Gyroscopic Investing

Finally there is a nation that is demonstrating moral clarity and fighting the cowardly scourge of terrorism, which puts missles in their own schools, mosques, and hospitals and uses their own women and children as human shields while they shoot missiles at civilians. Thank you, Israel!

any chance the zionists will consider Just War...such as a proportinate response?

murphy_p_t wrote: any chance the zionists will consider Just War...such as a proportinate response?

Ironically, a proportionate response would appear to entail deliberately attacking civilian centers.

A proportionate response to having thousands of missiles launched at your civilians would be much worse than what Israel is doing. But at least it's a start.

MangoMan wrote:

murphy_p_t wrote: any chance the zionists will consider Just War...such as a proportinate response?

I just don't understand how anyone can side with the Palestinians on this issue. They won't stop launching rockets at civilians, and they won't agree to a third party brokered cease fire.  What exactly would be fair here?

Though it is an oversimplification, one could argue that there are different sides.  Those who advocate for violence, those who enact violence, and those who are directly or indirectly victims of it without advocating it in return.

If innocent Palestinians are getting killed, then are we to measure their worth by what the Palestinian extremists do?

If we are going to measure the "appropriateness" of responses, perhaps we should measure non-combatant deaths. If memory serves, far fewer Israeli children have died than Palestinian.


And lastly, this isn't just some occupational police action, Palestinians see Israelis as invaders of their property.  Vice-versa, probably. But it's just one big land dispute where everyone sees everyone else as some sort of "invader" because of some one-sided historical precedent.

moda0306 wrote: Though it is an oversimplification, one could argue that there are different sides.  Those who advocate for violence, those who enact violence, and those who are directly or indirectly victims of it without advocating it in return.

The innocent Palestinians getting killed voted for Hamas to be their government by an overwhelming margin. When you have a representative government that is supported by the vast majority of its voter base, it's a lot harder to draw moral distinctions between the government and the people. I would be much more sympathetic to the Palestinian people if they would reject their government's actions or if they were were ruled by an iron-fisted dictator or something.

moda0306 wrote: If we are going to measure the "appropriateness" of responses, perhaps we should measure non-combatant deaths. If memory serves, far fewer Israeli children have died than Palestinian.

That's because the Israeli government invests huge amounts of money in protective technologies like missile shields and bombshelters. Hamas doesn't. What underground facilities they do build are tunnels for attacking Israel with. They invest their limited money on offensive weapons to attack Israel with, and actively use civilian deaths on their own side as a propaganda tactic. It seems rather perverse to argue that the Israeli government's success in protecting its people from constant aggression gives it less moral standing to try to stop that aggression.

The only place for the Palestinian people to hide in are shelters built by the UN, not their own government--which Hamas then uses as weapons stockpiles, knowing that it puts Israel in the impossible position of having to bomb civilians or allow known weapons caches to remain in their enemies' hands.

All of these things that Hamas is doing, by the way, are blatantly against international law. But you only ever see Israel blamed for breaking international law (mostly falsely).

I just hope that Israel can resist the pressure being applied by their "friends" and disarm Hamas once and for all. BTW, I fully expect some heinous terrorist event somewhere else in the world to occur shortly that Hamas can blame on Israeli aggression.

I think Pointed Stick hit it on the head. It's hard to side with Hamas here.

As for the argument that it's just a big messy land dispute and both sides are at fault and it's impossible to sort out who's got any moral high ground and yadda yadda yadda, I don't buy it. While it is obviously a land dispute, and while the history is certainly very sad and very unfair, and while both parties appear to have legitimate-seeming political, historical, and religious claims to the land, the nature of it being this type of dispute means that in order for there to be a peaceful resolution, each side is probably going to have to get less than it wants. To my knowledge, the Israelis are the only ones who have shown willingness to do this.

They demonstrated it in 1948 when they accepted the U.N. partition plan that created a Palestinian state and placed Jerusalem under international administration. The Arabs rejected it and declared war, leading to the Jews' stunning victory and the establishment of the state of Israel that ironically included far more territory (captured in that war) than they would have had with the U.N agreement.

