In a GD thread, debaser states:
So apparently, I’m one of those people. In this 66 year old(?) conflict, is there a good guy? I’m still on the fence.
Poll to follow.
I picked ‘other’. Neither of them are behaving well.
Both good and bad on both sides.
You’re not alone.
Both sides are both victims and victimizers who have massive laager mentalities that make the Afrikaners look like Mother Theresa.
Including this option poisons the well:
Some are good and some are bad on both sides
Of course, there are some good people and some bad people on both sides. There’s millions of people on both sides. This is meaningless. It would be true of any two groups in basically any conflict at the national level.
There were good Nazis too. (Oscar Schindler for one example.) Still I wouldn’t hesitate to call Nazis as a whole “bad”.
But the goals and actions of the Israelis and Palestinians couldn’t be more clear. The Israelis want to live in peace and are willing to concede much to get peace. The Palestinians want to kill all the Israelis and won’t concede anything in pursuit of that goal.
Except for the inability (or unwillingness) to halt settlements, I might agree with the part I underlined.
I think both sides screwed things up quite a bit. The Palestinians have missed more opportunities and have taken more unreasonable positions, although I do see them as the initial “victims” of the whole sorry affair.
Hamas wants to destroy all life on the planet that disagrees with their ideology and install an islamic caliphate to rule the planet for all eternity.
Israel wants to coexist in peace and is tired of being constantly assaulted by random rockets falling from the sky and their population having to live in fear all the time.
I think it’s pretty clear.
Are there bad people on both sides? Sure. As there is in any conflict. But Israel isn’t going into Gaza with the intention of killing every last one of the Palestinians. Hamas is absolutely trying to kill every Israeli they can, indiscriminately. Fortunately for Israel, technology is on their side, but they absolutely are justified in everything they’re doing as far as I’m concerned. Civilian casualties can’t be avoided, and Israel is more careful than any other country I’ve ever heard of at trying to avoid them. Hamas doesn’t give them much choice though, they’re willing to station children around weapon systems and military leaders, literally use women as human shields, etc. There are no limits to the depths of depravity Hamas will sink to.
Good post by Andrew Sullivan re Israel missing a chance for being the good guy.
Oh, and blockading Gaza.
But the bottom line is that I just don’t buy the line that the collectively, ‘Palestine’ wants to destroy ‘Israel’ in a different way than ‘Israel’ wants to destroy ‘Palestine’.
Yes, I agree that the retoric is different: no I don’t agree that the actual demonstrated aims and actions are different.
I’m still sort of open to the idea that the stupid, destructive, counter-productive behavior of Israel which perpetuates this situation is a product of the Holocaust, which taught them always to attack and never to co-operate with their enemies.
But every year we get further from the Holocaust I lean more to view that the present behavior of Israel isn’t stupid, destructive and counter-productive: it isn’t even Jewish. It’s Eastern European, Russian and Austrian.
Except that looking in from the outside it really doesn’t look like this.
Much less how it must appear to the Palestinians - who see Israelis living on “their” land must kowtow to Israel for everything.
The conflict is too old, and too complex with too much baggage from both sides for me to fully understand - and after over 60 years, it doesn’t really matter to me “who started it”.
All I feel is that Israel, as things stand right now, are the University Graduate big brother fighting with the toddler Palestinians - it doesn’t really matter who started it, who’s right, who’s behaving worse - Israel has the most capacity to change things. They can destroy Palestine at their whim and fancy - at the same time they have the most knowledge, resources, strength and ability to make a meaningful change the paradigm from the current never ending cycle of revenge to something much more constructive.
There are no good guys, except maybe a few brave people like this, but the Israelis are the oppressors (harsh ones too) and the Palestinians are the victims. Only someone who got all their news from Israeli and American mainstream media could coherently think otherwise.
Good post. My thoughts exactly.
…and then you have this:
This seems like it’s full of feelings and light on facts. Can you explain why it is that you feel this way?
From my point of view it really does seem to me that this is a sort of mental illness. Or at very least a mental block. Any rational, logical view of the situation is clear that the Israelis are doing whatever they can to make best of a bad situation and the Palestinians are dedicated to murdering as many Israelis as they can regardless of how much it costs them.
There’s a reason I didn’t ask Israelis vs Hamas. That’s been done in another thread and, imho, it’d be similar to asking Russians vs Republicans* as opposed to Russians vs Americans.
I was in Israel, as part of an official US delegation. The Palestinians put a bomb just outside our hotel, trying to blow me up. The Israelis came and took the bomb away.
It wasn’t personal. The Palestinians would have been just as happy to blow up any or all or my traveling companions, or even any American, or any Israeli. I freely admit that this experience colors my perception of events in the region.
The Palestinians are one of the older terrorist organizations. I think there is a faction that is tired of war and wants peace. But the hard liners always derail the peace process by attacking Israel.
I don’t see a solution. There will always be a hard line element within the Palestinian ranks that will never accept peace.
Israel has its hard liners too that consider even one rocket attack from Gaza an act of war. I can understand why. Who wants to live with that threat?
Now they’ve found tunnels that aren’t for smuggling. They are strictly for terrorists that want to covertly invade Israel and kill innocent people.
The language used to frame this whole discourse and the talking points that get trumped out every time we talk about this exhaust me. No, Israel doesn’t want to coexist in peace. They want land and they want the Palestinians not to put up a fight as they take it, but that’s not the same thing as wanting peace. If they wanted peace, there wouldn’t be any illegal settlements.
But no, the Palestinians aren’t all innocent victims. They are supporting a government that doesn’t have their best interests at heart. They need to be focusing every red cent on making their society a respectable one, one with a realistic vision of the future. Aniliating the Jews isn’t going to happen.
I feel bad for the Palastinians because although I think they are winning this conflict on the PR front, their cries are being drowned out by evilness of radical Islamists. Not to mention the fiasco happening in Syria. With that kind of PR, there’s no wonder much of Western sympathy goes to Israel. And you know what? As much as it shames me to say this, I am sick of seeing the same parade of angry Muslims parading in the streets night after night. I know it’s not literally the same parade, and I know the issues are all complex. But I guess I don’t care enough to try to figure out what the fuck is going on with these folks NOW. Arab countries have entirely way too much money and brainpower to justify such dysfunctionality.
So…I’m absolutely sick of Israel. I’m tired of hearing how much Israel is our “friend”. Fuck Harry Reid for saying we need to send them even more money when we’ve got clusterfucks on our own border. Fuck everyone who is too spineless to call Israel out on its bullshit. But I guess the self-inflicted Palestinian hopelessness exasperates me even more. If Islamic countries actually walked their self-righteous talk, Palestine would already exist as its independent, well-functioning state, and Israel wouldn’t be able to do shit to the Gazans.
The Palestinians are not a terrorist organization. This is ridiculous. Hamas, I could see.
A distinction that had meaning before the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead them. Not so much, now.
Israel agreed to stop settlements in the West Bank a few years back. In return for this gesture, they got
Cite. Offers of compromise are met with flat refusal to negotiate.
And yet it is Israel’s fault for not making concessions.
Regards,
Shodan