War in the Middle East, again

[rotting bones]

Wait, isn't this veering towards anti-Arab bigotry?

1. "Antisemitism" is not a word that magically adds justice to your position. It is insane to "believe" a woman who says you are invading her personal space if she is currently in the process of throttling you. In fact, the left has condemned white women who use tears to get black men punished. If humans have strayed this far from sanity, we might need a "Do Not Believe Murderous Women" campaign.
2. Jews have hated Germans during the Holocaust and then for decades after it had happened. If you encourage ethnic identities, then it's natural for "Arabs" to hate "Jews" when "Jews" kill "Arabs".
3. The claim that no one here has condemned the language used by the protestors is factually incorrect: viewtopic.php?p=75587#p75587 Torco has also said it's a "mistake" in less strong language: viewtopic.php?p=81585#p81585 Having said that, the protestors should definitely do a better job of condemning antisemitism.
4. If all political violence is forbidden, we would never have transitioned from feudalism to democracy. Justice only ever happens when the rubes threaten to hurt the "experts" in self-defense. That's how we got the medical establishment to accept homosexuality. I think a position that leads to feudalism is self-refuting.
5. As a reminder, the early Zionists openly stated their ideology entails ethnic cleansing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVzgxthLVuE All Israel needs to do to get my support is to outwardly adopt an official ideology that is analogous to the one used by Rojava. Rojava has also violated human rights, but I'm more inclined to make excuses for it. Why can't Israeli officials just mouth the words "Arabs have equal rights"? You can keep denying them housing and treating them as second class citizens as long as I have some hope that future generations might be indoctrinated by the words you said but didn't mean.

[Ares Land]

....you can't make this up. I hadn't even read this part when i wrote the above. right. everything you say is antisemitism, else i'm antisemitic. in addition, opposing the genocide of certain semites is antisemitic. well, if that's all correct guess i'm antisemitic. it's not tho.

The 'Arabs are semites too' line doesn't work, because anti-semitism doesn't work that way. Anti-semitism is specifically hatred of Jews.
As for the rest, no I don't mean you're an antisemite.
But, as much as I wish it wasn't, yes, antisemitism is real, more prevalent than what people think, and yeah it certainly informs way too much of the debate in Western countries.

Having said that, the protestors should definitely do a better job of condemning antisemitism.

Yes, exactly. I think a lot of the protestors are being, um, a little naive about the antisemitism.

Why can't Israeli officials just mouth the words "Arabs have equal rights"?

That is, sadly, not enough. They actually state that very thing, the reality, as we all know, is different.

[bradrn]

Anti-semitism is specifically hatred of Jews.

Which is why, incidentally, I always write it without a hyphen. It’s really not a great term: in fact its early use was mostly by antisemites themselves, who were looking for a more ‘scientific’ word than ‘Jew-hate’.

[Ares Land]

Anti-semitism is specifically hatred of Jews.

Which is why, incidentally, I always write it without a hyphen. It’s really not a great term: in fact its early use was mostly by antisemites themselves, who were looking for a more ‘scientific’ word than ‘Jew-hate’.

The orthography of antisemitism is one of the bits of English I still struggle with. Hyphen, no hyphen, capitalized?

[bradrn]

Anti-semitism is specifically hatred of Jews.

Which is why, incidentally, I always write it without a hyphen. It’s really not a great term: in fact its early use was mostly by antisemites themselves, who were looking for a more ‘scientific’ word than ‘Jew-hate’.

The orthography of antisemitism is one of the bits of English I still struggle with. Hyphen, no hyphen, capitalized?

Standardly lowercase, and in my opinion unhyphenated. (Plenty of people write it with a hyphen, but I disagree with that because it implies that ‘Semitism’ is a thing, which it isn’t.)

[Torco]

When did I ever deny this? I said, ‘this protest is violent in this way’. Your response here is, ‘many protests have been violent in this way’. Which may be true, but it doesn’t negate my point.

no, my response is that if we're going to condemn student protests -against a genocide, mind you, or an ethnic cleansing, or a bad thing-that-is-not-genocide-cause-israel-is-good-and-only-bad-people-do-genocide, whatever you want to call it- cause they inconvenience teachers or whatever else we might as well go back to slavery. protesting is a contact sport, especially for the protestors. rotten put it very eloquently.