The Israelis demonstrated it again in 1967, when, during a war the Arabs forced them to start by telegraphing their intentions to annihilate Israel and moving military units accordingly, Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria for the express purpose of giving it back in exchange for peace. The Syrians rejected this agreement, and as a result, they still lack that territory and have no official diplomatic relationship with Israel, and have attacked Israel several times since then, including just a few years later in 1973, when they and all of Israel's other neighbors sneak-attacked Israel on their holiest day of the year with, as usual, the full intention of putting every last Jew to death.

The Israelis demonstrated it again in 2000 when Clinton brought Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat to the table and got them within striking distance of a peaceful two-state agreement, only to have Arafat torpedo the deal by insisting on more than Barak was willing to give, and basically revealing that he didn't actually want a two-state solution; he, like most of the Arabs, wanted a single state with no Jews in it.

I could go on and on...

When you have a dispute, and one party says, "We just want to be left alone in peace," and the other party says "We won't rest until you're dead!", to me that really brings home who it is who has the moral high ground.

The crazies are smart in their own sick way and are spreading world wide.

It's refreshing to see a forum of people with their critical thinking caps on. Go to the comments section under a Gaza conflict article at any news site and you'll see a *few* posts like those above, but they're overwhelmed by posts that inform me Jews are the devil whether they're in Israel or not; Israel is deliberately targeting babies; Hamas has NO option to resist non violently because no one will listen, the Israelis must be wrong because they don't have many casualties on their side and it's just not fair; David against Goliath; Gaza is a prison run by Jewish Nazis; and things I can't even repeat here.

I was so taken aback that in Desert's other Israel thread, I thought I had better dip my toe in slowly, .not even putting quotes around the word 'behave' in my phrase "if Israel behaves."

Look, of course there are opportunists and hawks on the Israeli side. Of course Palestinian children don't deserve to be caught up in this. (Nor do donkeys deserve to be used as bombs). Of course war is hell. But when I wake up and see an Ann Telnaes cartoon depicting a man wearing a Jewish star holding a baby and punching it in the face while an armed balaclava-clad man (Hamas) merely looks on- when I see that carried by major newspapers, I wonder if I haven't awoken into an alternate universe.

We must remember that Hamas intentionally provoked this whole crisis first by killing those 3 boys then shooting thousands of missiles at cities then refusing a cease fire. The question is why. Is there something else that we are not seeing yet? What is Iran's role? There is more to this than meets the eye.

dualstow wrote: It's refreshing to see a forum of people with their critical thinking caps on. Go to the comments section under a Gaza conflict article at any news site and you'll see a *few* posts like those above, but they're overwhelmed by posts that inform me Jews are the devil whether they're in Israel or not; Israel is deliberately targeting babies; Hamas has NO option to resist non violently because no one will listen, the Israelis must be wrong because they don't have many casualties on their side and it's just not fair; David against Goliath; Gaza is a prison run by Jewish Nazis; and things I can't even repeat here.

As best as I can tell, the anti-Israel perspective basically begins with the assumption that the Israelis are foreign conquerors who belligerently invaded Arab lands, and as a result of the taint of those actions, everything they do is morally incorrect by virtue of their mere existence in the region, and anything the Palestinians do to resist them is morally correct, no matter how heinous it may appear.

I believe that this is a view wholly unsupported by the actual history of the region, and I have never met a person who held this view and actually knew that history, or understood particularly well how geopolitics works: for example, that when you fight in armed conflict, and you lose, the winning side may choose to take some or all of your territory. That's simply how war works. The Ottoman Empire experienced this when they sided with the Germans in WWI and had their land taken over by the winners. …because that's simply what happens when you roll the dice and risk it all in war. That's how England came to be in possession of the territory now known as Israel.

Under the laws of war, Britain owned that land. They could do with it whatever they wanted. And unfortunately, they had previously promised it to two different groups of people that happened to hate each other. If you ask me, it's basically all Britain's fault they totally cocked it up by first promising the Arabs that they would get the land for themselves if they helped the British push the Ottoman Turks out of the region, and then also promising to the Jews a national homeland in the region in exchange for fighting for the allied powers rather than Germany. Whoops.

