Most people cannot recognize contemporary atrocities. It is simply not how the world is processed in adult minds.
Decent folk of European descent could not see the crimes perpetrated against millions of native Americans for centuries. The brutality of chattel slavery foisted on Africans was invisible to many civilized folk for almost as long. The native Americans, after all, did raid and kill European settlers. And chattel slaves were, after all, less than human per the rulings of God and science. And the worst among the Palestinians have absolutely committed atrocities against even the best among the Israelis.
As a high schooler I remember suggesting that the only way for the Middle East conflict to be resolved might be to arm the two sides equally and allow things to be worked out the modern way... that is to butcher the other side out of existence . I was shamed for that comment in my decent little group, but I'm even more ashamed that that is what can feel like is happening today--except for the part about equally arming each side.
The likely reality is that those who readily look past the atrocities of today--or who can see only the atrocities committed against their side--will be long and comfortably dead by the time history books in some distant future show remorse. It is more comfortable that way. More comfortable to wish our less desirable neighbors the peace of a detonated nuclear bomb or some sort of work camp.
This is not the way any of my personal heroes have argued that the world should be. This was EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of the position of Matthew's Jesus or of Rabbi Hillel or even the Utilitarian Bentham. But fighting for "doing to others as you would have done to yourself" is a hard battle as easily lost today as it was two hundred and two thousand years ago.
Thank you for fomenting the conversation even if every side gets angry because the other side is at least a little bit wrong.
"Most people cannot recognize contemporary atrocities. It is simply not how the world is processed in adult minds"
The evidence of my various comment sections on this topic proves you right. I just cannot understand how this blind spot works.
When I was a kid, I couldn't understand how ordinary, otherwise decent people stood by or even supported the Nazis. How they rationalised and ignored such obvious racism and cruelty and fanaticism. Today, I feel as if I've had a very close look at the psychology behind it, and I wish to God I could unsee it.
Two people go as freshman to a frat party and totally get trashed.
One passes out, one loses all inhibitions.
The one that lost all inhibitions is accused of attempted rape.
BOTH WERE EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RAMIFICATIONS THAT HAPPENED.
Society has no responsibility to protect someone who is stupid enough to get shitfaced drunk and passed out. But someone society now thinks it is.
Choose wisely when you go to a frat party. Maybe just don't go!
As for Israel and the Palestinians.
Its way, way, way, way, way easier than you try to make it out to be.
This is a religious war. Its been going on since the Muslims invaded the Levant in the 8th century. The Muslims had the might to keep the area Muslim mostly through to the 20th century. With brief losses during the crusades. When the Ottoman empire collapsed. The Muslim's lost their might. Coincidentally Hitler (which the Ottoman empire supported), happened at the same time and tried to wipe the Jews from Europe. Many Jews started immigrating to what would become Israel as a result. They also immigrated to Israel because the British divided up the Ottoman empire and created countries that had Muslim governments. The new countries (no surprise given the Ottoman Empire supported Hitler) persecuted the Jews. So those Jews migrated to the area that is Israel.
The Jews bought most of the land but also drove out the Palestinians in the some of the areas. All the Muslim nations that now surrounded the Jews given the way the British divided the Ottoman empire went to war to make sure the Jews didn't create a state. Surprise of all surprises the Jews won. Not just once but every time the Muslim's tried to drive them out. The Jews (with the help of England and the US) for the first time in centuries had the might. Rational Arabs/Muslims didn't dispute the issue and became Israeli citizens. They are still challenged because Israel is a Jewish state. Oh well.
Irrational Muslims that focus on the principal that Jews should not have a state and let alone control the city of Jerusalem that includes the Al Aqsa Mosque left or were driven out. Their goal is still to eliminate the Jewish state today and especially take back control of the Al Aqsa Mosque (i.e. Make East Jerusalem the capital of the state of Palestine). Issue with this is that the Al Aqsa sits on the most holy site in the Jewish religion, the Temple mount.
Funny thing about this is all the Muslim IMAMs acknowledged that it was the Temple mount - wait for it - until the Jews declared the state of Israel. Then they started changing their views and saying it wasn't. Isn't that convenient for them.
Your need to frame this as some morality concept ignores basic humanity 101. Might makes right. You can judge Israel all you want but for the first time since about 800BC the Jews have the might to hold the area they believe is God given to them. In fact based on the Torah, God was irritated when the Jews migrating from Egypt wouldn't take the land by force because they were scared. That's the story of Joshua and the wall of Jerusalem falling when he blew the horn.
There is no "moral" right or wrong in the Israeli/Palestinian war about the land. Its the oldest religious conflict still playing out over 1300 years later. You can try and claim some new age religious moral position but your position is no more valid than the Israelis or Palestinians.
The thing about the Jews versus Palestinians and Muslims in general is that they are a very, very, very patient bunch. They have patiently waited in diaspora for millennia. The 1st and 2nd world war and the bad choices of the Ottoman empire gave them a chance to reestablish themselves in what they view as their God given right.
