Ahem.
Ok, but Bob was a diiiiick.
I can see your anger at the Palestinian situation but the thing is Isreal is surrounded by hostile nations who want to wipe Isreal out. I’m thinking about all the Arab-Isreali wars of the past. Isreal is also a small nation and needs everyone.
If you have physical fitness issues and moral uncertainty (dubious emotional fitness), you probably do not belong in the military, which means that avoiding service would have the opposite effect of weakening it: they are probably stronger without you.
Israel.
If it helps, remember that “El” means “God,” so you get all sorts of names like Israel (“God triumphant,” or “God contended”), Michael (“Who is like God”), or Raphael (“God has healed”).
Logical fallacy. Appeal to increasingly forgotten science fiction writer.
That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
Pacifists have been dying because of reckless jingoists for centuries. They have paid more than their share.
I seriously question the notion that you’ll have any real effect on the military capability of Israel. Maybe if you start some large political movement that significantly cuts into conscription numbers you could have a small effect. If you are just telling friends, family, and acquaintances the numbers you’re likely to influence are strategically meaningless. The IDF has also been gradually moving towards a more long term professional force. Even a major movement against conscription may fail to produce the effect you think it will. There’s a potential for increasing the power of the IDF if your movement pushes them into reforms that increases reliance on better trained and long service volunteers.
Also, in Israel the military is an arm of the state AFAIK, as I suggested in my first reply. If your political movement gain ascendancy, your party is the one dictating military and foreign policy (like whether to enter or sidestep certain conflicts).
OP does not identify as a pacifist or express pacifist view, nor indeed do they identify as a follower of St. Robert of Heinlein, so the pertinence of this quote is not immediately apparant.
Look, I’m hardly objective. I’m typing this om my phone from my base in miluim (that’s IDF resereves). I’m heading out to the Hebron area tonight, despite the fact that I personally object to Israel being in the Territories.
That said, comsider a few things: Israelis don’t get more concillatory when they feel less confident in their strength, they become more violent. It’s in our national character. Weakening the IDF will probably only make things worse.
Second, even if a peace deal can be reached with the Palestinians - and I have a hard time figuring out how one can be - it probably won’t end the conflict. I wish it would, but it probably won’t. You may see peace in your lifetime, but I likely will not.
Finally, remember that Israel’s greatest peaceniks, from Abie Natan to Yitzhak Rabin, all served, and served with distinction. Do your duty to your country, and then work to change it. Keep the moral high ground. And vote against Bibi in March!
Then serve, and serve well.
Peace through strength.
Israel itself was established with the aid of strong armies. The result was increased death. You see, strong armies do things like colonize, conquer territory, and occupy foreign lands. These lead to lasting consequences and deterioration of cultures at home and abroad.
Weak armies may react impetuously. Sounds like a theory. Are you saying they initiate conflicts that wouldn’t have happened otherwise?
I would like some people to point to weak armies that have done that so we can discuss it. The killings of strong armies have already been mentioned.
In regards to a weak nation becoming more violent, even if you take this as a given, it does not follow that the military of that nation should be sttrengthened. The strength of the military is increased at the expense of national strength. Take the US as an example.
The United States is an example of nothing. You guys have two huge oceans to protect yourselves from invasion; most of us don’t have luxuries like that.
Geography is destiny.
This is true. Keep in mind that the weak nations are the ones being colonized, conquered, and occupied. See, for instance, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Kuwait’s being weaker didn’t prevent a war. Their conquest was prevented/undone by a stronger military - namely the US and the other coalition members.
I don’t think the US is a good example.
In 1940, the US was weak militarily. The Japanese thought we could be intimidated into not becoming strong militarily. They were mistaken. Then in 1945 we were the strongest nation on earth, both because the Axis powers were defeated and our allies were exhausted, and also because we had the Bomb. Then the Soviets got the Bomb, and from 1948 on there were no more world wars - certainly low-level conflicts and proxy wars, but not WWIII. Even in 1945-1948, the US had the Bomb and a huge edge in military power, and we did not respond to the Berlin blockade and the takeover of the Warsaw Pact nations with further war.
You are correct that much of the overwhelming advantage of the US from 1945 thru the 50s was because our industrial base was untouched and that of Japan and Germany and France had been devastated. But we implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the Europe that was still free to have strong allies. To say the least, that involved major changes to the cultures of Japan and Germany. But it wasn’t a question of not changing cultures, or not having WWII. It was a question of who was going to conquer who, and change whose culture.
Regards,
Shodan
Like I said: peace through strength.
The US is an example of strong military that has weakened the nation. The strong military has made enemies abroad and entangled the country in major wars, bringing death to many foreigners and countrymen. It also diverts capital, human, and technological resources from prosperity-creating areas.
Ideology is destiny. There was no need for strong armies to establish a Jewish homeland, but ideology led to a geographical nation established by strong armies. The strength of an army has nothing to do with geography. The US has a strong army. Israel has a strong army. France has a strong army. The key factor here is ideology, not geography.
If the Israeli government would refrain from doing things that strong armies do, they wouldn’t have so many problems. They can’t. No government can. The answer is to weaken the military so the politicians and military leaders can’t do much with it.
Israel was invaded by seven foreign armies the day it declared independence. I thing that hints that a string army might have been neccessary for its survival.
Save your Liberatarian bullshit for the U.S. and keep it out of a region for which it has absolutely no relevance and which you do not understand. And stop hijacking a potentially interesting thread.
Yes but if Iraq had a weaker military, there may have been no conflict. Israel is already the much stronger military like Iraq was in relation to Kuwait.
Also, the US gave Saddam the green light to invade, so the strongest military couldn’t help itself from doing something that led to more net death in the world. If the US army was weaker, they may have not got into the conflict, and perhaps Kuwait could have paid a tribute to Saddam to avoid war. We don’t know what would happen if the elephant is not in the room.
In addition, the country of Iraq was created in a haphazard way by strong armies, leading to a tyrannical dictator.
Japan was another strong army that behaved foolishly and caused death to many foreigners and countrymen.
Yes the US was able to be the strongest after WWII despite getting involved in the war. Imagine if they had stayed out how strong the economy would have been. The US was the strongest nation before WWI, in the antebellum period, and after WWII, the strength of the US military was not the reason we were so strong, it was capitalism.
There was no large scale wars because the countries were tired of war making. They instead integrated their economies, lowering the chance of war and strengthening their economies.
If the US remained a strong neutral country, there would have been no conquest by Japan or Germany or anyone else. The US’ strong army led to adventures in the Pacific and conflict with Japan, we had no business in conquering Hawaii, as a strong army, from the beginning.
Also, the OP said he is focused on decreasing death, not any kind of maintenance of his culture or national greatness. If Israel became a tiny military who paid tribute, this would accomplish the goal of decreasing death.