Now, these promises were made at slightly different times. The Arabs got theirs first in 1915 (the Hussein-McMahon letters), while the Jews got theirs 1917 (the Balfour Declaration). But of course neither of these groups knew that the land they believed had been promised to them had also been promised to their enemies. So lots of Jews and Arabs moved to the region and/or fought for the British believing that it was going to be all theirs. And of course, the British claimed that these two promises were not inconsistent, even though they clearly were. Their final position wound up as "well, the Arabs get all of the land that was the former Ottoman Empire, while the Jews can have this little spit over here." Which of course the Jews were happy about but the Arabs (in particular the Palestinian Arabs already living there) didn't really like.

But it's important to keep in mind that during this time, there were no borders and no countries; the entire dispute centered around what the borders were eventually going to be, because the entire region had been ruled by a foreign empire for 400 years that had just been conquered. The true owners of the land were the British. Not the Arabs, and not the Jews. The British got to decide what to do with it.

So in my mind, each side began with a morally neutral claim due to the competing promises. And eventually the British realized they were in an impossible pickle and chickened out, punting the issue to the newly-created United Nations. I think the proposed U.N. partition plan represented a good option for actually resolving the dispute; each side would get some of the land, but nobody would get the most desirable part of it (Jerusalem). The Jews accepted this plan, but the Arabs rejected it, and immediately decided to roll the dice and try to kill all the Jews. When they did that, in my mind, they agreed to own the consequences, whatever they happened to be. And the shocking consequences were that they lost that war. But they were the ones who started it. Whining about losing a war you started is something I simply can't find it in myself to feel a lot of sympathy over.

That's why I can't see the Israelis as foreign conquerors. They had just as much of a right to be there as the Palestinians, under the laws of war and the diplomatic correspondences that had been made to them. The Palestinians Arabs rejected a compromise proposal to try to sort the mess out and lost everything in the process. But they started that war. They started it because they wanted everything, and they thought they could get it. And in the intervening 70 years, what they do have has shrunk more and more due to their own inability to compromise.

PS,

You pointed out a couple days ago that this is essentially a conquer-job that Israel pulled on Palestinians. If you want me to agree with you that lots of Palestinians have been absolutely irrational, cruel, bull-headed, etc, you have my agreement. Most Jews are very compassionate people. They just have painted themselves into a pickle in Israel. Most Palestinians are poor and probably quite angry. They may have voted Hamas in, but if that logic holds then do we have to claim ownership for the deaths of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan?  And Vietnam?  I'm not saying you're wrong at all. I'm just trying to give a bit of perspective in areas we might be forgetting it. Israelis have killed far more Palestinian civilians than vice versa. Period. There might have been more combatant deaths as part of that ratio, but if you're fighting an invasion of a militarily superior enemy, and you want them out, the strategy, naturally, is going to be to simply make it as miserable for the invaders as possible. It's going to be a very DIFFERENT type of war. And if you're going to complain about civilian vs military deaths, you probably should have numbers on your side. Let's not forget, Israelis voted in their government, too. So if they kill civilians, we've just gotten into a logical circle of tit-for-tat terror.

So it is still a a land dispute. If people displaced my entire neighborhood, we'd see the families as invaders and thieves.. Not citizens. Is that what Israelis really are?  Not really.  But that is how they are seen, and the affect on war tactics is simply an extension of that.

The stupidity of many Palestinians doesn't change the fact that you essentially have lots of people on both sides willing to defend disputed land "rights" at the point of a gun.  I'm a bit annoyed with both sides, really, in the same way I'd be annoyed with my uncle if he asked me to fund his war against the Mexican government if they tried to take his home.

PS,

You know these "laws of war" aren't really like the "laws of gravity" right?  I'm starting to think I activated a statist hamster in the back of your brain and he's spinning that wheel way too fast.

If you have to fight a war to get something, you have, pretty much by definition, "conquered" it. It usually helps to get into the details as to whether a war was just, but it would seem on a fundamental individuality level, most wars are just statist adventures.

The Jews aren't just foreign conqueror like Spain was by any means. That's why this is messy. It's not black or white. They kept pouring into the region after WWII.  Obviously it was a foreign assistance that brought about the state, but it had a sort of organicness to it due to the natural will for Jews to move back to their land of old and get away from all the euro-trash and everyone else that hated them.

