Jonathan Cook writes poignantly about the media situation a that is imposed on the West. The prism from which we view things, at the very base, is a flawed interpretation of the world. Obedience to the dominant hierarchy is expertly camouflaged within a supposedly free and democratic society. The question though is this, how free and democratic – even how just – is a system that promotes the withering of our empathetic selves and the systemic dehumanization of others?
“The reason the Great Western Narrative persists is because it is useful – to those in power. Humans may be essentially the same in our natures and in our drives, but we are very definitely divided by power and its modern corollary, wealth. A tiny number have it, and the vast majority do not. The Great Western Narrative is there to perpetuate power by legitimising it, by making its unbalanced and unjust distribution seem natural and immutable.
Once kings told us they had blue blood and a divine right. Today, we need a different kind of narrative, but one designed to achieve the same end. Just as kings and barons once owned everything, now a tiny corporate elite rule the world. They have to justify that to themselves and to us.
The king and the barons had their courtiers, the clergy and a wider circle of hanger-ons who most of the time benefited enough from the system not to disrupt it. The role of the clergy in particular was to sanction the gross imbalance of power, to argue that it was God’s will. Today, the media function like the clergy of old. God may be dead, as Nietzsche observed, but the corporate media has taken his place. In the unquestioned premises of every article, we are told who should rule and who should be ruled, who are the Good Guys and who the Bad.
To make this system more palatable, more democratic, to make us believe that there is equality of opportunity and that wealth trickles down, the western elite has had to allow a large domestic middle class to emerge, like the courtiers of old. The spoils from the rape and pillage of distant societies are shared sparingly with this class. Their consciences are rarely pricked because the corporate media’s function is to ensure they know little about the rest of the world and care even less, believing those foreigners to be less deserving, less human.
Nothing more than statistics
If western readers, for example, understood that a Palestinian is no different from an Israeli – apart from in opportunities and income – then they might feel sympathy for a grieving Palestinian family just as they do for an Israeli one. But the Great Western Narrative is there precisely to ensure readers won’t feel the same about the two cases. That is why Palestinian deaths are invariably reported as nothing more than statistics – because Palestinians die in large numbers, like cattle in an abbatoir. Israelis, by contrast, die much more rarely and their deaths are recorded individually. They are dignified with names, life stories and pictures.
Even when a moment arrives to single out a Palestinian from the mass of death, western corporate media show great reluctance to do so. Just take the case of Razan al-Najjar, the 21-year-old Palestinian medic executed by a sniper’s bullet as she tended to the unarmed demonstrators regularly being killed and wounded at the perimeter fence encaging them in the prison of Gaza.
Gaza is slowly sinking into the sea, but who cares? Those primitive Palestinians live like cavemen amid the rubble of homes Israel has repeatedly destroyed. Their women are hijabbed and they have too many children. They don’t look like us, they don’t speak like us. Doubtless, they don’t think like us. They cannot be us.
Even those young Palestinian demonstrators, with their faces covered with strange scarves, launching flaming kites and throwing the odd stone, look different. Can we imagine ourselves standing in front of a sniper to protest like that? Of course not. We cannot imagine what it is like to live in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet, in an open-air prison over which another nation serves as jailers, in which the water is becoming as saline as seawater and there is no electricity. So how can we put ourselves in the demonstrators’ shoes, how can we empathise? It is so much easier to imagine being the powerful sniper protecting the “border” and his home.
But al-Najjar undermined all that. A young, pretty woman with a beautiful smile – she could be our daughter. Selflessly tending to the wounded, thinking not of herself but of the welfare of others, we would be proud to have her as our daughter. We can identify with her much better than the sniper. She is a door beckoning us to step through and see the world from a different location, from a different perspective.
Which is why the corporate media has not invested al-Najjar’s death with the emotional, empathetic coverage it would if a pretty young Israeli female medic had been gunned down by a Palestinian. It was that double standard in his own newspaper, the Guardian, that outraged cartoonist Steve Bell last week. As he noted in correspondence with the editor, the paper had barely covered the story of al-Najjar. When he tried to redress the imbalance, his own cartoon highlighting her death – and its oversight – was censored.