From a totally pragmatic perspective, I would rather have the Jews and the state of Israel than a Palestinian state. I know the Jews could care less if I am LGBTQ or Christian for that matter. They have no goals to convert what they refer to as Gentiles.
The Muslims on the other hand are pretty clear that the world is meant to be one world Caliphate under Allah. Its just a matter of making it happen through Jihad.
Thanks for letting me verbalize how naive most thought is on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
"BOTH WERE EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RAMIFICATIONS THAT HAPPENED."
I honestly don't know how to engage with you in good faith on statements like this. Your worldview--if this is actually representative of your worldview and not just being edgy on the internet--is so monstrous, so lacking in anything that could be described as logic or morality or even scalability at a societal level, that I don't know where to begin. It feels like we have no common moral or intellectual foundation from which to begin talking about anything.
As for your take on Israel-Palestine, this is classic Dunning-Kruger, I'm afraid. No, it is not easy at all. Nor is it even close to sufficient to describe it as a religious war. Jews and Muslims have been living in relative peace in that region of the world for thousands of years. Far more peacefully than Christians were living in Europe (or much of the rest of the world) over the same period, for example. Zionism, a ~150-year-old political ideology, changed that, not Judaism, a ~3000-year-old religion.
If you knew this, you would know, at the very least, that your analysis here is painfully simplistic. But you have demonstrated, time and time again, that you have no interest in learning or thinking any deeper than your pre-existing biases. Much easier to dismiss everyone who knows more than you about a topic as "naive," eh?
I have two daughters and a son. They all agree with the statement!
I’m married to a guy. He agrees with the statement.
I have many friends who do and some don’t agree with the statement.
Two people liked my comment. All I can assume is they agree with my statement.
You state my world view is monstrous. What you need to really process is that a large part of the world agrees with me. You must believe then that the world is monstrous! How’s that working out for you?
As for Jews and Muslims living in peace. I addressed that specifically. The Jews are very very very patient people. They lived in peace not because they were living in conditions they desired, only because it was their only pragmatic answer.
That’s the fundamental difference between the Jews and most Muslims. Muslims can’t be pragmatic about not having the power. Their faith in their religion as most IMAMs preach is that the Islam faith is the ONLY valid faith and the goal of the faithful is to help create a world caliphate under Allah.
As I stated, the Jews have no evangelical goals. Jehovah never called them to evangelize the Gentiles. Christians are called to Evangelize, but they are not called to create a one world faith under Jesus. Muslims are called to convert the world thru Jihad. NO OTHER RELIGION has a position like that. That’s why the Muslim world is constantly at tension with the rest of the world including India which is largely Hindu. Thats why the conflicts continue in Africa between Muslims and Christians.
The world is largely driven by religious fever, not rational thought. The UN and its concept of human rights is just a new world religion. Communism is a new world religion around collectivism. Even capitalism is in a sense a religion.
It’s always amazed me how many people don’t start with the basics of the human condition. They are caught up in their echo chamber and have no ability to walk in someone else’s shoes.
Are the Muslim wrong for their belief? No more so than any other religion is wrong. But their belief is fundamental to their clashes with other beliefs. In this case the Jews and their belief that Jehovah gave them the land of Israel including Galilee and Judea (what’s called the West Bank). Then r belief along with Evangelical Christians that they are called to rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount and restart the sacrifices Jehovah called them to in the Torah.
As I stated in my last comment, I support Israel only because they have no need to convert me as a gay person to anything else. Their religion explicitly states that. That’s why Israel is a Jewish democracy and has Muslim citizens living in Israel in peace!
"Two people liked my comment. All I can assume is they agree with my statement."
Man, you get so embarrassingly excited when you get a like. I get hundreds, sometimes even tens of thousands, of "likes" on some of my comments and articles. So do many other people. This is not a heuristic for whether someone is right. This is the most basic "appeal to popularity" fallacy. Furthermore, you have no idea which part of your comment they did or didn't agree with. In my experience, some people will clap for anything at all that defends Israel. True or not. Logical or not. This is the topic of the article, in fact.
Though no, I don't believe for a second that a large part of the world agrees that a woman who is raped while unconscious and the rapist who decided to rape her, are EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE for her rape. This is just an obviously stupid, morally broken position that fails even on the most basic principles of agency. That the children you've raised and the people you've chosen to surround yourself with agree with you (though I actually doubt this) is hardly evidence that a "large part of the world" does (you also don't appear to understand sample bias when making generalisations).
And if they did, yes, I would think they were wrong on those bases.
For thousands of years, a large part of the world agreed with slavery and marital rape and burning uppity women at the stake. Topically enough, they agreed with “converting” and chemically castrating and even executing gay people like yourself and your husband. You only have to go back in time a few decades to find this happening all over the Western world. Again, popular does not equal correct.