My point, moda, is that this is not a "conquer-job", or at least, not an illegal one. All the land Israel took was taken in wars that other people started or forced them to start (e.g. Israel started the 1967 war because they had intercepted transmissions indicating when the Arabs were going to sneak attack them).

I don't think you quite grasp my point, as evidenced by your metaphors of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and neighborhoods being invaded. In those examples, party A took something that belonged to party B. Easy to see who's right and who's wrong. None of those metaphors accurately describe what happened in the middle east conflict, due to the following key differences:

1) in the beginning, the lawful owner of the land was neither party A (the Jews) nor party B (the Arabs); instead it was Party C (the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, and then the British Empire for 20 years)
2) both party A and party B had been promised that land by party C, giving neither of them a morally superior claim to it
3) at that point it became a "land dispute", but party A was willing to compromise and give up some of what they had been promised, while party B refused and decided to take a gamble and try to get everything
4) party B lost that gamble

Look, if the Palestinians had accepted the U.N. partition plan and the Jews had attacked them and carved a nation out of the land they took, I would be appalled and call them conquerors for not following the rules and being greedy. But they didn't do that. The Palestinians did that. And they lost. They were humiliatingly defeated. But sometimes that's what happens when you decide to use violence to resolve disputes. Sometimes you lose and wind up with less than you would have had if you had just compromised. That's the risk you take. The Palestinians took that risk, and it didn't pay off.

I'm in pragmatist mode right now. That's why I'm talking about things like "the laws of war." This conflict will not be solved by utopianism. That's been the Palestinians' mistake all along. If we are to examine this conflict, we must do it looking through the lenses of the imperfect institutions of the world as they exist and apply, not how things should be in a nonexistent anarcho-capitalist utopia where nobody irrationally hated other people and tried to murder them.

When I eventually found Anarchocapitalandia, it will be through pragmatic actions designed to succeed, not utopianism designed to feel good.

PS,

You're talking about rules here.  Rules built by states that neither Israelis or Palestinians think are legitimate in their previous claim over the land.

When I say "land dispute," I mean in societal term, not legal terms. Two societies currently have VERY different views as to the land "rights" in that region. They don't recognize the referees of the world community any more than the recognize each other.

And perhaps the Palestinians realize they've "lost," and are essentially fighting cuz they have nothing to lose at this point but their pride. Doesn't make logical sense, but from the standpoint of morality taking land at the point of a gun for personal gains isn't really much better than killing invaders for spite.  But in the end, I don't think they don't see the war as being over yet. They don't recognize any "authority" at this point that grants Israel the right to exist... It would undermine their whole premise of the invasion and theft as having occurred in the first place. They also don't recognize artificial "rules of war" that grant "invaders" a pass in not getting attacked.

I wish they were more pragmatic... Because if living a meaningful life after being conquered demands anything, it's a LOOOT of f'kin capacity for pragmatism.

PS,

To be fair, at the macro-level I'm looking at things super philosophically and not pragmatic at all. I can see, philosophically, why Palestine doesn't want to recognize Israel.  Pragmatically it's a horrible premise to work from.

But since I see this all as a hopeless cause, I am looking at things pragmatically on an individual level when I say:

Palestinian man... Israeli man...  Stop killing and occupying land that is disputed.  Period.

It works on an individual level, and everyone left over isn't worth my time to try to advise because they're willing to put their pride above someone else's life and their family's safety.

However, this would involve them giving up their pride. So I guess it's not pragmatic at all. 

moda0306 wrote: PS,

You're talking about rules here.  Rules built by states that neither Israelis or Palestinians think are legitimate in their previous claim over the land.

When I say "land dispute," I mean in societal term, not legal terms. Two societies currently have VERY different views as to the land "rights" in that region. They don't recognize the referees of the world community any more than the recognize each other.