The Guardian’s editors argued that his cartoon was anti-semitic. But the truth is that al-Najjar is dangerous. Because once you step through that door, you are unlikely to come back, you are unlikely ever again to believe the Great Western Narrative.
The true message of Israel
Israel-Palestine offered me that door, just as it has so many others. It is not, as Israel’s apologists – and the upholders of the Great Western Narrative – will tell you, because so many westerners are anti-semitic. It is because Israel lies in a grey zone of experience, one that is readily available to western tourists but at the same time gives them a chance to glimpse the dark underbelly of western privilege.
Israel is enthusiastically embraced by the Great Western Narrative: it is supposedly a liberal democracy, many of its inhabitants dress and sound like us, its cities look rather like our cities, its TV shows are given a makeover and become hits on our TV screens. If you don’t stand too close, Israel could be Britain or the US.
But there are clues galore, for those who bother to look a little beyond superficialities, that there is something profoundly amiss about Israel. A few miles from their homes, the sons of those western-looking families regularly train their gun sights on unarmed demonstrators, on children, on women, on journalists, on medics, and pull the trigger with barely any compunction.
They do so not because they are monsters, but because they are exactly like us, exactly like our sons. That is the true horror of Israel. We have a chance to see ourselves in Israel – because it is not exactly us, because most of us have some physical and emotional distance from it, because it still looks a little strange despite the best efforts of the western media, and because its own local narrative – justifying its actions – is even more extreme, even more entitled, even more racist towards the Other than the Great Western Narrative.
It is that shocking realisation – that we could be Israelis, that we could be those snipers – that both opens the door and prevents many from stepping through to see what is on the other side. Or, more troubling still, halting at the threshhold of the doorway, glimpsing a partial truth without understanding its full ramifications.”
Did you ever wonder why some of your acquaintances are so critical of the mainstream media; or why so quickly they roll their eyes when it comes to certain topics and ideas. I bet you a shiny loonie (One dollar coin in Canadian currency) that they have stepped through the doorway and are wondering when you will finally join them.
12 comments
June 23, 2018 at 5:54 am
tildeb
This is the Post Modern bullshit narrative in action being applied to a complex issue and framing it as a conspiracy by some ill-defined, hazy ‘elites’ we unknowingly maintain and support whose goal is to create the simplistic victim/vicitmizer playing field into which the Po-Mo narrative can now be be presented as if it is the the real story line. The ‘solution’ is always one of trying to leverage an artificial guilt by westerners into undermining classical liberal Western values, under the guise that such values are the problem, that they bring about some kind of hazy, ill-defined ‘privilege’ that creates victims. That’s why it’s a bullshit narrative and should be spotted a mile away by anyone with two neurons to rub together. It is an emotional appeal and not one based on actually finding real solutions to real problems within a framework of shared values. It’s the New Fascism.
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June 23, 2018 at 8:21 am
The Arbourist
@Tildeb
There isn’t really much of a conspiratorial nature going on here. One needs only to look at some of the unvarnished facts of the Israel/Palestine situation to see who holds the advantage in that situation. The fact that we in the West historically and consistently intervene to block the peace process in Israel/Palestine while at the same time holding tightly to the mantle and espousing Western values, classical or otherwise, points to the necessity of Cook’s argument.
Our civilized western values and the expectations that follow are applied quite selectively in the world, almost always to our advantage. We often act/intervene on behalf of ‘the national interest’ which is short hand for the interests of the elite sectors of society. Unless we wish to count realpolitik under the rubric of cherished western values then perhaps we should reevaluate the critique that this is just another po-mo escapade.
The hierarchical stratification of nations and societies creates material differences in power and liberties available to individuals in said societies and between nations/societies themselves. Decrying unjust situations and rightly naming them as oppressive is the responsibility of people who are interested in ethical behaviour and want to work toward a more just world.
Rediscovering basic human empathy is not an emotional appeal. Empathy is foundational to any purported system of justice or ethics. Any ‘real solutions’ not based on trying to understand the ‘other’ and their needs is just another glitz patina covering the cruel expression of western realpolitik and thus by extension the status quo.