4. If all political violence is forbidden, we would never have transitioned from feudalism to democracy. Justice only ever happens when the rubes threaten to hurt the "experts" in self-defense. That's how we got the medical establishment to accept homosexuality. I think a position that leads to feudalism is self-refuting.

i think this whole thing of "let me genocide or you're antisemitic" is actively and quickly eroding away the taboo against antisemitism. when antisemitism comes to mean condemning a genocide people simply stop seeing it as something bad, and can you blame them? I don't doubt the proportion of people who would agree with "jews are evil and I'd prefer none of them lived near me" has increased as a result of this sort of crybullyng of the netanyahuists and the overwhelming global psyop to justify it. many jewish kids apparently come to patagonia after their period of exterminating palestininans on vacation, and plenty buy land there, and a lot of locals are starting to wonder are we going to start getting genocided in our own country too? israel started as zionists buying land too, after all. now, is there some latent antisemitism grounding this? sure, of course there is, but they're really not helping.

[Ares Land]

many jewish kids apparently come to patagonia after their period of exterminating palestininans on vacation, and plenty buy land there, and a lot of locals are starting to wonder are we going to start getting genocided in our own country too?

EDIT: my apologies. I completely missed the bit about latent antisemitism. Sorry!
Yeah, this is antisemitism... But you know, I don't think it really has much to do with Israel, except superficially. People were making up conspiracy theories about Jews before Israel. People are just kind of stupid and mean that way.

i think this whole thing of "let me genocide or you're antisemitic" is actively and quickly eroding away the taboo against antisemitism. when antisemitism comes to mean condemning a genocide people simply stop seeing it as something bad, and can you blame them?

I think the fallacy here is that there's some sort of rationality or justification behind antisemitism. There just never is.

If there was no state of Israel and no Jews in the Middle East at all... we'd still have antisemites in increasing numbers.

Same thing with about any kind of racism. Here in France people justify racism because of terrorism attacks and/or Islam. But I mean, people just want to hate Arabs.

Now, you're right, the taboos against antisemitism is eroding. It has nothing to do with what's going on in the Middle East. Absolutely nothing. The taboo against antisemitism is eroding because the generation that went through WWII has mostly died out. It's really the same reason taboos against any kind of racism are eroding, and the same reason an increasing number of people think fascism is cool.

[bradrn]

Responding in reverse order:

many jewish kids apparently come to patagonia after their period of exterminating palestininans on vacation, and plenty buy land there, and a lot of locals are starting to wonder are we going to start getting genocided in our own country too? israel started as zionists buying land too, after all. now, is there some latent antisemitism grounding this? sure, of course there is, but they're really not helping.

I’m sorry, but this is not ‘latent’ antisemitism. This is antisemitism. ‘The Jews are coming to kill us all and replace us’ is one of the oldest and most persistent antisemitic canards there is. I’ve been the target of this accusation myself, long before the current events.

So, you want to know why the rhetoric from the protests frightens me? This is why.

i think this whole thing of "let me genocide or you're antisemitic" is actively and quickly eroding away the taboo against antisemitism. when antisemitism comes to mean condemning a genocide people simply stop seeing it as something bad, and can you blame them?

As it happens: yes, I certainly can blame them. ‘Please don’t target Jews on the basis of their religion’ isn’t an unreasonable request. As much as they may dislike Israel, I expect them to be able to recognise the difference between disliking Israel and hating Jews. Even if Israeli right-wing types confuse the situation, is that really reason for them to lose their moral sense?

When did I ever deny this? I said, ‘this protest is violent in this way’. Your response here is, ‘many protests have been violent in this way’. Which may be true, but it doesn’t negate my point.

no, my response is that if we're going to condemn student protests -against a genocide, mind you, or an ethnic cleansing, or a bad thing-that-is-not-genocide-cause-israel-is-good-and-only-bad-people-do-genocide, whatever you want to call it- cause they inconvenience teachers or whatever else we might as well go back to slavery.

There are plenty of ways to protest without being violent, or threatening violence, and I don’t think they’re any less successful than violent protest. You don’t have to call for people’s murder if you just want to protest the policies of the Israeli government.

(Funnily enough, when it’s pro-Israeli groups who are doing it, people here suddenly seem to agree that violence is wrong. Like I said, some consistency would be nice.)

[Ketsuban]

I’m sorry, but this is not ‘latent’ antisemitism. This is antisemitism. ‘The Jews are coming to kill us all and replace us’ is one of the oldest and most persistent antisemitic canards there is. I’ve been the target of this accusation myself, long before the current events.

