Middle East on fire - Part XVII

[luiz]

Sounds like Israel enjoys a really bad rep in Palestinian territories. Now, why is that? Must be the irrational, perfidious, hateful innate nature of the Palestinian people...

Again, while obviously Israel bears some responsibility in this case, we cannot simply draw a conclusion along the lines of:

-One group of people is very hated ---> they must have done something to earn it.

I hate to bring up the Nazis again, but it's impossible to resist. If I rephrase your quote as below, how would you answer?

"Sounds like the Jews enjoys a really bad rep in 1930's Germany. Now, why is that? Must be the irrational, perfidious, hateful innate nature of the German people..."

 

[Arwon]

What a helpful post.

 

[luiz]

How do you reply to
"Sounds like Israel enjoys a really bad rep in Palestinian territories. Now, why is that? Must be the irrational, perfidious, hateful innate nature of the Palestinian people..." ?

 

[Arwon]

Not like that, I'd suggest.

Are you saying that Palestinians and Israelis don't have legitimate reasons to hate each other? They've been trying to destroy each other's societies with guns, hostage-taking, suicide vests, rockets, walls, checkpoints, gunships, settlements, propaganda and blockades etc for forty years now. Plenty of justification for all the trauma and hatred in the world.

Why go the Godwin to deny something so self-evident?

 

[Leoreth]

I can dismiss "injustice" and "poverty", two fetishes for some people, as main drivers of terrorism, yes.

Okay, I don't think I need to read your posts in this topic anymore then.

 

[luiz]

Not like that, I'd suggest.

Are you saying that Palestinians and Israelis don't have legitimate reasons to hate each other? They've been trying to destroy each other's societies with guns, hostage-taking, suicide vests, rockets, walls, checkpoints, gunships, settlements, propaganda and blockades etc for forty years now. Plenty of justification for all the trauma and hatred in the world.

Why go the Godwin to deny something so self-evident?

Because it goes to show that hate does not work like that. It is not a rational response. I dare say that most Israelis don't hate the Palestinians, and a large number of Palestinians don't hate the Israelis (though I wouldn't say "most").

OTOH, you have Saudi and Paskistani and whatever extremists, who never suffered anything at all at the hands of Israel, and still hate Israelis with a passion far above that of your average Palestinian (maybe above even that of your average Palestinian extremist).

 

[Arwon]

I'm not sure what your dispute is, in partiuclar how you square that post with the out-of-hand dismissal of injustice and poverty (scare quotes? Really?).

I don't think it's shocking or outrageous to suggest that injustice and poverty caused by the occupation fuel violence in the West Bank and Gaza. The fact that not all poverty and injustice in the world leads linearly to direct violent hatred against another group doesn't mean that those things aren't drivers in cases where terrorism and violence do exist. That just strikes me as a bizarre assertion to make, and it leaves me to wonder what, aside from some sort of intrinsic hatred or evil, you think drives things in the Territories.

 

[luiz]

My dispute is with the assertion that poverty and injustice are the main drivers of terrorism (remember, we were talking about terrorism).

I don't dispute at all that the situation there leads to a whole lot of tension and resentment.

 

[Lone Wolf]

"Sounds like the Jews enjoys a really bad rep in 1930's Germany. Now, why is that? Must be the irrational, perfidious, hateful innate nature of the German people..."

The answer to this question is also "no, 'the irrational, hateful innate nature of the German people' doesn't have much to do with it - though neither do the Jews".

This time, however, Israeli government does have quite a lot to do with the Palestinian situation. And no, I'm not suggesting that the Jews are doing to Palestinians the same thing the Jews did to Germans in 1930'ies or some other offensive stuff like that. I'm not a self-hating Jew.

I don't dispute at all that the situation there leads to a whole lot of tension and resentment

Breed tension and resentment, you get terrorism in no time. And poverty and injustice can breed tension and resentment (it also can breed defeatism and passivity, but the result it quite difficult to predict). So, the question is: is the tension and resentment in itself justified, or do masses of people resent stuff not worth resenting over (such things do happen)? In Palestinian case, the answer is "yes, they do".

 

[ace99]

Why shouldn't traitors be shot?

Edit: Whoa the thread jumped ahead

 

[luiz]

Why shouldn't traitors be shot?

Edit: Whoa the thread jumped ahead

Because there's more than a decent shot that they weren't traitors at all?
Do you think they received a fair trial? Even a hald-fair court martial would be a big improvement. But nope. Chances are they were just named by someone (who may have all sorts of reasons to want them gone) and that was that.

 

[Arwon]

My dispute is with the assertion that poverty and injustice are the main drivers of terrorism (remember, we were talking about terrorism).

I don't dispute at all that the situation there leads to a whole lot of tension and resentment.

What, then, for you, is the major driver of violence in the West Bank and Gaza, be that rockets, suicide bombs or rock throwing?

