Oddbean

Hot take. Many here will disagree with me on this, but this is nostr and damn it, I get to say whatever I want to say. My sympathies have always been with Palestine over Israel, not because they are the underdog, but because they are the aggrieved party. The United Nations agreed as to how to settle this long ago and Israel is the one violating that agreement. Israel inflicts huge amounts of suffering on them, and suffers tiny amounts in comparison. They "settle" (flat out steal) their land, cut their land into pieces so that they cannot travel, bulldoze their houses, and block them from International trade. It is illegal for Israelis to travel to Palestine, lest they see the horror and develop sympathies for them. Israel must withdraw from all of Palestine to the 1967 lines, and then there will be peace. That is already a huge compromise from the 1947 lines, which was itself a huge compromise from Palestine originally being 100% of the region. There is no reason to expect them to continue to give more to Israel over and over and over again. It has to stop, and 1967 is where it stops according to the UN, the PLO, and other international bodies. Bad arguments for the ethnic cleansing and land stealing from Palestineans: * We used to live here four thousand years ago * God gave us this land * We have a bigger economy * Hitler killed a bunch of us in Germany * They teach their kids to hate Jews (I believe in freedom of thought, freedom to hate, freedom to love) * They present a security risk, so we have to kill them first * Palestine started the violence again this time, not Israel (to think they shouldn't fight to reclaim their land from Israel because there have been ceasefires is status quo bias) Those are all morally vacant arguments, and give zero consideration to what is just and right. I never understood why people in the American right-wing are on Israel's side. They make the above arguments and I just cringe.

The American right wing is the victim of a mass, generations long propaganda campaign by the most powerful people on Earth to view modern Israel as a modern fulfillment of an Old Testament eschatology.

Which story seems more believable? (1) Palestineans hate Jews and will always attack Jews even if Jews are nice to them, or (2) Jews were mean to Palestineans and they have built up a lot of hatred becase of it? (2) is far more likely to be true. That doesn't mean the ethnic hatred built up will settle down all at once. It will take a generation or two.

Maybe. Israel never even tried for peace though. It still hasn't tried it. It demands peace under conditions where it continues to occupy, murder, barracade, bulldoze, and fill wells with concrete. That's not peace. Why doesn't Israel try for peace? They don't actually want peace, they want to win. They want the entire territory, but they are afraid of international reprocussions if they just genocide the remaining Palestineans so they are letting it happen slowly. But evil, flat out evil it is. Palestineans have little choice here. They can't just live like that. Also, Hezbollah, Iran, Russia even could come in and make a full scale war that forces Israel to honor the U.N. resolutions. But that is not likely to happen either. Unfortunately the most likely outcome is the most unjust one... Israel will use this as an excuse to prune the Palestinean population further, 1000 for every 1. Until they are eventually gone.

I am going to make a video where I explain my view on this better. What I wrote in this note is very unsupported by the note, so I want to support it. And it's not very well contextualized. And I'm not making all the right consessions. So a video is in order. Israel has tried for peace over and over in a fake couldn't-possibly-work kind of way. And I need to explain that better.

Robert Greene ( my favorite author ) teaches this strategy in his books - he calls it "Negotiate While Advancing" when he was talking about it i instantly thought about Israel. In Israel's case its " negotiate while illegally building settlements in an area you're militarily occupying " which is something forbidden by the United Nations if i recall correctly Israel broke more UN resolutions than any other country on the planet, but US has veto power and we always cover for Israel. the Jewish media teaches us that Israel is our greatest ally because they vote with us at the UN more often than anybody else ... well, sort of ... except it's rally US that votes with Israel, or rather Vetoes whatever Israel doesn't like ...

400M+ people spanning a continent of land, make sure to add in Iran. But yeah write up an overly simplistic & clearly flawed version of the historical events that led up to where we are now. It's ridiculous to even mention those strawmen bullshit points you tried to make. Why make an opinion so concretely on a topic that you not only have no experience with, you clearly can't even reason past the surface level talking points that you read over those three articles you parsed on the shitter. https://image.nostr.build/62c3ca529d169e69a46c3cc62fbffc1e4d5d61577e3de371a25416d85984a1ea.jpg

The history is much less relevant than the present. In the present, Israel is subjugating the Palestinians, taking their lands by force, killing their children or at least shooting them in the ankles, restricting their water, not allowing them to do anything productive for "security reasons". They are not free. I believe in liberty. I also believe in equality. If you believe in those things, you have to believe Palestinians are just as equal as you and I are, and thus you must wish for their freedom. If you don't, then either you don't believe in equality, or you don't believe in freedom. If I'm wrong, you are going to have to explain why clearly, not just spit out insults. I am not a clown, and I think plenty of people on nostr can attest to that. We may disagree, and if so that is a good thing because we can learn from each other. That is why I am replying rather than just ignoring your short and mean comment.

I agree with you. Saifedeen Ammous made some great arguments in this debate, and around 1:04:20 you see the Professor Walter Block’s true take. https://youtu.be/JBFvMv0F26I?si=pY3uuAEwu_Yd8f8t “Maybe Israel is all wrong, maybe they’re unjust. But what do you wanna do now? They have much more power than you.” The state control/narrative tactics Israel uses should be fairly easy for any Bitcoiner to see. They’re right out of the IMF textbook.

thank you for sharing growing up I never understand the conflict, you’d hear “Peace in the Middle East” on MTV award shows and start saying it to be cool it wasn’t until I saw a map, where I said oh I get it, that’s fucked up https://image.nostr.build/fc453fcb3feb53f135b5133983eed472c0c2343848ff94d9e04e46534fdaff81.jpg https://image.nostr.build/0cdc7ad94d1dbca2ccca7abad85e7fae3a732aa8b8bdb2d65074201f8d3c9bab.jpg

Be aware that defenders of Israel always make a clear distinction between the West Bank and the Gaza strip. So the Gaza strip remains unoccupied since 2005 (until probably today), whereas this map is of the West Bank. Hamas from Gaza attacked Israel, and they don't coorelate what is happening in the West Bank with Hamas' attack from Gaza... they keep them very separate and talk about them very separately, even though Hamas definitely coorelates them. Let me say though that what Hamas has done to innocent civilians is horrific. And what IDF has done in retaliation to apartment buildings filled with mostly innocent civilians is just as horrific (but there is much less footage of that horror covered in broken concrete). War is horrific. I just wish they would be fair to each other.

excellent point, thank you for the distinction also telling Americans that their money was used to blow up that apartment building doesn’t get much footage either https://image.nostr.build/0df5ae8660d1109a38cb7219cb1da57fb83223222d6d2c0e98740c7e16a46834.jpg