You have missed Torco's point - nobody was disputing the idea that the end state (a Great Replacement theory) is antisemitism. The point was that "Netanyahuist crybullying" (to use Torco's own framing) devalues the word "antisemitism" itself by attempting to expand it to include opposition to genocidal Netanyahuist policies and greases the wheels for turning a neutral observation ("Israeli young people buy land in Patagonia") into an antisemitic concern-troll ("does that mean they're trying to colonise here as well, by constructing a narrative where any Patagonian concern about it will get brushed aside by the international community?").

[Travis B.]

I’m sorry, but this is not ‘latent’ antisemitism. This is antisemitism. ‘The Jews are coming to kill us all and replace us’ is one of the oldest and most persistent antisemitic canards there is. I’ve been the target of this accusation myself, long before the current events.

You have missed Torco's point - nobody was disputing the idea that the end state (a Great Replacement theory) is antisemitism. The point was that "Netanyahuist crybullying" (to use Torco's own framing) devalues the word "antisemitism" itself by attempting to expand it to include opposition to genocidal Netanyahuist policies and greases the wheels for turning a neutral observation ("Israeli young people buy land in Patagonia") into an antisemitic concern-troll ("does that mean they're trying to colonise here as well, by constructing a narrative where any Patagonian concern about it will get brushed aside by the international community?").

This.

[bradrn]

I’m sorry, but this is not ‘latent’ antisemitism. This is antisemitism. ‘The Jews are coming to kill us all and replace us’ is one of the oldest and most persistent antisemitic canards there is. I’ve been the target of this accusation myself, long before the current events.

You have missed Torco's point - nobody was disputing the idea that the end state (a Great Replacement theory) is antisemitism. The point was that "Netanyahuist crybullying" (to use Torco's own framing) devalues the word "antisemitism" itself by attempting to expand it to include opposition to genocidal Netanyahuist policies and greases the wheels for turning a neutral observation ("Israeli young people buy land in Patagonia") into an antisemitic concern-troll ("does that mean they're trying to colonise here as well, by constructing a narrative where any Patagonian concern about it will get brushed aside by the international community?").

You’re quite right, of course. This is why I disagree with the equation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism (as I believe I’ve mentioned before). All the same, what Torco reports is antisemitic hate speech, and I wanted to make it absolutely clear that there is no excuse for such a thing. My family has been targeted by this conspiracy theory once before; I don’t need it to happen again.

[Torco]

whoa, zero of the relevant points were addressed. okay, let's go through the antisemitism thing.

I’m sorry, but this is not ‘latent’ antisemitism. This is antisemitism. ‘The Jews are coming to kill us all and replace us’ is one of the oldest and most persistent antisemitic canards there is. I’ve been the target of this accusation myself, long before the current events.

Yeah, this is antisemitism... But you know, I don't think it really has much to do with Israel, except superficially. People were making up conspiracy theories about Jews before Israel. People are just kind of stupid and mean that way.

the point being missed has been established: but to be clear, yes, it is antisemitic and it is bad. and yes, antisemitism is older than the palestinian genocide: *but* whatever baseline cultural tendency of people throughout the world to hate on jews, call it the lasting embers of antisemitism, it's not currently being fanned by progressive student protests (who btw regularly platform jews of the "not in my name" persuasion in a most chill and positive manner): it's being fanned by the one ethnostate who claims the label of jewishness engaging in a genocide for most of a century! like, race prejudice is bad, sure, but let's not be delusional here: people remember these things, and associate them with whatever people groups are acting as the dramatis personae: if you asked me when I was 15 about afrikaaners, I would ask "oh, the guys who were super evil to the blacks in south africa?". I was 10 in Chile and whenever we'd want to invent some mocking name for a kid with a german surmane we'd go for some nazi joke: because that's the most salient item about the german people, the holocaust! when you think of americans, you think of burgers, oil wars and movies. and i'd be willing to bet most people in the third world the only thing they know about israel is the palestinian "conflict", as the TV calls it. ethnostates are very destructive towards the PR of the relevant ethnicity, unfair as it might be.