 

[ace99]

Well I think we agree that summary execution is probably a war crime.

Your posts made it sound like you were all outraged that Hamas had the gall to shoot collaborators during wartime.

 

[luiz]

What, then, for you, is the major driver of violence in the West Bank and Gaza, be that rockets, suicide bombs or rock throwing?

Political leadership that wants conflicts, vast financing of radical groups that want conflict, vast amounts of propaganda and indoctrination portraying conflict as the only possible alternative.

 

[luiz]

Well I think we agree that summary execution is probably a war crime.

Your posts made it sound like you were all outraged that Hamas had the gall to shoot collaborators during wartime.

I don't know how you drew that conclusion considering I merely posted a source, not commenting it in anyway.

But of course I do find Hamas' behavior outrageous, and further evidence that they're not reliable partners. As far as we know those guys who were lynched are entirely innocent; they may well have been killed for trivial reasons.

 

[Arwon]

Political leadership that wants conflicts, vast financing of radical groups that want conflict, vast amounts of propaganda and indoctrination portraying conflict as the only possible alternative.

That's a very convenient lack of legitimate grievance or genuine agency there. All false consciousness and evil elites. How lucky for you.

 

[Verbose]

Sidelining poverty isn't that problematic. Make people poor enough, and survival takes over from any higher interests in their lot.

Injustice however...

Because terrorists tend to spring from perceptions of gross injustice. Question then become how correct these perception are?

Does Luis not think the Palestinians have a legitimate cause for a conflict with the Israelis? I don't quite know? It's at least a little unclear, with the insistance of proaganda etc.

But Luis aside, there is a fairly general view being spread of the conflict being spread that clearly vilifies the Palestinians and white-washes the Israelis. "Terrorist" is a nice catch-all which is allowed to short-circuit processes of actually looking at the situation as the political conflict it is at its root. "Islamist" does the same. Our, western, side of things tends to allow people to get away with all kinds of sloppy thinking when the opposing faction can get the nenublous label "Islamist terrorist" pinned on them.

The Israeli government has been very quick to push this since GWB declared that "War on Terror", and the Israelis set about redefining their political conflict with the Palestinians as part of that "War on Terror", which means no one should look any deeper into what it's about, since "Islamist" and "terrorist" by definition do not need a reason for doing what they're doing. So then supposedly there is not ACTUAL conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Just a conflict between the Israelis, who are almost metaphysically legitimate, and their terrorist adversaries, who are correspondingly illegitimate.

It's a nice bit of originally US-made brain-rot that is getting spread around, and everyone is stupider for it.

 

[Tee Kay]

OTOH, you have Saudi and Paskistani and whatever extremists, who never suffered anything at all at the hands of Israel, and still hate Israelis with a passion far above that of your average Palestinian (maybe above even that of your average Palestinian extremist).

This is how:


Link to video.

A similar process I imagine goes on in the Middle East.

Poverty plays a rather large role in it.

 

[Verbose]

A similar process I imagine goes on in the Middle East.

Poverty plays a rather large role in it.

And the thing to remember is of course that in many societies poverty IS still clearly seen as a matter of gross injustice. It's just not that it is the poorest who respond to it, and take up arms. They do it on behalf of people who tend to be to busy making ends meet to do it themselves. It's of course where critics insert the wedge of scpeticism - that they are doing it on behalf of someone else, who should be doing it themselves, or else we don't agree this is legit.

There is some kind of blind spot (willful ignorance) in parts of western society where poverty is being reinterpreted as something else, as a JUST, or at least necessary, condition.

Alternatively poverty is only recgnised as a matter of outright abject misery, or else we refuse to consider it.

The room for parties not getting through to each other, being able to agree on even a common basic narrative framework of what' happened and what it means, is considerable.

 

[luiz]

That's a very convenient lack of legitimate grievance or genuine agency there. All false consciousness and evil elites. How lucky for you.

There are legitimate grievances, no doubt.
But I do question genuine agency of extremist/terrorist groups. As already mentioned, those are middle and upper class individuals, usually from an educated background. Exactly the kind of people who should understand well enough that they're not helping "their people". Every time Palestinians took the conflict route, they ended up worse than they started and freedom was further away. They are wrong and unjustified on two counts: they direct their attacks largely on innocents, and they have caused the collapse of living standards of their own people. The Palestinian leadership and the foreign-funded radical groups have carried out the "liberation struggle" in an extremely stupid and counter-productive way. Palestinians could be doing much, much better if they had sensible leadership who took the deals that were offered them by Israel (you can make deals while still demanding more) and used the billions of dollars received in foreign aid to build schools and infra-structure instead of buying guns. At the end of day they have to ask themselves: is their purpose to live better or to kill Israelis? Is it more important to give people a good life or to have exactly the 1949 armistice borders?