the same piece of land was awkwardly promised two two groups by the actual colonial power of the time (Britain). As a result of this, the U.N. intervened, and offered both sides a compromise solution, which the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected. That is a very different moral plane from the Jews just showing up and shooting.

I understand that the Arabs didn't like the compromise deal. They felt like the land should be all theirs. Totally understandable. The Jews felt similarly and didn't like the deal either. But they accepted it. And when you reject compromise in favor of violence, you need to own the consequences, whatever they may be. As it turned out, those consequences were that the Israelis got a state that was bigger than they would have gotten under the compromise, and the Palestinians got no state and the land that they would have gotten was captured by Egypt and Jordan in the ensuing conflict. Guess they shoulda taken that compromise...

Also, the idea that Hamas is a humanitarian organization willing to compromise for peace and the Israelis are just a bunch of imperialist butchers is belied by what the leader of Hamas himself just said in an interview:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/03/world/mea ... ?hpt=hp_c2

Hamas' cause
Meshaal said Israel has a powerful military but the Palestinians will triumph.

"We are stronger than they are in the justness of our cause. We are the rightful owners of the land, and they are the thieves of the land. We are the victims and they are the murderers. But despite this, we might not win a battle or two completely, but at the end we will win the war. Our steadfastness is a victory. For us to kill their soldiers while they kill our civilians is also a victory for the Palestinian cause and Hamas."

Robertson pressed Meshaal on the point, asking how this can be a victory for Hamas and its cause when so many Palestinians are dying.

"Our people are convinced today that the only way to get rid of the occupation and establish their state is through resistance."

Pointedstick wrote:...while seemingly ignoring why there even is a military conflict: because Hamas fighters dug tunnels under Israel and used them to kidnap and murder three Israeli children....

Another possibly one-sided article:
How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza

Jan Van wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:...while seemingly ignoring why there even is a military conflict: because Hamas fighters dug tunnels under Israel and used them to kidnap and murder three Israeli children....

Another possibly one-sided article:
How Politics and Lies Triggered an Unintended War in Gaza

That is a bunch of really interesting information, most of which I was not aware of. Shoot. Now I have to rethink everything.

Pointedstick wrote:...Shoot. Now I have to rethink everything.

Thanks for doing that and helping me (us) along, most of the time I don't know what to think anymore...

Jan Van wrote:

Pointedstick wrote:...Shoot. Now I have to rethink everything.

Thanks for doing that and helping me (us) along, most of the time I don't know what to think anymore...

I think the will to be "right" or finally have a settled opinion on the Israel/Palestine debate is a fruitless one.  First, it creates a false dichotomy... "Do I support Israel or Palestine?  Which one is at fault?"  That's just state-based thinking.  It is many individuals acting in very different ways.  Even if there are elections, there is still simply SO much more going on that makes that a weak "team-maker."  We are just seeing in real time what has happened all over the world for centuries... a societal shift in a region from an economically poor, tribal, nomadic culture with some admittedly brutal tendencies at times to an economically wealthy more modern culture with lots of good positive cultural traits but their property norms put them in direct opposition to the nomadic culture.  I "feel" bad for people so emotionally invested in all of this, but in the end, even if I could direct BOTH governments towards a certain course of action like some kind of dual king for a day, I don't know what I would do, as individuals and groups will act on their own, and the consequences of my "advice" are pretty unforeseeable.

It's one thing to have rich debates about things that you think you COULD control to a better outcome if you had the chance (even if you don't have that chance).  It's another one entirely to talk about how hopeless a situation is. 

It's subjects like this that I am really, really happy that I identify so well with HB's HIFFIAUW, and his "Rule Your World!" lecture.  It moves your focus from something immensely complex AND utterly uncontrollable (politics, war, public morality, everyone else's actions, etc) to something pretty simple and entirely controllable (your own happiness, the biggest contributors to it, and the biggest risks to it).

The amount of peace of mind that comes with changing that outlook makes issues like Israel/Palestine, while tragic, take up so much less mental space in your brain.  It's almost embarrassing that these ideas feel so new, because they should be our obvious natural state.  You could spend your whole life trying to "be right" on this topic, make absolutely no headway, and lose massive opportunities to actually enjoy life.  Which is ironic, as the whole time, you're probably shaking your mental finger at one side, the other, or both, for not letting bygones be bygones and actually ENJOY their lives with their family.