There are plenty of ways to protest without being violent, or threatening violence, and I don’t think they’re any less successful than violent protest. You don’t have to call for people’s murder if you just want to protest the policies of the Israeli government.

so you do think the vote for women, the 40 hour week, the vacation, were won by asking nicely? no, sir, sometimes there is no way to protest without some base level of violence (let's not forget we're talking here about the peaceful, though likely coercive, takeover of a classroom by the students of the relevant university here, not gulags) and pretending so is, again, selling out the labour movement, women's liberation, gay rights... about every win for humanity since at least the industrial revolution. i ask again, is defending the honor of israel *that* important? and yes, sometimes violence is good, sometimes it is bad: we all validate self-defense, we all condemn rape, we all think cops tackling an escaping thief is good, we all think a cop tackling an old lady for holding up a sign is bad: are we inconsistent because we're "not condemning violence in every instance"?

[bradrn]

so you do think the vote for women, the 40 hour week, the vacation, were won by asking nicely? no, sir, sometimes there is no way to protest without some base level of violence

I’ve been considering my thoughts on this post and, I think, it ultimately comes down to a basic philosophical disagreement: you think violence is acceptable when promoting a good goal, I don’t. (Excluding self-defense and violence by the state, which are special cases.) I don’t think this is a disagreement which is going to be resolved by this kind of Internet argument, so I’m going to stop here.

In any case, the question of ‘is political violence justified?’ is really a side-track here. What matters more to me is the clear and sharp rise in antisemitism recently. It happens to be most obvious in the student protests (yes, not universally, but it’s very clearly there), but it’s also rising more generally. And that scares me. Doesn’t matter if you find some excuse for it or blame it on us: hatred of Jews is a bad thing. And if you can’t find it in yourself to agree with that statement, without reservations, then I’m not sure there’s any point in me continuing this discussion.

[Linguoboy]

On this point, it’s worth highlighting the Australian student protests, which — at least so far — have been substantially less violent than the American ones. (There was the whole ‘kids calling for intifada’ thing, but that seems to have been an isolated incident.)

I know the conversation has long since moved behind this, but I'm just catching up and like, damn.

First of all, there's the equation with calling for resistance which may involve acts of violence with violence itself. That's a rhetoric sleight-of-hand which doesn't deserve a pass.

Second, there's Emily's point which bears repeating: A call for Intifada is a call for resistance against violent oppression. It is self-defence against violence. You (or was it Ares Land? Sorry but I'm not scrolling back a dozen pages to check) rhetorically asked us, "What are the Jews supposed to do? Lay down and die?" Let me pose the same question to you, but this time regarding the Palestinians. Are they just supposed to meekly accept permanent occupation and the constant dehumanisation and destruction of their society, lives, and livelihood that entails? Or do they have a right to resist--even if that includes violence?

Ares Land asked what Hamas has achieved with its acts of violence. Well, they've pretty effectively revealed to the world the bloodthirstiness of the current Israeli regime. It's come at tremendous cost to both the Israelis and much moreso to the Palestinians and it's well worth asking if they wasn't a less murderous way to draw attention to the Palestinian cause and create accountability for Israeli violations of human rights. Before the current "war" Palestinians were dying in obscurity (much like the 400 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since October 7th). Now the casualty tolls in Gaza are a regular feature of daily news reports. The USA just took the step--unprecedented in my lifetime--of suspending deliveries of munitions until it receives guarantees from Israel that they will not conduct an all-out assault on Rafah (with the massive Palestinian casualties that would no doubt entail). Would we have gotten here without the actions of Hamas, the overreaction of the Israeli government, and the resulting revulsion among ordinary citizens around the globe? I'm really hard pressed to answer that question affirmatively, however distasteful the implications are to anyone who abhors violence generally.

[Torco]

so you do think the vote for women, the 40 hour week, the vacation, were won by asking nicely? no, sir, sometimes there is no way to protest without some base level of violence

I’ve been considering my thoughts on this post and, I think, it ultimately comes down to a basic philosophical disagreement: you think violence is acceptable when promoting a good goal, I don’t. (Excluding self-defense and violence by the state, which are special cases.) I don’t think this is a disagreement which is going to be resolved by this kind of Internet argument, so I’m going to stop here.

