Before you accuse me….
Yesterday, we were treated to the news that Hamas had officially violated the ceasefire when they took credit for killing three Israelis in a terrorist attack. However, there is some consternation of both sides as one side blames the other for violating the cease fire. Essentially, this is where this conflict has gotten us. The last couple of months has been a microcosm of the last 75 years since Israel was officially established by the United Nations in 1947. First, let’s take a step back for a second. The vast majority of animal behavior is predictable on some level.
Our cats and dog fight like, um, cats and dogs. One of them gets along with him (the dog) better than the others, but the dog weighs 100 pounds. He wouldn’t really hurt any of them, but they don’t know that. More importantly, they constantly fight with each other. You would think they could join together in common cause against the dog, but they can put aside their differences to do this.
This is where things are at in the Middle East. When you look at what Hamas has done it would appear that it is unprovoked. There were no direct preceding events that led up to their terrorist attack in October. However, there were tons of preceding events. Just like with my cats, there is a reason why one attacks the other. It may look like the victim was just minding their business, but it wasn’t always that way. The aggressor was responding to a time when he or she was the victim. So, even a seemingly isolated event has roots in something.
All human behavior is predictable. Even sociopathy is predictable and understandable once you get a fuller appreciation for it. Our ex-president’s behavior is predictable. Hamas’s behavior is predictable. Israel’s behavior is predictable. We respond based on previous experience and the facts on the ground as we understand them. If our experience is that you can’t be trusted and that you will attack beyond the scope of the current conflict then my response is certain to reflect that. So, here we are.
What is also predictable is our collective response. People that criticize Palestine are called Islamophobic. People that criticize Israel are called anti-Semitic. If you were to somehow criticize both then you would just be the world’s biggest bigot. This is where we are at. We cannot have a frank and honest conversation because those labels are going to be thrown around quicker than it takes you to finish this paragraph.
I fully understand the emotions involved. I feel deeply for the Israeli AND Palestinian people caught in the middle. Having empathy means actually mentally putting yourself in their place. Some have questioned why innocent people would not put themselves in harms way and turn in their neighbors if they knew they were Hamas and what they planned to do. How safe would feel turning in your neighbors? Maybe we could relocate across town in that scenario or in another state. These folks cannot.
On the Israeli side, they know they are the target of the Arab world. Most of the countries around them vacillate between reluctant tolerance and out and out hatred. If we put ourselves in their shoes it would make perfect sense to lash out at those folks to at least demonstrate strength and resolve. Knowledge and wisdom are two different things. Knowledge simply means I know all of this stuff. I’ve studied history enough to know this. Wisdom means I also know I don’t have a solution available. Humility also comes into play here. If they have been going through this since 1947 it makes perfect sense that someone would have suggested simple and obvious solutions before.
I just find it interesting that everything you’ve pointed out has been true or not for decades.
1But Hamas, who’s backed by Iran, who’s purty cozy with Russia, coincidentally picked Putin’s birthday October 7th out of the other 364 days of the year.
Ukraine hasn’t been in the news quite as much in almost 2 months.
What a coinkydink.
I mean hell, it’s not like we got an important election coming up anytime soon involving anybody cozy with Vlad the Donnie impaler.
2Hmph.
I don’t think Rodney King would consider himself a philosopher, or an expert on human interactions, but yet he had the ability to see the meaninglessness of violence and say what I consider to be one the smartest, kindest observations by any human being who suffered a terrible beating:
“I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?”
3Nick wrote: “People that criticize Palestine are called Islamophobic. People that criticize Israel are called anti-Semitic. If you were to somehow criticize both then you would just be the world’s biggest bigot.”
Why, thank you very much, I did that a few threads back ;] .
I proposed a solution that I’ve advocated for a couple of decades [after much consideration, my empathies for any of them simply evaporated].
Since these peoples, groups, cannot ever ‘get along’ [they’ve been at it for millennia]. Beyond their own area, they export their conflict to other parts of the world, resulting in much turmoil and deaths of innocents [at least in their context].
The only logical solution is the complete removal of the perpetually warring perpetrators from our world, like treating a cancerous growth.
A total glazing over of the region centered on the so-called ‘Holy Land’*, in a massive nuclear strike.
Sure, a number of relative innocents would also be affected, an unavoidable byproduct of the process.
But necessary for the greater good, and little different from tactics used to win WW II and others. EG: aerial bombardment, by both sides; with ultimately a massive advantage to the Allies before the Axis was crushed. Millions of relatively ‘innocent’ civilians were annihilated, for a greater good.