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June 23, 2018 at 12:14 pm
tildeb
“…the sons of those western-looking families regularly train their gun sights on unarmed demonstrators, on children, on women, on journalists, on medics, and pull the trigger with barely any compunction.”
Seriously, you think the description is simply fostering empathy? Jews bad (intentionally kill children) Palestinians good (out treating the wounded). And you don’t see this as artificially creating an emotional narrative I’m calling emotional but “unvarnished facts?” Give your head a shake, Arb.
Look, the situation is very complex. What I’m reading is not a fair and balanced rendition. At all. It’s the polar opposite. Nor is this approach any means of finding real world solutions. It is intentionally biased to elevate the Palestinians to be the victims (never of their own making, of course) and the Israelis to be the aggressors (based on Western governments) to create the bullshit guilt narrative disconnected from reality, the narrative that supporting Israel is the de facto support for creating more victims.
This is Po-Mo bullshit down to its smallest punctuation and you’ve swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.
I’m saying step back and understand the emotional manipulation going on here in this kind of bullshit ‘journalism’, separate the Po-Mo opinions out from the facts, discard them entirely, if you want to appreciate the factual complexity that is the true situation. Only then will you be able to evaluate where the strongest middle ground can be found based on Western liberal democratic values, and only then be incrementally achieved. That is the way forward and that is only way towards a peaceful resolution. Attacking those values and pretending this situation is a victim/victimizer narrative is completely counterproductive and guarantees entrenched conflict. That’s the real conspiracy going on here.
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June 23, 2018 at 2:39 pm
The Arbourist
@ tildeb
The very next paragraph – ‘They do so not because they are monsters, but because they are exactly like us, exactly like our sons.That is the true horror of Israel. We have a chance to see ourselves in Israel – because it is not exactly us, because most of us have some physical and emotional distance from it, because it still looks a little strange despite the best efforts of the western media….’
Cooke is describing the white-washing that is a consistent feature of the Israeli/Palestinian news coverage. Hearing a narrative that is not in line with the official stance may seem outlandish, but is necessary to get a better idea of what is happening over there.
Disregard for international law, the UN, and classical western values are the facts in this situation. The facts of the situation don’t seem to matter when the people on one side of the argument happen to be holding a big stick, and have their ass covered by USA.
If we appealed to the factual material reality of the situation a fair one-state or two-state solution would be a done deal by now. But no. That isn’t the case.
The illegal occupation and ever increasing Bantustanization of the Palestine continues unabated. Against international law, against UN resolutions, against any sort of – just – resolution to the problem.
Good reporting comes with bias. ‘Fair and balanced’ is about as far from good journalism as one can get these days. The majority of the media is dominated by precisely the opposite narrative, and in this small enclave of the internet, I choose not to give it the preeminence it enjoys elsewhere.
Proposing a counter-narrative to the perceived wisdom of the times is the tonic to the intellectual stupor that affects so much our populace.
The creeping colonization of Palastine would be over if the US did not support it . (Precedent set in Indonesia in 1998 – with the ‘resignation’ of Soeharto).
I’ve done a fair amount of reading on the topic and historically, politically speaking the Cooke’s essay resonates with it. The works of Chomsky, Tariq-Ali, and Edward Said are not, for the record, part of the po-mo canon.
Speaking of bullshit. Chamberlain would be proud of your incrementalist approach. The Palestinians have been doing ‘incremental change’ since 1967 and their reward has been the dissolution of the contingency of their state and the formation of the world’s largest open air prison.
So a hearty bollocks to your incrementalism argument. Revolution is in order – as it was for America and France – it must be for the people of Palestine.
Power is never given freely, it must be taken.
Oppressed/Oppressor narratives exist. How can they not given the our hierarchical past and structure of our nations? They are a material part of our historical reality. To deny them, is to silence the voices of those who we claim to champion.
I’m not so much calling BS on you tildeb, but rather the history of Western Intervention in Israel and Palestine and really,the entire Middle East, is not a ringing endorsement of traditional liberal democratic values. Seeing you go to bat for those particular values, especially given their deleterious effects in context of the region in question strikes a discordant note with me. (Although I’m pretty sure you’re aware that our words in the ME do not match our actions.)