In any case, the question of ‘is political violence justified?’ is really a side-track here. What matters more to me is the clear and sharp rise in antisemitism recently. It happens to be most obvious in the student protests (yes, not universally, but it’s very clearly there), but it’s also rising more generally. And that scares me. Doesn’t matter if you find some excuse for it or blame it on us: hatred of Jews is a bad thing. And if you can’t find it in yourself to agree with that statement, without reservations, then I’m not sure there’s any point in me continuing this discussion.

on the first thing, this position is quite untenable, and also very seldom actually held: upon slight examination you have to either bite some really tasteless bullets or begin to add more and more exceptions, until it's only violence by the people you approve of for the reasons youapprove of, which... yeah, is functionally indistinguishable from the default position of 'sometimes violence good other times violence bad'. like, okay, self defense: is it not self defense to shoot back the guys shooting at you... you know, the way the palestinians have been doing? okay, but maybe it's just individual self defense. still, can't self defense be preventive? i.e. you *know* those guys over there are going to kill you: at some point (i.e. they're going to kill you and a million of your neighbours, say), isn't *some* for of preeptive violence *sometimes* reasonable? like, if we have a time machine do we not try to kill hitler? you also add the state: which state though? often two states disagree on who is the state in a territory. you know how we've come to the situation most of us find ourselves in, where that is not the case? through our state, the one we have, having previously beaten the other states. with political violence. also, is all violence by the state good, simply because it is violence of the state? the holocaust was performed by a state, so I *have* to suppose no. also say you see a guy driving while extremely intoxicated while you're operating a some large machinery able to pick up large and heavy things, such as a car. he ran over like seven old ladies on the way and he's stopped right besides you while drinking the last bit of a vodka bottle. do you not pick his car up? or, I don't know, grab his wheel with the machine? maybe you don't want any trouble, but if someone else did it, would you say this is unconscionable? this is almost a orange purple morality position.

on the second, of course it's a bad thing. no reservation: also, no delusion: it's good if we investigate bad things to figure out how to make them happen less, not *use them as an excuse to do even more bad things* the way the entire technocratic, pro-israel, genocide abiding world is currently doing.

oh, incidentally... i hear they're going to be legally making it a hate crime to criticize israel in the states? that megacorpos are expressly announcing "we'll use machine learning to discriminate against you for being in this protest"? and all for what, to defend the ethnostate that's, through its own atrocities, making antisemitism go up faster than gamestop in 21 (not to mention, you know, exterminating palestinians)? it's like israel *wants* there to be antisemitism.

yes it does, in point of fact, but that's second year genocide awareness.

Would we have gotten here without the actions of Hamas, the overreaction of the Israeli government, and the resulting revulsion among ordinary citizens around the globe? I'm really hard pressed to answer that question affirmatively, however distasteful the implications are to anyone who abhors violence generally.

EDIT: politics is dirty as fuck, and it entails violence whatever political position one wants to espouse tbh. which is no wonder, since politics is the question of, you know, how to use violence and against whom and for which reasons: politics is the answer to the fact that violence sometimes good, sometimes evil: we need to figure out when it's which.

One suggestion: Hamas could have confined its attack to Israeli military installations, and left civilians alone. To be clear, from a personal perspective, I would still object to that — like I said, violence does the Palestinians no favours. But at least a targeted attack would have given Israel a lesser casus belli.

rarely does a resistence movement afford such a policy: neither did, notice, the people who stopped the holocaust

[bradrn]

First of all, there's the equation with calling for resistance which may involve acts of violence with violence itself. That's a rhetoric sleight-of-hand which doesn't deserve a pass.

You’re right, I’ve been sloppy here with my rhetoric. (It didn’t help that, in the beginning, I drastically overestimated the amount of violence which had actually happened.)

But I’ll point out that ‘calling for violence’ is itself bad enough. Humans being what they are, it often becomes a prelude to violence itself. And I don’t want to see that happen.

Second, there's Emily's point which bears repeating: A call for Intifada is a call for resistance against violent oppression.

I’ve already explained why I disagree with this characterisation.

[Someone] rhetorically asked us, "What are the Jews supposed to do? Lay down and die?" Let me pose the same question to you, but this time regarding the Palestinians. Are they just supposed to meekly accept permanent occupation and the constant dehumanisation and destruction of their society, live, and livelihood that entails? Or do they have a right to resist--even if that includes violence?

It’s a good question. I wish I had a good answer for it.

One fact that I will point out: immediately before October 7, Israel was about to loosen some of the restrictions it had placed on movement to/from Gaza. Why? Primarily, because they were convinced that Hamas had decided on a less violent approach. (Of course, this was a deliberate ploy from Hamas.) It seems clear to me, therefore, that the Israeli government is at least somewhat receptive to less violent approach from Palestinians. (And conversely, that violence hardens Israeli views.) So, insofar as I have any solid opinion, it’s that non-violent protests would achieve Palestinian goals significantly better than violence has.

