Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread

[halfwise]

Nobody wants them. Israel needs to face up to its responsibility.

Now that they've made it clear that any attempt to wipe Israel off the map will fail, they should see themselves as having a strong bargaining position, ignoring the fact that the people who they are bargaining with hate them even more. If they would integrate them into their society it will make it easier, not harder to stop terrorism. But this means the Palestinians need to unbend as well and not reject settlements. If they can do this in tandem there's hope. But that's a rather forlorn and distant hope.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ What staggers me is that of all the peoples on the face of this planet, you would think that blaming an entire people for crimes, collectively punishing them and singling them out, indiscriminately slaughtering thousands of their civilian population including pregnant women, old and young, and forcing them into a global diaspora in exile robbed of their homeland being wrong and a bad thing to do, would ring a few bells for the Jewish people as something not to do. They of all peoples should be the last conducting this. It's like seeing a child who was horribly abused growing up to be an abuser themselves and perpetuate the cycle. }}

[halfwise]

It's what happens in the Middle East. The journalist Thomas Friedman wrote a book about spending several years in Beirut followed by several years in Israel, called From Beirut to Jerusalem. His thesis was that despite being very two different religions and cultures, they operated by the same rules. He called these "Hama Rules", which referred to the elder Assad of Syria wiping the town Hama off the face of the earth because it contained Muslim Brotherhood rebels. This was seen even by many Muslims as being necessary to maintain order.

It's related to an old story told in the Arab world. An old man was raising a turkey, until one day it was stolen. He told his sons to go find the thief and beat him. His sons said "why do we care about a stupid turkey? The thief was probably hungry." Then when their sheep was stolen they went to their father and said "what do we do?"
"Find my turkey" he replied.

In a dog eat dog world you have to demonstrate fierce retribution or it just gets worse. That's what they are doing, and it transcends any sense of history or compassion.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ Well it's better than my Dads version he used to hold to when I was a kid, that humans aren't meant to live in very hot countries as our brains overheat, which is why they are always fighting each other. Certainly not politically correct, or scientifically or historically sound, but when you watch what's going on you can see how in ignorance such ideas take hold. }}

[Mrs Figg]

Makes sense though, the further south you go the angrier people seem to get.