Obviously the two sides have different views; that's why it's a dispute. The Jews believe that The Balfour declaration as well as their religious history gives them the right to the land they are already one, as well as the West Bank (dunno how they feel about the Gaza Strip, which is a worthless hellhole). And the Arabs believe that the Hussein-McMahon letters quantify Lawrence of Arabia's promise that they would get all the land after the Ottoman Empire was no more. Again, that's why it's a dispute.

However, we have frameworks for resolving disputes, with names like "diplomacy" and "treaties" and the like. They need not be internationalist impositions; they can simply be good old fashioned compromise. In my mind, the fact that there is a dispute is secondary to the affected parties' willingness to resolve the dispute like adults rather than children, as evidenced by their willingness to participate in a process of compromise and then follow the rules that are set during this process.

When you don't participate in this process and follow those rules, you enter the realm of "might makes right." This goes for individuals as well as governments. And when you go there, I believe that you own the consequences--good or bad. You can't initiate violence in an attempt to take more than you were going to get and then whine when it doesn't work and you get less. Sorry. And like I've been saying, the Arabs were the ones who were and are unwilling to compromise and follow the rules--any rules. The Israelis are. They accepted the U.N. agreement, and they accepted the 2000 Clinton peace plan. The Jews do recognize international agreements and the concept of compromise.

You can't handwave that away by returning to the fact that there's a dispute with morally gray origins. When such disputes arise, they need to be settled with compromise and diplomacy to avoid violence. And, again, it's the Arabs who are unwilling to do that. They had the opportunity to claim their part of the moral high ground by compromising, but once they said, "screw it, we're taking all of the disputed land for ourselves because we f'n can!" I think they gave up that moral high ground and have to own their current plight. They have the power to improve things. They don't do those any of it because they would rather feel right than get what they want.

I agree with most of that, PS.

But we look at threats of violence as violence. We look at theft as violence.  Simply occupying someone else's home without their permission, often, will be seen as a violent act.

When you have a land dispute amongst individual cultures (not just the governments who might rule over them), this is what is going to happen. The reason you so-often hear about the TACTICS of the Palestinians rather than their moral claim, is because their moral claim isn't all-that fundamentally flawed.  If Israeli's did to us what they did to Palestinians we would be some pissed off m-f'ers, and most of the conservatives disgusted with Hamas would be lobbing rockets at invaders of their community, too, and many would probably look at defending "their land" to the last man without signing a "treaty" as a sign of pride.  "Treaties" have fucked indigenous nomads for centuries (not that trying to fight a more advanced military has been much better).

But in the end, morality is enacted personally, not by "societies."  This is a problem of pride and religion and too strong of a belief in property rights superseding the basics of morality.  Israel is defending land that isn't "theirs" at the point of a gun. Palestinians are willing to kill people over some shit land in the desert. The rest is details. "Treaties."  "Diplomacy."  Just bullshit words that governments make up to make violence and force look like peace. (Holy shit I never thought I'd sound like Kshartle in a debate with you!!)

And I've been a ways out from really caring about this conflict for a while now, so I can't remember the details, but if memory serves, Israel has done some extremely shady things in the past above and beyond just building settlements under the premise that they own the land.

moda0306 wrote: But in the end, morality is enacted personally, not by "societies."  This is a problem of pride and religion and too strong of a belief in property rights superseding the basics of morality.  Israel is defending land that isn't "theirs" at the point of a gun. Palestinians are willing to kill people over some shit land in the desert. The rest is details. "Treaties."  "Diplomacy."  Just bullshit words that governments make up to make violence and force look like peace. (Holy shit I never thought I'd sound like Kshartle in a debate with you!!)

And I've been a ways out from really caring about this conflict for a while now, so I can't remember the details, but if memory serves, Israel has done some extremely shady things in the past above and beyond just building settlements under the premise that they own the land.

They built settlements in land they conquered in wars started by them or that they were forced to start (see earlier example). But yes, they have done shady things. Some of which I heard accounts of firsthand when I was in Israel that made me shiver.