So true, Moda. So true. Great post. I think there's a part of me that just doesn't want to admit that there's no right answer and the most probably outcome is going to be tragic and unfair no matter what. It offends my sense of justice. But at the same time, yeah, it doesn't really affect me.

Pointedstick wrote: This is ignoring a major part of the "overall moral and political context."
...
I understand that the Arabs didn't like the compromise deal. They felt like the land should be all theirs. Totally understandable. The Jews felt similarly and didn't like the deal either. But they accepted it.

I've been reading the same thing in Lozowick (ISBN 978-1-4000-3243-3). Way too much to type here in a thread that is not dedicated to older history but, I learned:

- There was quite a lot of Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence that led to a massive exodus of wealthy and educated Palestinians. (I wonder how many of their modern descendants would own up to that, or if everything is the fault of Jewish settlers).
- The way the British carved up Palestine/Israel, a checkerboard of Jewish and Arab settlements found themselves on the "wrong" side of the partition, much like Indians and Pakistanis when the Brits pulled out of India.

- Palestinians had not really gotten serious about having a sovereign state until after Israel became a reality. Ironically, they were inspired by Israel.
- By and large, the Palestinians did not want to accept *any* deal that left any Jewish settlements in the region. It never occurred to them that these Jewish dhimmis (second-class citizens) would rise up and have their own state. Never mind that it was on formerly malarlal infested marshland and was purchased legally.
- Also, it never occurred to them to settle the Jewish problem with anything but violence, and there was a lot of mass murder in the late 1930s, as well as rape and the destruction of synogogues.

- It should also be noted that there were Arab protectors who bravely put their own lives at risk to save a lot of Jewish lives.
---
I agree with your post, too, Moda. Neither side is perfect or even unanimous, and we shouldn't expect it to be.

PS,

My "justice" fuse is kind of broken.  You know... the whole "we're all stuck in a big moral dilemma on a big deserted island" take on things.  There are so many injustices one could get angry about.  I can't get over the fact that the BIGGEST injustice within my life, though, is to worry about things I can't control while I fail those people I value AND have promised to help through life.  There are SO many things to enjoy in life if you just let the things you can't control float away or not bother you if they don't.  There are also SO many opportunities to improve ourselves as people, and quit worrying if everyone else is choosing to do the same thing.  Every minute you spend worrying about a plight you can't control is a minute you are allowing potential happiness-killing elements into your life, and the lives of those you promised you would try to protect.  It's a minute you're not spending expanding your or their enjoyment. It's a minute you can never get back.

And if we're honest with ourselves, that is probably the point... it's a hell of a lot more enjoyable in the SHORT-term to point fingers at others, than to look at what YOU are doing wrong to maximize your happiness (and that of your family, if you feel obliged to them), and minimize your risks.  It's a lot more fun to gossip about how morally vacuous another party is than to look at the skeletons in your closet (in the short-term).  And if all I'm doing is minimizing my short-term discomfort around taking actions that will significantly improve my long-term happiness (and that of my family that I feel responsible for), what sort of "sense of justice" have I really got?  If something bad eventually happens to me, will I blame myself for not taking strategic action with my time instead of lamenting about some foreign evil, or other parties because "they wronged me," somehow?  Probably the latter for most people... and so the spiral continues.  My sense of justice might be offended sometimes when unfortunate things happen to good people.  But when I ask myself if they did what they could to rectify their situations earlier, I see a lot of knowingly-fruitless finger-pointing at the expense of strategic positioning, and I lose a lot of that sympathy (not to mention, even if I did have it, I still can't control outcomes for these people).

I really don't see how some can get to the point of nihilism, though.  If there is anything that is REAL in my world, it is my enjoyment of doing things I like doing, and discomfort doing things that I don't want to do.  Even if it is subjective, if NOTHING else matters in the world, at the very least my happiness should be my ultimate "Purpose."  If it isn't, then I should test my adherence to that principle by stabbing myself or causing myself pain.  If I can't bring myself to do it, I have just proven that at the very least, there's this goofy game called life, and "winning" means maximum enjoyment.  Make a project out of it... a nihilist will ask "but why?"  I'd ask, "why not... I promise you'll enjoy it more than the alternative."

