In the medieval mode, power lies and makes it truth; in the modern world, power had better tell the truth given the world’s yet free legions of high-integrity academics, consultants, judges, lawyers, researchers, and scholars. Lie to us, and we will find you out and bring about your humiliation in the minds of future generations. So here we know the lie told to the Palestinian refugees of 1948: “The Jews stole your land, and God wants you to win it back” — and it seems an old portion of Arab power has given the Palestinians that lie as something against which to bang their heads for decades.
From the Awesome Conversation
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What mobs hear, believe, and repeat is different from what lawyers, judges, and scholars examine and come to know with overwhelming validity.
The civilized way of attenuating findings certain to make one side or another unhappy is to cooperate in a relocation chosen by those moving out and as good or better than present circumstance and altogether agreed permanent according to the will of those so relocated. No death, outrage, vandalism, or violence — just a disruptive but civil adjustment undertaken in a mutually respectful even if reluctant atmosphere.
You would rather create a sore, salt it, and drive a mob against both historical and inherited realities and superior — proven, experienced — defense and security forces.
Given the bent, about all Palestinian “advocates” can guaranty is greater and more widespread Palestinian anger and related harm.
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So the Power That Lies–what is it to tell its people when the game’s up?
The answer is Copernican: “We were wrong. We could not see nought but ourselves and God, the universe, and the world before us fully admiring, approving, validating no matter what we did to ourselves, those taught to trust us most, and those we regarded as our enemies.”
I would not regard my fellow Jews as occupying the Center of the Universe either, but one may respect or at least value the co-evolutionary presence of the world’s diminishing pool of ethnolinguistic cultures, and then perhaps respect Arabs and Israelis and others most of all for overcoming themselves and broadening the reach of those principles most peaceful, pleasant, responsible, and, ultimately, universal.
Inspiration: the conversational partner’s quoting of Thomas Jefferson and Nelson Mandela on Freedom on behalf of Palestinian aspirations related to the same.
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Yes!
The authorities in the West Bank and Gaza repressed dissent by arbitrarily arresting tens of peaceful demonstrators, opponents, critics, journalists and human rights activists.1 In some cases, authorities used emergency COVID-19 regulations to stifle freedom of expression and assembly.
The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), the Palestinian national human rights institution, recorded 37 incidents of violations of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press: 21 in the West Bank and 16 in Gaza. The ICHR also recorded 158 cases in the West Bank and 118 in Gaza of the arbitrary arrests of opponents and critics. The Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms recorded 97 incidents of attacks against journalists, including arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment during interrogation, confiscation of equipment, physical assaults and bans on reporting: 36 in the West Bank and 61 in Gaza.
I don’t want to work up a timeline, but given the report cited, police action would appear perfectly reasonable, responsive, and responsible.
Other issues (excuses) have also their depth in legal detail and reasoning. On better than balance, Palestinian leadership incitements and Palestinians too dumb for tackling online independent research in their own interest will bear responsibility for this latest war.
The more fair and profound question worth asking is whether the greater powers wish themselves to sustain the “Middle East Conflict” as a necessary buffer between the regions of “political absolutism” and related fascist or totalitarian control and those whose political evolution has found greater freedom and latitude in personal behavior in the world’s democratic and open societies.
Inspiration: the assertion that Israel wanted Hamas to take over Gaza in 2005 (in the wake of the Jewish retreat from the region) in order to clean out its rivals (Fatah, PLO) –>
Against Wild Conspiracy-Think
Playing “The Jews did it!” with Hamas is surreal given the realities attending Israel’s ceding Gaza. You (as metonym for “The Palestinians”) were to have protected roadways and synagogues for access by members; you were to have produced peace regardless of the factional warring for control of Gaza; you were to have established peace and a peaceful relationship with Israel. You failed to achieve other than a genocidal war against Jewry as re-framed as a war with Israel.
There is has been no Jewish Power in Gaza since 2005, and yet Palestinians in Gaza remain subject to brute force and political repression.
How is that possible without the Palestinian failure to defend even themselves from internal forces claiming to represent their interests?
So far as I can tell, Israel’s defense and policing policies respond directly to states of affairs generated by Palestinian behavior.
