*Also I should of added it’s confusing cause with effect (not that that justifies it).
Sigh
Isn’t it a more interesting debate to reflect on why people hold diametrically opposing opinions on Israel/Palistine, than to demonstrate, for the upteenth time, that people do have diametrically opposing views?
How about it, Fang? MC Master of Ceremonies? Why to you argue over this issue? Why do each side gain your sympathy?
[Please, provide something other than a list of crimes of each side - how about a list of virtues of the side you support?]
Some of the Muslims, especially Osama, are jumping on the Palestinian bandwagon because the Palestinians are the only force in the ME region that fights ‘hated’ Israel to the point of exhaustion. Israel is still wondering how they never lost one of their prized tanks when they fought 5 or 6 countries at a time, but lose three to a bunch of desparate refugees in a terrorist hunt.
There is also the underdog factor. People root for underdogs. And for the first time in just about any conflict, Israel is the Goliath. The Palestinian youths let them know it every day with the rock-throwing at the soldiers. Israelis knows it, and it vexes them.
This explains why some Muslims support Palistine, certainly.
And clearly the “underdog factor” is important. However, “people root for the underdog” does not explain why some clearly root for the “Goliath” in this conflict.
Why in your opinion do some find this factor compelling, and others not? And why does this tend to follow left and right political orientations?
Actually, at least in the US, the far left and the far right support the Palestinians and the moderates and centrists support Israel.
Mathus sighs…
Sigh
Isn’t it a more interesting debate to reflect on why people hold diametrically opposing opinions on Israel/Palistine, than to demonstrate, for the upteenth time, that people do have diametrically opposing views?
Yes, Mathus, and thus I reflected…
Left and right, Liberal and Conservative, seem to be trans-cultural labels that effectively identify two distinct postures of political belief systems. Why two? Why trans- cultural? One wonders.
Perhaps the political propensities are innate in individuals of our kind. Yeah, like the million years of distinct social roles that evolution required of the male and female. Men hunt, women raise children. Men fight and protect, women care for the old and nurture the young. Sexual selection and social conditioning of these necessary traits brought about two very different world views.
Two parts of a whole that was needed in order to continue in time as human beings.
There are many fundamental attitudes embodied in these two seperate but complementary philosophies. Most are obvious.
Male = cognition
Female = feelings
Today in our sexless society the politics of individuals gravitate towards one or the other of these two poles of beliefs.
Female =left = Liberal
Male = right = Conservative
Today the new left’s penchant for condeming the Israelis for being mean hearted, along with their attendant feelings of thoughtless compassion for the homeless and helpless Palestinians without consideration of future consequenties demostrates the Left’s inability to properly abstract from reality and reveals the female origin of their beliefs.
And yet today (at least in the states) only slightly more females than men are Liberals and only slightly more men identify themselves as Conservatives. Strange.
Well, that is damn interesting.
I’ll have to think about it a bit. I am very uncomfortable assigning gender roles to political positions, though, based on evolutionary theory.
I’d be interested to hear how you reconcile this with the Hebron massacres (also your note c).
You’d have to go back and look at the time to the race riots in which the Hebron massacre took place. After the Balfour Declaration there existed a strong suspiscon in the Arab community towards the Zionists as they believed that they had come to push them off their land (a fear compounded by the eviction of Arab farmers by abstentee Arab landlords to make way for Jewish settlers and the rhetoric of Jabotinsky and his revisonist movement). This led to several disturbances but the largest of these occured in 1929 after a dispute over the Wailing Wall and rioting in which three Jews and three Arabs were murdered , which spread around the country and resulted in the murder of 68 Jews in Hebron by an Arab mob the next day.
Before Zionism no, such tensions between the two communites existed, which is what I orginally stated.
Why the Left’s inclination toward the Palestinians?
I’m not inclined toward Palestinians.
You wanna call me right-wing?
I must be a trans-sexual…
nah, I think you’re quite something else. 
gum, help me, I am confused …
Scott Dickerson
With respect to point 1: I have not read Dershowitz’s book. I did recently read Tom Segev’s One Palestine Complete http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805065873/qid=1067876772/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-4463118-5232709?v=glance&n=507846 .
The gist I got from that is that while there was both an “Arab” Jewish presence and a “European” Jewish presence in Palestine prior to the turn of the century it was a fairly small minority of the population. It was only post WWI, (with Britain giving a Zionist orgaziation substantial control over immigration) that serious numbers of Jewish immigrants arrived, with simultaneous substantial purchases of land. The question of what to do with the Arabs living within the borders of what would be a Jewish state was a thorny one - solutions ranging from peaceful coexistance to buying out all the land to ethnic cleansing. One point he notes that I found surprising is that at the time of partition, the Israeli portion still had a majority of non-Jews.