Hey I’m glad we espouse those traditional liberal values, but we ever so rarely hold ourselves to them makes much of the argument seem to fall into the category of noble,well intentioned, boilerplate.
The West’s dedication to our values have (surprisingly) been very good for the West, but significantly less good for those who we deign ‘not of the West’.
So in my mind it can be an argument from empathy. Knowing what it is like to be on the short end of the stick, to be vulnerable and powerless and therefore helping others not to be in that state is a powerful and radical ethos to uphold as it runs counter to the current capitalist oligarchy we currently inhabit.
If we actually followed the rules(moral, ethical, social, economic, et cetera) we expect others to play by, the world would be a radically different place.
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June 23, 2018 at 3:17 pm
tildeb
Let me put it this non-Chomskian thought-experiment way: would you as an atheist (or a woman) prefer to live in Israel, Gaza, Jordan, Egypt, or Syria?
If you now introduce the Po-Mo vicitimization narrative, you will come up against a barrier in real life, a place where the narrative simply doesn’t connect with the real world. Israel is in fact a relative sanctuary in any fair and honest comparison. I know. I have lived in these places. And the level of absolute hatred and intolerance towards the Jews from the cradle taught throughout these Muslim countries is something neither Said nor Chomsky ever honestly address except as a product supposedly caused by the West, a means to avoid holding these countries to the same standard. This, too, is absolute bullshit.
The antisemitism of the Po-Mo ideology is so painfully obvious that it boggles the mind so many Westerners close their eyes to it:.I direct you to the number of UN motions condemning Israel compared to all the Muslim countries combined. How many atheists has the Israeli government executed for blasphemy?
Zero.
There are two very different standards at work here and buying into the victim/victimizer narrative serves no one’s best interests… except the armchair moralist privileged enough in the West to condemn Israel and feel superior for doing so. What the writer is doing is called the bigotry of low expectations and you’re not seeing it but willingly going along with it. And it’s absolute bullshit if not a moral capitulation to buy into the narrative. That’s why I say the first step is to seek a fair and honest comparison because you have to throw that away to go along with the Po-Mo bullshit and believe the ideology and its narrative first by avoiding the facts that demonstrates just how disconnected it is from reality. It’s actually antisemitism in action.
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June 23, 2018 at 8:40 pm
The Arbourist
@tildeb
So because these Muslim countries hate the Jews, from birth, it then makes it okay for the Israeli state apparatus to shoot whomever they please in the territory they are illegally occupying. I’m looking for, but not finding, very much of what is considered to be classically liberal sentiments.
Formal apartheid and racism just doesn’t play well on the international stage, go figure. South Africa was all over it, but eventually was compelled to see the light via the revolutionary efforts of the ANC. If Israel is tired of UN official resolutions, then perhaps not engaging in state level atrocious behaviour that requires sanction in the first place, would be a great beginning (UN Security Council Resolution 242 would be a great place to start).
How many people shot for approaching a fence? Or living in a neighborhood that happens to in the way of a missile strike. Or how many dead because of lack of access to basic medical facilities and basic utilities?
People are meeting their untimely and unjust demise in both cases. Neither should happen, and more importantly the crappy behaviour or some Muslim countries is not a valid ethical justification for terrible behaviour on the behalf of Israel.
The mark of any civilized nation is the ability to look at the historical record and see one’s mistakes and make actions to correct them. Not many countries have met this standard, but it is something to strive for. Israel isn’t even trying. The illegal occupation and continued settlement projects continue unabated. These are the facts of the situation, it is out of line with any sort of ethical view that purports to respect the life, liberty and happiness of individuals.
So perhaps then we can dispense with the ‘classical liberal ideals/values’ rhetoric then? It is hypocritical argument as soon as it becomes necessary to ask the question of freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and markets, but for whom? We can return to this once Israel guarantees these rights for everyone in the contested regions.