Wait. Are you telling me the Israeli Army, so heavily criticized and condemed world wide (including by it's only real supporter, the USA government) for the killing of many innocent civillians (including hundreds or maybe up to 1,000 children) has found a manual written by the opposition of how to use "human sheilds"?

Please let's put our thinking caps on here.

The entire Gaza strip is the 3rd most densely populated political boundry on Earth behind only Hong Kong and Singapore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density
By political boundaries
[edit]With population above 1 million Rank Country/Region Population Area (km2) Density
(Pop. per km2)
1  Singapore        5,183,700 710              7301
2  Hong Kong        7,061,200 1,104            6396
3  Gaza Strip        1,816,379 360              5045
4  Bahrain            1,234,596 750              1646
5  Bangladesh      152,518,015 147,570    1034

Gaza city no doubt is even more dense. It is also one and two story buildings so everyone is near ground level. Does anyone here really think the Hamas commanders would be so utterly stupid that they would put a manual out on how to use civillians as cover?!?!? Do you think Palestinian fighters need training on how to engage the IDF near civillians?!?!?!

Look. It would take superhuman training to get them to fight out in the open and not where women and children are hiding. It would also be suicide.

This is looks to me like IDF propoganda, unless you are a huge coincidence theorist.

I don't support Palestinan rockets, I condem them. I feel bad for the worldwide hatred of Israelis and Jews because of what the Israeli government does. But please guys, we need to be able to spot ovbious dissinformation campaigns. The war is an information war and it's being waged directly against you by the people who want your tax dollars and the US reputation sacrificed for their land grabs. They bomb, shell and shoot women and children. it might be accidental but the rest of the world sees it and draws little distinction between their acts and the US government, and by extension us. It makes the world less safe for us and is the theft of our money.

They made this little pamphlet to trick you, to wage psycholgical warfare, against you. Either that or the Pals are unbelievably stupid and this was just a super lucky find for the IDF 

Hard to say. The terrorists do love their (torture) manuals.
But, this would be a convenient find right when Israel is accused of war crimes.
Also, there are people saying that the Arabic it's written in looks non-native.
Time will tell.

dualstow wrote: Hard to say. The terrorists do love their (torture) manuals. USA?
But, this would be a convenient find right when Israel is accused of war crimes.
Also, there are people saying that the Arabic it's written in looks non-native.
Time will tell.

Dust, I'm not siding with the Pals. I'm against all violence that isn't self defense and obviously there is TON more to the conflict than some abductions and murders and rockets from a few weeks ago.

The first casuallty of war is the truth. I'm sure Hamas leadership celebrates when school kids are hit. I doubt they need to train their fighters to ensure it happens though.............

This raises a question from me to what I see as obvious strong supporters of the Israeli attack/defense. If a foriegn government develops propoganda to deliberately manipulate you into supporting them financially and emotionaly, are they really your ally? Seems like a parasitic relationship to me.

Kshartle wrote:

dualstow wrote: Hard to say. The terrorists do love their (torture) manuals. USA?
But, this would be a convenient find right when Israel is accused of war crimes.
Also, there are people saying that the Arabic it's written in looks non-native.
Time will tell.

I'm against all violence that isn't self defense

Do you eat meat, poultry, or fish (I won't even get into violence on plant life)?    JK, trying to lighten up an impossible situation.

... Mountaineer

Mountaineer wrote:

Kshartle wrote:

dualstow wrote: Hard to say. The terrorists do love their (torture) manuals. USA?
But, this would be a convenient find right when Israel is accused of war crimes.
Also, there are people saying that the Arabic it's written in looks non-native.
Time will tell.

I'm against all violence that isn't self defense

Do you eat meat, poultry, or fish (I won't even get into violence on plant life)?    JK, trying to lighten up an impossible situation.

... Mountaineer

Why do you think it's impossible?

lol @ "Dust" - I like it! 

Certainly the manual could be fake. Let's say it does turn out to be devious and dastardly propaganda. If so, I would think it has more to do with the war crimes accusations than into garnering more financial support. The financial support will still be there, (un)popular opinion notwithstanding.

And I too would be less inclined to call the US-Israel relationship purely symbiotic than, I don't know, "mutually parasitic".(?) No, that's not right either, because although the U.S. does benefit from technology, it is not parasitic. And certainly Israel appears to be benefiting far more. But I do think of them as an ally. Some even think of them as the US' proxy. I don't know. It's a little bit of everything.