The post-Soviet arc of power — define it for yourself and have a look any time — is riddled with cancerous, dying, or dead and failed states!
The world has plenty of other evil in it, but what “malignant narcissists” do to their own geopolitical spaces in the cause of their own aggrandizement (and centralization of power) always ends badly.
As far as I’m concerned, Americans are superior!
Lol.
We’re all on this one “Blue Marble” and many of our real issues — not issues rooted primarily in our own minds but a part of our shared global experience — are issues to be acknowledged and worked on together across our many cultural and political boundaries.
In any case, Big Pictures and more parochial ones — both at hand at the same time — Palestinian Liberation begins with you and your vision.
You should defy Palestinian corruption and political repression at every chance, not overlook or shrug it away as both attach to your own character if accepted.
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Too often in modern conflict, “Accusation in a Mirror” applies to easily to the accuser. There’s older Chinese wisdom for that: “He points the finger has four more pointing back at himself.”
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I believe Israel wants an authentic peace in a modern world characterized by democratic processes, rule of law, and wide latitude for individual choices in the election of personal beliefs and behaviors. The enemies of Israel, on the other hand, wish to live by way of the force of will and punitive power to control and channel their people as faceless and nameless masses. The same would be the enemies of evolution, humanity, modernity, and all of the open societies of the world.
The Soviet failed state cum Putin’s kleptocracy has found a role in its attachment to rogue political movements and states, thus, it might seem, it has been always. Here’s the latest on feudal and post-Soviet Era puffery with NATO’s Turkish wild child buddying up with Putin to shill for the Islamist angle —
Erdogan told Putin the international community needed to “teach a deterrent lesson” to Israel, adding that Ankara was working to mobilize this reaction, according to a statement from his office.
Erdogan also called for work to be done on sending international peacekeepers to the region to help safeguard Palestinians, a proposal Turkey has made since 2018.
Here’s Orwellian as spoken by Adnan Abu Amer, head of the Political Science Department, University of the Ummah, Gaza —
Russia is a major power with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. It is also part of the Middle East Quartet working to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition, Russia maintains close relations with the three actors that matter most to Hamas – Israel, the PA and Egypt. Russia could, therefore, help Hamas to not only stand up to Trump and his “deal of the century” in the international arena, but also resolve its issues with the PA and Egypt.
The last Palestinian with whom I chatyped declared his people peaceful and religious. Which religion, I asked him: Christianity or Islam?
Well, he answered, we’re more Nationalist.
I didn’t follow up with what Hamas represents, but nonetheless thematic across the arc of intra-Palestinian relations has been the Fatah v Hamas rivalry.
The last time Hamas won power in that argument, this is how Palestinian Unity went down —
AP – Posted to YouTube July 13, 2015.
Fast forward to the near latest in Palestinian elections —
Polls will be scheduled within six months under a deal reached between Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, officials from both sides told AFP.
“We have agreed to first hold legislative elections, then presidential elections of the Palestinian Authority, and finally the central council of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),” said Jibril Rajub, a senior Fatah official, on Thursday.
RAMALLAH, West Bank – It was meant to be a historic and long-overdue vote aimed at ending 15 years of paralyzed and divided leadership. Instead, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called off next month’s parliamentary elections after challengers from his own party threatened to weaken his hold on power.
Abbas’ decision, which came just two days before campaigning was supposed to begin, indefinitely postponed the May 22 vote and apparently a July presidential election as well. The postponement angered Palestinians eager to replace a president who has not held a vote in a decade-and-a-half and failed to deliver on his main goal of achieving independence from Israel. Street protests broke out in several cities in the West Bank and Gaza.
Through it all — the terrorism, the street fighting, the demagoguery, and failed election promises, not to mention decade after decade of defeat in the Palestinian effort to eliminate the Zionist Entity — Russia has stood by Palestinian leaders in the cause of Palestinian Liberation (Enslavement), Dignity (Humiliation), Freedom (Political Repression), and Prosperity (Corruption and Kleptocracy), and Peace Most of All (Perpetual War).
With Moscow’s acceptance, blessing, and encouragement, Palestinian leaders defy democratic processes, hold on to power, pervert political language or rhetoric, and drive their constituents to exactly the kind of violence that Israel needs must respond to with order-restoring force.