When we start playing by the rules we say we follow, I’ll look more seriously at the claims you put forward. That isn’t the case now, nor has has it been since we decided that the Middle East was too important a sphere on influence to allow the people living there the right of self-determination.
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June 24, 2018 at 6:07 am
tildeb
What I’m seeing in your comments is not a single fair or honest comparison. I keep using the word; you keep avoiding it in order I think to stick with a victim/victimizer Po-Mo bullshit narrative that simply doesn’t comport to the complexity of reality on the ground. That is what I’m saying is both necessary and completely lacking from the Po-Mo ideology you are spouting here. What you are supporting is an antisemitic position that unfairly targets Israel. Period. End of story. You demonstrate no understanding of the complex situation and so you cannot offer any meaningful and honest suggestions to foster a peaceful solution because you’ve taken an emotional position completely in favour of the Palestinians. And you’ve done so not to respect what’s true or reach an honest level of understanding but to go along with an ideological framework that infects the West today and what I think is the rise of New Fascism.
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June 24, 2018 at 9:26 am
The Arbourist
@tildeb
And what would that serve really? Hey, Israel is less shitty then Syria, but still pretty shitty. Being slightly less shitty isn’t an excuse, nor a justification to keep the unjust status-quo. A bastion of liberal democratic values Israel clearly is not.
Thank goodness for complexity when it allows one to handwave away not only violations of international law, but human rights as well. I guess the apartheid in South Africa was not complex enough, and therefore a solution could be found that actually moved the country toward the classical liberal democratic ideal.
There is that comparison again. And you’re right, it isn’t fair because in South Africa situation, the US wasn’t supporting, codifying, running interference in the UN, and ultimately bankrolling the apartheid regime.
No, you don’t get to talk about the rule of law, or democratic ideals, or any sort of noble framing when it comes to Israel. They have the big stick, and the big coat-tails to hide behind which allows Israel to ignore ethical, legal, and humanitarian issues with near impunity.
The rest of the world (outside of the US) is in near consensus when it comes to the Israeli/Palestinian situation and the requirements for a just one state or two state solution.
TERF, Anti-semite, … I’ll add it to the list of things people call me when they run out of arguments and are faced with the facts of the situation.
The history of Israeli behaviour toward the Palestinians is egregious. The numerous human rights and international law violations speak for themselves. The injustice and cruelty is documented, and of course, on-going.
Lol. The peace process has been consistently blocked, stymied, and shutdown by the US and her proxy, Israel. Meaningful and honest has been on the table since ’67 and nothing has come of it, other than an increase in illegal settlements, mass punishments, and extrajudicial murders on behalf of the state of Israel.
So, maybe you should demonstrate a understanding of the (historical and continuing) obstructionist nature of the US/Israel dynamic, and get back to me when an actual honest solution is viable, and not just the bog-standard petty persiflage that dribbles from the respective state apparatuses.
I guess we’ll have to go a little po-mo then, because the classical liberal democratic values seem to somewhat variable for you in their intensity and application depending on which country we’re talking about.
Easy to bring them out to bash the bad Muslim regimes, but applying them to our team…well… then there is that darned complexity to deal with.
That is some grade A hypocritical imperialist bullshit going on there.
Not dealing with the fact that we have two sets of rules, one for ‘us’ and one for ‘them’ and that this is the cause of a great deal of injustice and suffering is a reality that needs to be acknowledged.
But, your allegiance to team Israel seems to supersede your declared preference for the small details of classical liberal ideology – personal liberty,rule of law, free trade, private property – or perhaps these features should be available only to those you deem ‘worthy’. A heavy, heavy burden to bear, no?
As to the rise of fascism, it is on the move and festering as people grow afraid to talk to one another and disagree about the hard issues. Keeping the public space open and the considered dialogue going will be key in combating the escalation of fascist elements in our society.
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June 24, 2018 at 10:53 am
tildeb
“Keeping the public space open and the considered dialogue going will be key in combating the escalation of fascist elements in our society.”
You want to speak of hypocrisy? You say this as if it somehow relates to your one-sided position when in fact you’ve already framed the issue in such a way as to support only your Po-Mo ideology that damns the ‘victimizer’ and demands guilty allowances for the ‘victims’. That’s hypocrisy, Arb, because it simply doesn’t relate to reality. It is an example of the bigotry of low expectations.