At a fundamental level, I basically agree with you that it's personal morality writ large that decides this conflict. This isn't really about government vs people because both governments have the full support of their people. They are simply channeling the geopolitical desires of their voters. So it's really the Israelis vs the Palestinians, not the Israeli government vs Hamas. The Palestinians feel like it's their land and the Israelis are foreign conquerors, and the Israelis feel like it's their land and the Arabs are a bunch of barbarians at the gates. This is the natural result of, again, not following the rules. Rules governing the behavior between nations and peoples in modern times exist for a reason. When they are not followed, when you get is, again, the world of "might makes right." And the fact of the matter is that it's stupid to enter this world when you are not as mighty as your opponent, and clearly, obviously, indisputably so. I understand that the Arabs are a proud and passionate people, and that they had been denied their own self-determination by the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. I get it.

But still, when you try to solve your problems with violence, you have to own the consequences. And from day 1 it's been the Arabs who have tried to do that, with the Jews only defending themselves against outside attacks whose purpose is their extermination. The Arabs decided to use violence to solve their problems in 1948 when they attacked the Jews rather than agree to a two-state solution. They did it again in 1967 when they were preparing to sneak-attack Israel and were found out and got sneak-attacked themselves. They did it again in 1973 when they succeeded in sneak-attacking Israel. They did it again in 2000 when they rejected the best option for a two-state solution they'd had in decades. Again, I could go on and on...

Again, this is a land dispute, and in such matters, neither side will get all of what it wants. Israel admit that and is willing to go along with it in exchange for peace. Anytime the Palestinians want, they can engage the Israelis in diplomacy and secure some land for themselves. They can get some of what they want, they can get legal recognition, they can get a full-fledged nation state, and all that. The Israelis are willing to engage them in this diplomatic matter. But that's not what the Palestinians want. They want something they fundamentally cannot have--all of the land.  And until they drop this unrealistic desire, they are going to continue to fail spectacularly and backslide into ever more squalid poverty.

Think about in Harry Browne terms: if you want something, and you have the power to get it--or at least some of it--and you don't use that power and instead just complain about it, or even do things that will get you farther away from your goal, whose fault is it when you don't get what you want? Yours and yours alone. The Israelis are getting what they want. They have a beautiful, modern, advanced society they irrigated out of the dust of a miserable patch of barren desert. It's the Palestinians who are suffering from their own unrealistic pig-headedness. The power to improve their lives is in their own hands.

If you really want me to forget about governments and international law and the like, I'll put on my anarcho-capitalist hat again and put it this way:

Two people who want to live in peace with one another don't need rules to govern their behavior.

Two people who don't want to live in peace with one another should go far apart from each other so they don't have to chafe against one another.

If both of those people can't move because there's no place for them to move to (that sucks), those people should try their best to adopt a set of rules that each of them can live with in order to forestall violence between them, which will hurt both of them.

If either of people can't agree on such a set of rules, then they should be both willing to live with the rules framework or even set of customs set up by others who wish to prevent their violence.

If either of those people can't agree to follow the rules or customs of others, then violence between them is unavoidable.

The person who is weaker should try to prevent this at all costs due to the inevitability of a violent solution leading to a worse outcome for them compared to a rules-mediated compromise solution.

If the weaker person is too stupid or irrational to realize this, then he gets what he deserves when he initiates violence anyway and gets crushed.

The problem:  Arabs typically are an "honor culture".  Israel is a "law culture".  Difficult to reconcile.  Remember Star Trek?  Clingons and Romulans versus the Federation?  Limited ability to work together.  Go Worf go!  Maybe the Borg will suck us all into the hive. 

The solution:  I'm afraid one of them has to go.  It will be ugly.  Israel has the weaponry to wipe their opponents off the map.  Arabs have the people to make it mighty bloody.  Likely many others who have a stake in the matter will take sides and not leave them alone to duke it out.  I think CO2 may become a moot point once the nuclear ash spreads.  Hope I'm wrong.

... Mountaineer

Mountaineer wrote: The problem:  Arabs typically are an "honor culture".  Israel is a "law culture".  Difficult to reconcile.  Remember Star Trek?  Clingons and Romulans versus the Federation?
Limited ability to work together. 

Yes, the Israelis have a law culture, and for that reason I have always thought of them as the Vulcans. My star trek is rusty, but weren't they also cousins to the Romulans?

And how does this equation change once Iran puts their first nuclear warhead on a missile aimed at Tel Aviv?