Time has come, imo.
* And the flawed concept of the so-called ‘Holy Land’ is truly the root of the problem, beyond the main groups involved.
4Throughout human history, religions have been the major sources of, or tools of autocrats, in virtually all conflicts and wars.
Israel has been practicing the eye-for-an-eye principle, at a usual rate of 10 or more to 1, for the whole of my life. As the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results this time, why not try something else?
5Israel’s neighbors attacked it when I was 12 and again in my teens. But it now has formal peace agreements with most of its neighbors, so it’s safer now than in my youth. (Not to mention the nukes.) it’s also more brutal in the occupied territories; what’s up with that?
Nick, you really shouldn’t base your posts on history unless you know it. You do not.
Lord knows I cannot teach a complicated history lesson here, but
it is usually a good idea to start at the beginning.
The Ottoman empire had a centuries-long policy of moving populations (usually but not always defined confessionally), sometimes with carrots, sometimes with sticks.
When the first Zionists (as opposed to the small population of Jews that had migrated since the extinction (by Christians) in 1099, the Arabs had three choices: welcome, indifference, hostility.
They chose hostility (the town Arabs were more hostile than the rural Arabs).
Now you can say many things about Zionism, but the ne
6one thing you cannot say is that at that point the Jews were oppressing the Arabs.
7Since I didn’t say they were oppressing the Arabs I think my history is just fine. You continually insult me by saying I don’t know history while putting words in my mouth. You are bound and determined to call me wrong even if you have to make up shit to do it.
Why stop at 1099? This is steeped in the Old Testament. The Israelis have been an occupied people for most of their history. Persians, Romans, Ottomans, Hittites, Egyptians? Take your pick. What I did say was that human behavior is predictable. This is all very predictable.
Seems to me that Hamas is the one party that gets universal scorn and blame. Yet, even their behavior is predictable. Right? Smart? No on both counts but predictable. The Israeli behavior is also predictable based on their history. Is it working? I suppose you could argue that but there shouldn’t be a need to misquote me or make up shit out of thin air I’ve never said.
8Harry Eagar tries to deflect and divert; while Nick still doesn’t quite ‘get it’, or can’t quite bring himself to state it [but doing much better].
Again, that part of the world has been infecting us all with their conflicts for millennia [even 9/11, and hundreds of other incidents, was linked to it].
Effectively making us all hostages to their antipathies.
An exquisitely apt political cartoon just appeared, by an up and coming cartoonist, that perfectly illustrates how these groups have been holding us all hostages [for far too long]; and highlights why my solution is probably the only rational one… :
https://images.dailykos.com/images/1251592/story_image/pm231130c.jpg
The full article page:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/2/2208852/-Cartoon-Hostage
Be sure to read the comments, like this great quote [by ‘democratos’], showing how far it has devolved. :
“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the [ancient] Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.
And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
— Edward Gibbon (1737-94). The decline and fall of the Roman Empire. vol. 1 ch. 2 (1776). “
9Neither the Jews nor the Christians nor the Druids would have said Gibbon was correct.
Nick, you should read your post. I did. In my comment, I pointed out that the conflict started with the arrival of the Zionists — nearly 150 years ago, not 75.
And human conduct is not predictable, No one, for example, predicted the Moscow show trials in 1936-8. There is a vast literature trying to explain that, and if there’s one thing we can conclude, it’s that those are still a mystery.
.
10Uncertain about the ‘tolerance and concord’ stuff.
Although the Romans in general were quite successful as an empire by being accommodating and tolerant towards their subjects once a conquest was complete, either by a subjugation or an acquiescence.
But I’ve rarely seen truer words than : “…all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful” in regard to “religion”.
Although ‘the people’ bit might not always hold, the philosophers and magistrates have it nailed: as false, and useful [extremely so in much history, as a tool of autocracy of all stripes].
Let’s rework the missile and B-52 targeting tables and let ’em rip…[those] problems solved..
11“Nick, you should read your post. I did.”
Great. Now, kindly highlight where I said that the Zionists were oppressing the Arabs. Tick tock.
In referencing the 75 years it is referencing when Israel was recognized by the UN and not as an absolute starting point in the conflict. I think everyone knows it goes back a lot further than that.
12I did not say you said the Zionists oppressed the Arabs. I said the Arabs started attacking he Zionists as soon as they showed up; that is, before there was any cycle of grievances to justify retaliation.
