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Why I Rarely Argue About Israel and the Palestinians Anymore
Debating controversial issues is fun for some people; they like the fight and drama. Sometimes they actually have a dog in the fight. But frankly, I’m not a person who likes a fight, and I never have. I’m not afraid of controversy; in fact, sometimes I enjoy discussing controversial subjects when the dynamics are supportive.
But when it comes to the Israelis and the Palestinians, I have pretty much bowed out of those discussions, even though they are with people whom I consider to be my friends. I used to be willing to take on all challenges. It just doesn’t seem worth it anymore. Why, you may ask.
For me to enter a conflict-ridden discussion, I have to feel passionate about it. That certainly applies to Israel. I want to talk with people who I think are reasonable and count on reliable sources of information; this is where the subject gets dicey. There are hundreds if not thousands of sources that are on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I obviously believe in the veracity of the publications I read; people who disagree with me trust a whole other set of media. Positions are so polarized that even if there were room for learning, or possibly changing minds, no one is truly interested in that effort. We are simply too far apart.
The same criteria apply to almost any controversial topic: anything on the extreme political Left is most likely to differ drastically with the political Right: Wokeism, government spending, overreach by all branches of government, and the administrative state are just a few examples. The main problem, I believe, is not only are positions polarized, but we don’t believe we can learn anything meaningful from the other side. On the Right, we also question the Left’s motives, their commitment to truth, their understanding of the implications of their beliefs, and their willingness to generate practical compromises.
They only care about winning.
Which brings me back to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. We can argue about the history of the situation, the agendas of all sides, the potential for peace. But I just can’t get past one simple fact:
The Arabs/Palestinians want to drive the Israelis into the sea.
No matter whether a one or two-state solution is negotiated, they are angry, feel abused and injured. And those in charge are committed to destroying Israel and the Jews.
That’s a subject I refuse to contemplate.
[photo courtesy of unsplash.com]
Published in Foreign Policy
You need to ask him but he said that slavery was permitted by the Bible as I recall. He dismissed America’s idea of racial chattel slavery was Biblical slavery was OK.
Sure there is. Hiroshima comes to mind.
If you look at the situation with a wider lens you might see the malign hand of Iran, arming and funding its proxies to prolong the conflict.
It never ceases to amaze me how critics of Israel routinely fail to suggest any solution to the impasse. Personally, I would like to see a demilitarised Palestinian State which extends citizenship rights to Jews living within its borders.
“Simple and unsophisticated.” I’ll bet you hear that a lot.
Why would a Jew want to live there? Just sayin’…
How did you know?!
I would like citizenship rights within Palestine and fabulous gay bars like how Israel has. All the Muslims can disagree with homosexuality but they need to leave the homosexuals alone.
In Israel, there is a whole sub-community of Arab Homosexuals who want to live in Israel. I don’t blame and I want the demilitarized Palestinian to other the, the same opportunities.
They already live “there” – but why let it become a Palestinian state when you can just kick the Arabs out and take it? Good question.
Zafar try to answer the question. Israeli-Arabs want to stay in Israel and will never move to another Arab state. In a similar fashion, you will never move back to India.
Arab countries with some exceptions, (Morocco comes to mind) kicked out all their Jews.
So why do Israeli-Arabs want to stay in Israel and why do the Mizhrahim want to stay in Israel?
Because it’s exhausting Susan! Because it is really, really tiring. Etsy has a tough gig.
My reading of it is that people are so committed to an outcome (a democratic, Jewish state, for eg, or justice for Palestinians in a secular state, or whatever) that they find it too emotionally confronting to even consider information that doesn’t support that outcome.
Because we all bring baggage, right? Every person who’s from a country that was colonised (like India, for eg) is going to see Israel/Palestine through that lens. Just like South Africans see Israel/Palestine through the lens of Apartheid. It may not be exactly colonialism (though it’s similar) or Apartheid (though its similar) and to argue that it isn’t exactly that is to miss the forest for the trees.
Jews certainly bring their own baggage to the issue. (And I for one don’t blame them.)
In fact everybody participating in one of these discussions on Ricochet does. Nobody is a neutral observer who, after careful and calm consideration of the facts decides that: Israel is right/The Palestinians are right. They may pose as such, but it’s a pose.