Moscow, were it modern beneath Putin’s egotism rather than feudal-medieval, could encourage throughout the Palestinian community an appreciation for reliable contemporary and historical information, civil order, practical problem solving to address basic education, infrastructure, public services and other community-wide issues, and tried and true humanist reasoning — helpful and impartial in the improvement of Qualities of Living — but that might have Russia taking its place among the advanced and higher integrity open democratic societies of the west in improving the lot of the residents of the Palestinian Territories.
For Moscow, it’s plainly better that Gaza and West Bank Palestinians remain suspended in chaos, disillusion, disinformation, and political deadlock and impotence. That apparently, keeps Palestinian leaders coming to Moscow for guidance, and Moscow now plainly appreciates its own international importance and their ever faithful, ever hopeful esteem.
“Fast News Share (FNS)” experiment but with some brief self-quoting. 😦 🙂 The format hasn’t really worked for me, but with events moving so quickly and a want to “share the experience”, I thought I’d do my little bit of sloppy blogging, “Quick and Dirty”, “Q&D”, as vulgar old Washington hands used to say of press, and see if the additive format — perhaps new material at the top — would serve for speedy relay. (The small “v” are placeholders for next entries, but, as noted, updates may be posted at the top).
It’s about time somebody said it loud and clear. BBC libels the State of Israel as part of a set narrative. Any time that Arab terrorists hit Israel with a barrage of missiles and Israel responds by bombing the source of the attacks, BBC talks about poor Palestinian babies that suffer. Well, it’s true that the little Arab babies and children who are harmed are innocent. But, it is a total falsehood to claim that Israel is at fault. Those who set up missile launch pads near hospitals and at the foot of residential apartment buildings are the problem.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,038, May 13, 2021
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The explosion of mass violence by Israeli Arabs against their fellow Jewish citizens is nothing short of a religious war and has to be treated as such.
On Putinesque and civilizational Russian influence worldwide —
Autocracy / Authoritarianism are the problems that power-obsessed Russian officialdom passes through to the world. In Left-Right terms, one side thinks the other most representative of the want of suffocating order, but the extremists for both are about the same as regards their penchants for control.
Moscow cultivates the chaos. I wonder now if that might not go back all the way to the Slavic disunity that invited organization from above, so to speak. For “The Terrorists”, Russia’s support would seem to encourage the same to repeatedly drive themselves — and their communities — into walls, proud to be diminished, injured, martyred . . . . at least that’s been the effect of arming and back-slapping the impassioned and misdirected.
No introduction needed this day for this quick opinion —
“Look how the authorities made sure to plunge the country into war and civil conflict. Is it a coincidence? Is it?” Palestinian agitation, manipulation, and propaganda account for the experiential and intellectual poisoning of the Palestinians en masse. The “Palestinian Narrative” — more or less, “The Jews stole your land and God wants you to win it back” — has never held water, but for a black-and-white thinking rabble born to capitalize on tales of its own abuse, the myth serves for truth and sustained war for peace.
No Israeli politician invited this latest boiling over, and even though all will stump about it differently, the truth is the Palestinians have been lied to and exploited for decades by their own leaders and other powers intent on enriching themselves at Palestinian expense or proving (while getting some loot for doing so) some Islamic, nationalist, or racist point that might be attributed to their theater-of-the-real “heroism”.
Perhaps nowhere else does the tension between medieval and modern worlds erupt with deadly force so periodically and predictably than in the Middle East Conflict in which the political methods of the feudal world — lies outright; misguidance; misdirection; political suppression; incitements to riot; corruption and exploitation in the “handling” of the main Palestinian population base — come head to head with modern democracy, empiricism, liberalism, and humanism.
From a part of my presence in the conversation on social media —
Palestinian “leadership” would rather see its people battered and impoverished than subject to the economic and political norms of the modern world.
That posture represents feudal-medieval outlooks and relationships, excessive greed and narcissism — the Palestinians are “marks” for Palestinian authorities and thugs — and a complete absence of conscience and empathy but for the purposes of political theater and related blackmail.