I dare you to stand facing thousands of advancing and clearly hostile people directing their anger at YOU as a symbol of everything they hate and not react with self-preserving violence. What an immoral cad you must be when you are labelled by armchair moralists from afar as the victimizer and the thousands only to be deemed ‘victims’ of your ‘illegal’ presence and bullying ways… a presence you have earned by armed force after your fledgling country has been invaded not by one, not by two, not by three, but by four nation states simultaneously… not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. Let’s castigated you for setting up more defensible borders earned in armed conflict from these invaders because, hey, you’red the victimizer, you bully, and you can be so only by other ‘victimnizer’ and bullies we’ll call the US. I mean, seriously, the amount of historical revisionism needed for the PoMo narrative requires an astounding level of hypocrisy and a entrenched double standard.
Of course, YOU will never have to face such a situation because some vast conspiracy has implemented their privileged position and by sheer accident has allowed you to live in the safety and relative freedom of a liberal democracy… a safety only maintained not by Po-Mo ideology and its fascist supporters but by the willingness of individuals who value our common rights and freedoms to serve in your defense, a defense maintained by the inconvenient use of armed might – aka bullying tactics – which by your definition must make it the means to enable the victimizer and create ‘victims’.
You have already deemed any fair and honest comparison between Israel and its neighbours – including the Palestinians – to be not only unwanted but unacceptable. Poof! All gone. Good guys and Bad Guys only. And that’s the narrative you need to say something so ridiculous as , “….allows Israel to ignore ethical, legal, and humanitarian issues with near impunity.” Those issues can only work when the rule of law is applied and enforced on all. You have no clue how hard the military works to try to serve all its masters including the lowest number of civilian casualties in an urban war. Rest assured, Gaza could be razed and it isn’t only by the self-control of the ‘bullies’. But you don’t care about any of that in order to lay out a narrative that describes what you’ve already ‘decided’ on (swallowed hook, line, and sinker) that is Israel bad and evil, Palestine is good but victimized only by Israel the proxy and the US the bully. You don’t care that Palestinians are paid a bounty to kill Israelis. This kind of thing doesn’t even appear on your moral radar, so sure of you in your faith-based belief that Israel is all bad and Palestine is all good. That’s why I raised the simple example – and there are thousands – of you deciding where you would prefer to be an atheist because that cracks the curtain of bullshit your narrative necessarily hides behind.
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June 24, 2018 at 12:05 pm
The Arbourist
@tildeb
Wow. The penalty for protesting terrible conditions is death, and it’s your fault for being murdered. Nice gig. No culpability, no problems.
Fuck ya, because isn’t war the most grand arbiter of them all? Nothing unjust going on there – if you win the war then you make the rules. Moral clarity just went off the chart. I’m feeling the warm glow of classical liberal values, aren’t you?
Pity the sad history of the colonizer. Wouldn’t be nice if the rabble just accepted their second class status and left us in peace, or even better if hey just left? Not like they should be treated like people or anything as crazy as that.
Where are Jack Nicholson and few good men… you need to add the part about those standing on the wall too. The Canada, love it or leave it, is coming on through loud and clear.
Bullshit. If advocates for Israel can’t handle critique of their countries shitty human rights record, the answer is not to get more nationalistic and patriotic. That quickly brings down into MAGA and wall building discussion territory… hmmm… well (ouch) batting .500 there.
I’m sure the families of people murdered by sniper fire and rockets deeply appreciate the hard work of the military. I know I certainly would.
And by the numbers, that sure is an effective policy isn’t it? Hundreds of Israeli dead by the month. Oh wait no, it is the Palestinians doing most of the dying. Funny how people continue to strive for justice, despite the terrible toll exacted upon them for standing up for their rights.