I do think that awareness is curative, so it’s good to question ones own baggage, the outcomes it demands, why – and how that affects our relationship with truth and with facts we don’t like.
Because I hear it a lot.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the weaknesses in my own arguments, but they are few and not significant enough, IMHO, to explore them with others. I know my biases pretty well and am not interested in shedding them.
That way lies the Golden Calf.
What?
We are not calling for the destruction of Japan at all.
Please find for me where we called for that.
Wow, the same thing happened in Israel. They held the territory as a political entity for 1,500 years, give or take, and then had the territory taken from them for about 1,850 years or so and about 70+ years ago were restored.
Isn’t that amazing.
Too bad their neighbors had to kick off a war(s) as soon as that happened and lose even more territory to them. But thems the breaks.
Thank God the Abraham Accords are putting an end to the last 70 years of turmoil (at least at the nation-state level).
If North Korea was defeated in a war by South Korea, I would view this as the liberation of North Korea and therefore a positive result.
If South Korea were defeated in a war by North Korea, I would view this as the subjugation of South Korea and therefore a negative result.
I see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the same way. Israel is like South Korea. The Palestinian territories are like North Korea.
I would like it if the Palestinian territories became free societies like Israel is. I would lament it if Israel became a despotism like the Palestinian territories.
I do love a good fight with smart people of goodwill. But I have come to understand that engaging in battles of wits with the the unarmed is a complete waste of time. And yet–sometimes–it can be wildly entertaining, until it isn’t. The trick is knowing when to pull the plug.
I often wonder about those who see the world through an oppressive lens. (“We wuz colonized!” “We wuz enslaved!” etc. etc. and so forth.) Exactly how far back should we go with that, and what should we do with our conclusions? It’s pretty easy, when you can show audio and video evidence of the matter from–say, perhaps–the mid nineteenth century forward.
But what about 1066? 1214? 43? 1428? 669BC? And other such? What about them?
Susan, great topic. I can never get them to out themselves. You must inspire trust.
If an Arab rules over other Arabs with an iron fist, not respecting the human rights of Arabs at all, some people say, “Well, it’s their culture. Who are we to judge?”
If Israel provides Arab-Israelis human rights unheard of in the Arab world, these same people say, “Israel is an apartheid state!”
Who? Those who disagree with me? They’ve commented.
You got one commenter to equate the desire of the United States to see Hitler’s genocidal regime defeated with the desire of some Palestinians to commit genocide against Jews in Israel.
I don’t know if you inspired trust. But you did get one commenter to reveal his nihilism.
FFS, please
Maybe so, but sometimes the simplistic is absolutely true (as in this case) [On second thought, maybe you were making a parody on Jerry?! Now I get it!]
Which is totally ironic! A good half-of Jewish Israelis are secular people who do not believe in God, just like the leftists. Surprisingly, it is the least religious country in the Middle-East.
I interpreted Mantle’s comment as “we were stopping Japan who was the one calling for total destruction of the other (of China, Korea, and all of East Asia + the United States).
Wrong. Palestine has “Non-Member Observer State” status at the United Nations. They are not recognized as a nation with full member status.
As an outspoken Christian who professes to have Christian values, you are lying. You have been railing against the State of Israel for years now. You have not shown a single shred of support for Israel’s existence nor for their polices or actions since I can remember back to the days when you espoused more “normal” views. Your bizarre notions about the Israeli-Arab conflicts are so warped that you cannot even acknowledge that both the Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza explicitly promote the cause of driving the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea (as they put it), a euphemism for extermination.
Or Russia being afraid of Ukraine. Or Georgia.
The U.S. military could take on probably 1,000 Saudi Arabias, but 17 high-jackers are capable of killing 3,000 Americans on a single day. And the death toll could have been higher if the last plane had completed its mission.
Roughly three-thousand Israelis were killed by the Palestinian Inftifadas in the late 20th/early 21st Centuries. As a percentage of the Israeli population, that would translate to killing about 30,000 Americans if it had happened over here. And you call the objection to this “quite ludicrous?”
Can you truly not differentiate between over a river and back into your own country, and into the sea and dead?
It has everything to do with us since we signed it into existence.