“People have been waiting for elections for 15 years, hoping this would be the light at the end of tunnel, especially given the absence of a peace track with Israel,” said Fadi Elsalameen, a Palestinian democracy activist and prominent critic of Abbas, speaking before the announcement. “Closing this window will have severe consequences…I believe it will lead to violence against the Palestinian leadership.”
Israel/Palestine: The EU is dismayed at the large numbers of civilian deaths and injuries, including children. The priority must be to protect civilians.
Israel has declared a state of emergency in the central city of Lod after rioting by Israeli Arabs, as conflict between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants intensified.
Cars were set alight and a father and daughter – both Israeli Arabs – died when a rocket from Gaza hit their car.
In the age of “Active Measures”, widespread trolling, government-funded disinformation campaigns, a sad bump in east-west rivalry with Beijing and Moscow pitted against democracy, and extraordinary agitation and propaganda, the business of shamelessly lying to the American People should be treated no differently than speech associated with conspiracy to commit crimes, libel and slander, and incitement.
The 28 Palestinian families arrived at the Karm al-Jaouni area of Sheikh Jarrah as refugees in 1956. Under an agreement with the Jordanian government and the UN refugee agency UNRWA, the homes were built in exchange for a revocation of their refugee status and the promise that these families would own the homes after three years.
The promise was never fulfilled, and in 1967 Jordan lost its mandate over the West Bank and East Jerusalem after the territories were occupied by Israel.
Title issues in Sheikh Jarrah appear to go back to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War (“Six Day War”) and the redistricting that ensued. So next:
Posted to YouTube May 31, 2018.
The video makes it look like Israel just popped up on the map one day in 1948, and the Arab states were enraged by the sudden intrusion.
Well, neither Israel nor Pakistan arrived from out of nowhere in 1948. For one, a militant Islam had found itself unhappy in India, so one might suggest, and an horrific two-way mass migration formed the new state and its “frozen conflict” in Kashmir and shifting East-West alignments and related politics. As for Israel, cultural memory engraved in religion and ancient tradition, urged a return far predating 1948. A part of that history may be found here:
Should your devotion to peace (even from your desktop, laptop, or phone — no less than mine if that) have you at least look or recall the history of Jewish habitation and investment in Palestine far predating Hitler’s atrocious crime, then consider the passage that follows.
From the Awesome Conversation
I appreciate the avarice, egotism, greed, and vulgarity involved in most wars in relation to taking property by force.
Fortunately, the tides move in both directions, making everyone miserable (if not vulgar).
WHAT IF Israeli and Palestinian officials designed together final boundaries and funded resettlement — no homeless; no “kick-outs”; no further coercion, fraud, or force — and no allowance for contempt or hate — for equal or better qualities of living where placed?
Take the emotion out of arrangements, domestic and other, and just focus on the basic human right to live in peace and free of intimidation and persecution. It doesn’t matter who you are, how you got there, what you believe or don’t believe, or even where loyalties may reside, but only that families may be settled and left to live (and work) — by mutual assent — fairly and without harassment.
Kumbaya?
Not necessarily. It’s out of necessity now that emphasis shift from immediate personal alliances, ambitions, concerns, egotism, and hurt (even) to broadened responsible modern Israeli-Palestinian cooperation. It should take only one rightly handled instance to change . . . everything.
“Masking” is what takes place when events are reported with critical missing information. In this instance, the Arab and Muslim press, the modern-looking Al Jazeera perhaps especially, overlooked the 1967 Arab challenge to Jewish survival in Israel, a war that is now an historical matter, and in standard operating procedure demonized the Jews while maintaining the innocence of Arab residents who knew their homes by having taken the same for themselves when political conditions permitted. In effect, the family had done nothing wrong with the exception of taking up residence in a geopolitical space that would again be contested, and whose outcome would be their loss by way of the restoration of previous boundaries.
Who are the thieves?
The Arab family settled in 1956?
The Jewish family pressing its case for title from before that date and after another horrendous eleven years later?
Let the finger pointing end.
Drawing to a close the instability of boundaries and related animus matters as much as the carefully and legally researched answers to legal title. To get that accommodation wants for asking those with interest to open their eyes and to think further into the future than themselves, their appreciation of themselves, and their immediate perceptions.
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