As for human behavior being predictable, a pretty good historian wrote a book about that. Robert Conquest, “The Dragons of Expectation.”
Here’s some of what he said:
“Still, history gives us many good, as well as less good, examples of fierce nationalisms being, after all, contained. One that seems to be helpful in modern times is that of Hungary following the national revolution of 1848, which was put down by the Austrian Hapsburg monarchy largely through Russian intervention. You might have thought that this bloodstained confrontation would have led to deep and permanent Austro-Hungarian estrangement. But moderates on both sides had, by 1867, negotiated the Ausgleich, by which Hungary became an equal participant in the ‘Dual Monarchy.’ . . . the experience shows that fierce nationalism can be abated and avoided.”
13Harry,
First of all, I apologize for losing my cool. Nothing pushes my buttons like someone that says I don’t know what I’m talking about. I taught World History for over a decade. Essentially, what your responses boiled down to was an attempt to be “well actually” guy. Nobody really likes that guy and I know because I have been that guy from time to time in other topics.
The way I was taught history growing up on my daddy’s knee (he was also an American History teacher) that if you did a good job of explaining the circumstances surrounding any situation then you could predict the response or at least understand it after the fact. I understand what both sides are thinking here. That doesn’t mean I endorse either side and I completely get Sandridge’s response as well.
What you have is a situation where both sides feel persecuted and hunted. This is where “well actually” guy comes in. Who was the first aggressor? At this point it probably doesn’t matter. I am sure the Hatfields and McCoys have various tales they tell their children and grandchildren that are absolutely true depending on when you start the story.
You could start it 200 years ago, 1000 years, or 3000 years ago. The details are different but it is the same story. The Jewish people feel hunted and when you feel hunted you react. I suppose what I am saying is that the Palestinian people could spin a similar tale with a different start date and have the story be true from that moment forward. Both sides leave out details and omit events through either selective amnesia or what we might call gaslighting.
If someone were to murder my family I would definitely react. I’m not sure how I would react as that is a possibility I try not to think about. If I carpet bombed the neighborhood where they lived I would definitely kill the muderer. At least I hope I would. I’d also destroy a number of homes and families along with it. If I focused it to just his house then I’d kill his family along with him.
I’m sure his family may support him or his aims in a general way, but that doesn’t necessarily make them complicit in my family’s murder. They just don’t want to see harm go to him. So, should they be arrested as accessories after the fact or accomplices? Perhaps. Should they be murdered along with him? People can understand my grief, pain, anger, and rage and not necessarily approve of my actions. They can grieve with me and support other people closely tied to our family during our time of grief and loss. They also can criticize my actions.
Doing so doesn’t make them biased against Catholics or Italians (my roots). It just means they did not agree with my actions. It is also fair for me to come back and say, “well you don’t understand because this goes back further than this one incident.” That’s all fair. What is not fair is calling someone a bigot for having the audacity to criticize the response. That works for both my family and the other family as well. Now, there might be people that hate me because I am Catholic, Italian, or whatever. There may be people that hate that other family because of who or what they are. However, the sheer idea of criticism does not mean you are automatically put in that box. That was the point of the whole treatise which is why the ‘well actually” response missed the entire point.
14The fact is, though, that both sides in the Zionist-Palestinian dispute assert history as cause and justification. Only one side can be correct.
The Eretz Israel crazies are in a class by themselves (and are, anyhow, a recent phenomenon).
When I hear about colonialism (not from you), I immediately wonder, Do you not know that the Arabs were colonized by the Ottomans for 400 years It seems rich to blame (as many do) a British occupation that lasted barely 20 years.
It seems that Santayana was wrong: we are condemned to repeat history whether we know it or not. Except . . .
Besides Austria-Hungary, I can think of lots of places where two groups antagonistic in religion, different in language and divergent in economic life live within the same borders without murdering babies. Canada, f’rinstance.
15FWIW, i, too, was raised Italian and Catholic, and in addition a great-uncle wrote a lot of widely-used school histories.
All bunk. I have spent the past 60 ears unlearning everything I was taught.
16Truth and fact are four letter words (figuratively). Either one is based on shared life experiences. As for your specific examples I’d also study it and probably discover some nuances that changed the behavior. Sometimes the heroes involved are simply people that bucked the trends.
People for the most part exist within their own time and circumstances. It’s the same with Jefferson and Washington owning slaves. Does it mean they were horrible people? No. They are a product of their time and place. We shouldn’t whitewash that history but we also shouldn’t excessively punish them for it either.
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