It's come at tremendous cost to both the Israelis and much moreso to the Palestinians and it's well worth asking if they wasn't a less murderous way to draw attention to the Palestinian cause and create accountability for Israeli violations of human rights. (And not rhetorically either: If anyone has a detailed answer to that question, I'm all ears.)

One suggestion: Hamas could have confined its attack to Israeli military installations, and left civilians alone. To be clear, from a personal perspective, I would still object to that — like I said, violence does the Palestinians no favours. But at least a targeted attack would have given Israel a lesser casus belli.

It would never have happened, of course, because Hamas is itself a genocidal terror group whose raison d’être is in large part killing Jews. But if you want a ‘what if they were slightly less evil’, that’s my thoughts.

[Linguoboy]

oh, incidentally... i hear they're going to be legally making it a hate crime to criticize israel in the states?

I don't know if this is deliberate hyperbole or what. The bill passed by the House does explicitly define anti-Zionism as antisemitism, but it doesn't lay out any penalties. I suppose it could make criticism of Israel the basis for charging someone with a hate crime if it were linked with some other criminal activity. (For instance, if there was an altercation involving a Jew and someone holding an anti-Zionist placard, the placard could be used as grounds for charging the anti-Zionist with not just assault but a hate crime.) But speech alone does not constitute a hate crime, so simply criticising Israel would still be completely legal under the First Amendment.

That said, as the Slate article linked to above points out, this is a bad idea and a bad law. But it has bipartisan support and will most likely pass. (Follow-ups to the American politics thread.)

[Linguoboy]

But I’ll point out that ‘calling for violence’ is itself bad enough. Humans being what they are, it often becomes a prelude to violence itself. And I don’t want to see that happen.

But the violence is already here. This ship has sailed, sunk, been salvaged, and sunk again.

One fact that I will point out: immediately before October 7, Israel was about to loosen some of the restrictions it had placed on movement to/from Gaza. Why? Primarily, because they were convinced that Hamas had decided on a less violent approach. (Of course, this was a deliberate ploy from Hamas.) It seems clear to me, therefore, that the Israeli government is at least somewhat receptive to less violent approach from Palestinians. (And conversely, that violence hardens Israeli views.) So, insofar as I have any solid opinion, it’s that non-violent protests would achieve Palestinian goals significantly better than violence has.

That conclusion only seems sound if the Palestinian goals are fewer restrictions on movement while accepting permanent occupation. At the same time the Israel government was making these calculations, a record number of Palestinians in the West Bank were dying in settler violence and settlements continued to expand.

Moreover, the Gazans tried embracing non-violent protest with the Great March of Return. How'd that work out for them? What important concessions did it shake loose from the Israeli regime?

It's come at tremendous cost to both the Israelis and much moreso to the Palestinians and it's well worth asking if they wasn't a less murderous way to draw attention to the Palestinian cause and create accountability for Israeli violations of human rights. (And not rhetorically either: If anyone has a detailed answer to that question, I'm all ears.)

One suggestion: Hamas could have confined its attack to Israeli military installations, and left civilians alone. To be clear, from a personal perspective, I would still object to that — like I said, violence does the Palestinians no favours. But at least a targeted attack would have given Israel a lesser casus belli.

The idea that the Israeli response would have been any less deadly if Hamas had confined its attacks to military installations is hard to credit. The viciousness of the current conflict has less to do with responding proportionately to Hamas' provocations than it does with keeping Bibi in power at all costs (as the timing of the current Rafah operation makes abundantly clear).

[bradrn]

I was linked to this wonderfully refreshing view of the whole situation: 50 Completely True Things (by a Palestinian American).

(Re the last few posts: the main reason I haven’t responded is because I’m starting to lose track of who said what. That makes it difficult to have any rational discussion, and I’m not going to waste everyone’s time by trying. If you have a specific question you want to get my opinion on, please re-ask it.)

[Travis B.]

I was linked to this wonderfully refreshing view of the whole situation: 50 Completely True Things (by a Palestinian American).

I agree with 98% percent of that. The 2% I don't agree with is the one versus two-state solution part - because the Israeli gov't and the settlers have destroyed the chance to establish a truly independent, sovereign Palestinian state with territorial integrity, which requires evicting all the settlers, something I highly doubt the Israeli gov't ever will do.