Palestine doesn’t claim to be a bulwark of democracy, peace, and freedom. Israel does. The claims are overstated. And of course no, it isn’t a black and white issue there is plenty of villainy on the part of Palestinians as well – they just don’t get to enforce theirs with attack helicopters, artillery, and nukes. The power imbalance is real. The issue (now) is that for mentioning an alternative narrative that doesn’t portray the state apparatus of Israel in a positive light – you lose your shit – and go 110% full frontal carelessly throwing about claims of antisemitism and false narratives aka thought terminating cliches all in support of team Israel and keeping the rhetoric flowing in the ‘correct’ direction.
It won’t stop the discussion here, nor will it censor the content of the debate. Sorry man, but the flag waving and nationalistic posturing don’t really cut it rhetorically or argumentatively. I mean if they make you feel better, do continue, but know it for what it is.
I’m not sure how where I want to be an atheist relates to the question of why a people should be forced to live without the basic requirements of civilization (food, water, medicine et cetera) and self determination. However you’d like to slice it, illegal occupation is still unjust and then trying to blame those revolting against the imposed intolerable conditions (having the audacity to let themselves get shot, the nerve!) isn’t exactly the most ethically or morally sound position to take.
So, being slightly less shitty is the best one can hope for. That’s a rather low bar to set. And this lack of aspiration and intention really proves the point that the ‘classical liberal ideals’ (at least in context of this argument) are really just a nice set of ideas to pay lip-service, but when the rubber meets the road – it is the colonizers realpolitik (see imperialism, nationalism) that gets shit done.
Cool beans. Discovering that we don’t actually do as we say is very important step in grasping the geo-political realities of our world.
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June 24, 2018 at 2:43 pm
tildeb
45.9% of all UN human rights council resolutions are against Israel. In the world. Think about that.
Yup, this is where woman are property, undergo genital mutilation, where their testimony is worth half that of a man, where women are punished for being raped and then daring to accuse. Yup, the place where genocides continue unabated, children are forced into armies of god, where rape and pillaging is a national policy against minorities, where the internet is censored, where chemical weapons of mass murder routinely used. This is where the leadership lives in opulence while those that serve live in squalor. This is where government policy dictates the number of children people are allowed to have, what religion they must adhere to, what language is to be spoken, which tribal affiliations matter. Oh, the list of grievances is almost half as long as the rest of the world combined. Terrible place, Israel. Just terrible.
The two state solution was smashed repeatedly over decades by Arab countries refusing to even recognize the UN creation called ‘Israel’, rejecting outright the notion of a Transjordan, countries that carried repeated wars into this place in the name of ‘liberation’. They care not one fig about Palestinians but use them shamelessly to undermine Israeli security. The Israel we have today is caused by this ongoing history of violence and rejection of any peaceful solution.
You blame Israel. You blame Israel solely. You blame Israel for everything. You do not offer a fair and balanced understanding of why Israel is the way it is, what shaped it, why they carry out the policies they do. I am perfectly aware of the many shortcomings of these internal policies that may suit this Israeli faction or that one politically, and I am very concerned when these policies come at the expense of the Palestinians, but I am also aware that Palestinian leadership still will not recognize Israel’s right to exist. And that really, really, really matters. You blame Israel, of course. You blame them for absolutely everything and pay lip service to some Palestinian responsibility without according them the dignity of being a major part of the problem and a major part of the solution to a peaceful resolution. You just grant them total amnesty… but not Israel because, again, Israel is always responsible in the Po-Mo narrative. You don;t care at all that the only peaceful solution acceptable to Palestinian authorities for many decades has been the complete eradication of Israel. But you pay that little gem zero attention in your holy quest to damn Israel for having the audacity to win wars of invasion, to take land from the invaders, as if it did so with… what’s your term… impunity… as if being invaded was just a quiblle. Gaza is the direct result of Palestinian intransigence and Palestinian policies. Shocking as it may seem to your sensibilities, Palestinian leadership is very much a central part of the problem as are Palestinian policies to maintain ongoing hostilities. But you don’t care that Palestinian authorities pay families for producing martyrs when it comes to the random killing of Israelis. You do not see this as anything but a justified response to ‘Israel’ because Israel is Bad, and go along without a blink of a doubtful eye the absurd claim that Israelis teach their children to shoot unarmed Palestinian children in general and medics offering aid to them in particular. You care not at all the targeted and informed criticisms by Israelis about Israel… because this doesn’t mesh with the idiotic one-sided narrative that is Po-Mo antisemitism: Israel bad. Palestine good.