As to the second point: I think part of the problem is that the definition of “support for the Palestinians” or “pro-Palestinian Bias” seems to be “anything less than a blank check for Israel”. The objection to the zionist desire for a homeland is not to the desire but to the homeland chosen - one already occupied by individuals who did not necessarily want to live in a state set up by outsiders for their own reasons and benefits.
Disclaimer: Israel exists. Israel is a liberal democracy in an area where they are scarce on the ground. Israel has a commitment to human rights in principle and usually in practice. Israel provides a haven for Jews who would be persecuted elsewhere. For all of these reasons I am fine with Israel’s existence and I believe that my country should ensure Israel’s continued existence. I do not feel however that Israel can long continue to exist as a liberal democracy with a commitment to human rights while the occupation continues.
** Today the new left’s penchant for condeming the Israelis for being mean hearted, along with their attendant feelings of thoughtless compassion for the homeless and helpless Palestinians without consideration of future consequenties demostrates the Left’s inability to properly abstract from reality and reveals the female origin of their beliefs. **
Are you prepared to make a similar statement that disparages your identified “male” right? For example:
"Today the new right’s penchant for condeming the Palestinians for being unwilling to accept peaceful domination by Isreal, along with their attendant expectation that Palestine could have simply “bought” its way out of the conflict through fair, arms length negotiations demostrates the Right’s inability to understand the emotional and cultural forces that reality, present and future, and reveals the male origin of their beliefs. "
(Disclaimer : Mathus is referred to here because he was the first one to respond to the quoted post.)
I hypothesize that: 1. Mathus would not agree with this formulation, or even find it interesting. He would argue about the conclusory statements, and dismiss it out of hand. 2. The only reason the “liberals are girls” statement above warranted an interested nod was because the conclusory statements in THAT formulation agreed with Mathus’s own substantive beliefs.
This gets to the deeper problem- the language and authority presented in favor of a proposition are more important than the proposition itself.
The left and right differ (with statistical generality only) on the Isreal-Palestine problem not because there is something automatic about the belief structure. It isn’t that a liberal device pumps out one result, a conservative device another. What is going on is that party leaders and politicians have decided to make arguements for various sides of the debate, and people are going along with the arguments that stress substantive beliefs they share.
I doubt anyone on this board has been living in Isreal for the last fifty years; I imagine most of our evidence comes from other sources of authority, mostly party-oriented. We trust those sources not because we have any first-hand verification, but because they claim to be alligned with the substantive beliefs an individual has chosen to adopt. That is to say, Bush assures Christians that killing terrorists is the godly thing to do. Clinton and his group assured liberals that he could still do a good job as president while entertaining a mistress.
Also - I hate to hijack, but I read through this thread and didn’t see a single voice raised in dissent against the tired, conservative rant about how liberals are anti-American. I’d just like to get the perfunctory refutation out of the way: 1. I’m a liberal, 2. I am no more anti-American than they are anti-Calculus; I’m willing to question the propositions until I am satisfied that they are proven. 3. Being open to the ideas of other nations does not make me anti-American. 4. Certainly Mathus wasn’t suggesting than anyone who questions Bush must be anti-American. 5. He was probably referring to Conservative arguments based on selective reporting of positions labeled “liberal” as described in Coulter’s books.
-C
That explains why we never see Anne Coulter in pasties and a thong.
You are quite wrong here, as I think is evidenced from my earlier posts.
I have certain substantive beliefs. I have attempted to examine the issue objectively, not because of those beliefs or to support them, but because it is an interesting and instructive exercise.
Please note my post above, where I do unto the Right as I have done unto the Left:
"…it is only fair that I turn my guns around and point out why I think that the right supports Israel to an irrational degree.
Why does the right overlook Israeli stomping on human rights, stealing land, and ignoring international opinion?
-snipped to save space-
In other words, rightist Americans support Israel because they see in the “story” of Israel the same virtues they admire in themselves and their own history (only more so, the threat being greater). To those on the left, these are not “virtues” but successful crimes."
I would have been just as interested (and just as unconvinced) by your formulation as by the original one - because it is an interesting approach. Interesting, but I think mistaken - either way.
I agree, and have in my way been attempting to examine the content of that belief structure.
What do you think of my efforts? On the mark, or wrong? If so, why?
I worked in Isreal for a year.
I’m not an American, so the issue of anti-Americanism is only of theoretical interest to me.