If only reality were that simple, Arb. Hate to burst your bubble, but it isn’t. And this kind of Post Modern victim/victimizer bullshit narrative does nothing but add fuel to the fire and guarantee continued conflict and killings.
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June 26, 2018 at 9:01 pm
Vesuvius R. Kaine
Just back from travelling and happened to pop in on this very intense discussion. I’m going to weigh in a bit because, well, there’s an open box here that’s still allowing me to and often those who oppose the far-left hypocrisy in here get little if any support.
I think Tildeb is right on so many things, and it’s not that Arb is necessarily “wrong”, but Tildeb does a great job of pointing out (and staying with) either Arb’s terribly skewed perspective on the matter based upon emotion rather than facts, or Arb’s lack of perspective on the Israel vs. Palestine issue period regardless of the number of books he’s happened to have read on the subject.
Tildeb keeps asking for a fair comparison here in order to have a debate (I Believe), yet just like someone will use the death of Kate Steinle as cover to push their own xenophobic agenda, Arb uses the death of Razan al-Najjar as cover to push his – and in that exposes many of the false equivalencies, hypocrisies, and (I believe) gutlessness that makes up such a huge part of the ideological framework that exists today.
False equivalencies: on a wide variety of issues, the left will always try and “match up” an evil from one side (Israel) with an evil from the other (Palestine) under the guise of offering a “comparison”, yet – as you’re pointing out, Tildeb, they’ll conveniently stop their comparisons far short of all the egregious things their own side does or has done. In fact, anything which clearly shows how their side are the perpetrators who are just playing victim – those sorts of details or comparisons are rarely tabled and even if they ever happen to be, are never tackled head-on.
Curious – when you were in the Middle East, Tildeb, how many Israeli soldiers did you see holding babies up in windows as human shields, or placing rockets in daycares where kids play, or ordering crowds of innocent people to go stand on the roof of a building they knew was going to be hit No comparison.
Or how many of Israeli’s or Christian//Jewish leaders did you see chanting “Kill All The Arabs” every morning at prayer, or blowing themselves up as “martyrs” trying to take as many not soldiers, but innocents with them as possible? Again, no comparison. Fact is when you take the extreme of one group over another, Hamas-supporters have done far more heinous and egregious things with far more reach than Israel ever has, but no one here will want to admit it.
Hypocrisy: so many examples of this. They’ll criticize you for not having perspective, Tildeb, yet you’re probably the only one here who has lived in the Middle East or spent any amount of time over there. They’ll pretend like they hate all religion, yet their arguments and selective refrain of criticism will show their support for people who blindly follow religions whose leaders STILL openly not only support, but promote all those things you listed: women as property, genital mutilation, rape as punishment, child soldiers, mass murders, etc.. And their “comparison” here? Some ancient quotes from the Old Testament that barely anyone in the world holds above the law anymore (and hasn’t for generations). They won’t do a side-by-side comparison with you on that one either, Tildeb, because their blatant (and ridiculous) hypocrisy would show through and through.
Which brings me to the third thing which gets exposed in situations like these, and that’s their collective gutlessness and lack of courage. Never the guts to call out the extreme of a religion for what it is because they’re afraid to. Never the guts to look at their side (or themselves individually, for that matter) with the same scrutiny that they try and attack your side with because they’re afraid to. Never the guts to actually spend time in or experience the places and things they pretend to know so much about (like businesses!) because they’re afraid to.
Arb’s one of the better of them, but the fact that you a) actually have real-life perspective in the argument you are making, b) are willing to stand your argument/position up to ALL levels of scrutiny, and c) you appear to be able to apply an equal level of scrutiny inwards makes me believe you’re the clear winner in this debate, Tildeb. Congrats for the honesty and bravery.
Now I’m off to get more rich because I LOVE MONEY and I LOVE OPRESSING PEOPLE!!!!!! :)
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