So if your reason for supporting Israel as it kills tens of thousands of children, oppresses millions of innocents, and risks dragging the world into a major, perhaps catastrophic war, is that they are more accepting of your homosexuality, then fine. That is perfectly in line with your generally shallow, simplistic, self-centred view of the world.
You are, of course, free to think this way. But there's point in discussing it. Your mind isn't open to reason or facts or empathy because all you care about is yourself and your narrow interests.
One more point, I'm personally not supportive of enslavement - i.e. the concept of owning a person.
But I don't live in naive morality that assumes a large part of humanity is not totally on board with "owning" other humans. The Muslim world in general largely believes that men "own" woman. Woman do not have rights outside of their husbands permission structure. Daughters do not have rights outside their father's permission structure. The real world enslavement happening today. Enslavement will never go way.
The most amusing thing about your reference to enslavement is that in the case of slavery you're totally willing to fall back on history. In the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the religious history is not relevant to you. Especially Jewish claims to the land of Israel that are the most historically documented claim of anyone in the world today.
“ The most amusing thing about your reference to enslavement is that in the case of slavery you're totally willing to fall back on history. In the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the religious history is not relevant to you. Especially Jewish claims to the land of Israel that are the most historically documented claim of anyone in the world today.”
Jesus, what the f*** are you talking about? I’m not “falling back on history” by mentioning slavery, I’m pointing out that lots of people can support things that are morally wrong.
If you prefer, forget slavery and stick to psychologically torturing and sterilising gay people. Lots of people agreed with it, some people still do today, I think they’re wrong. The fact that there are lots of them makes no difference to the morality of it. This was the point I was making.
Oh, and feel free to lay out these “most historically documented claims in history” to the land of Israel. I can’t wait to see this…
People will always believe in psychologically torturing and sterilising gay people. Lots of people agreed with it, some people still do today.
I have no moral judgement on them. In fact the UN Human Rights charter has no moral judgement on them. They believe this because of their religious faith. I do not argue about peoples religious faith or make moral judgements on their faith.
I do state that we need very clear walls between them and me. Muslims largely believe being gay is immoral. Jews have no position for me as a "gentile". I believe there needs to be a very high wall between the Muslim world and the Western World. Israel is that western world in the middle east. No judgements on whether they are morally better. Just practically better for me.
Same goes for many Muslims in the US and Conservative Christians in the US. I want a wall between their communities and the gay community. I live in CA. I feel very comfortable with CAs position on it.
When I encounter Conservatives trying to preach about being gay is a sin in the Castro, I'm very clear with them. Tell me what church you are from, I'll be there this Sunday preaching about how much you are a pharisee. They don't have an answer when I frame it that way. They don't want to tell me what church they are from because they are scared I'll really show up. They are right to be scared. I will.
You are so much in your echo chamber do don't even notice how your comments reflect it.
This is not my blog. I'm just a commentator. I am not excited in any way about the likes. It's just a data point.
Your assessment of me as if somehow you know me, my daughters, my son, my family or my friends is indicative of your complete isolation to your echo chamber. You have a world view in your echo chamber and instead of challenging your world view you divine that you understand who I am and who the people I site are.
STEVE. WAKE UP! GET OUT OF THE ECHO CHAMBER.
Do some basic study of what humanity is and how it works. I get you don't like how it works but that's irrelevant. You're living in an imagined reality you have created for yourself (a.l.a. Zaphod Bebblebrox in hitchhikers guide).
Somehow your imagined reality is necessary for your mental well being. Good luck with that. The world does not operate on your imagined reality.
Is it or is it not fair to say that your “daughters, son, family and friends” are “ children you've raised and the people you've chosen to surround yourself with” and therefore I obviously know at least this much about them? Which is all I claimed to know.
You, sadly, after years of reading your comments, I know a little better. And my assessment of you is based on that knowledge, as well as the words you literally typed in your comment.
Ooooh disagree hard on your Brock Turner comment. No amount of alcohol would force a young man to fingerbang a lady passed out behind a dumpster. I dunno if he just encountered her there or they went there together but it’s still a bad thing to do.
But there we go. It did. Young guy, probably never played with a woman, first time wasted, comes by a woman, thought no one looking (there was that's how we know), and it happened. Your statement proven wrong.
Men are genetically predisposed to breed. The experts even say that humans are really not genetically predetermined to be monogamous. Its a religious/cultural concept.
That's why it was common and still is in many places for the man to go get his rocks off and his wife didn't really care. She has the children and the income.
Our society is trying to push men to be something that their genetics does not. Just as it tried to push me as a gay man to be str8. I had no problem living with a woman and having kids. Given my sex driven genetics, I could still get hard and cum when I was young. But as much as I tried, I was always sexually attracted to guys. My wife was aware but what should she do.
Genetics wins out over cultural limitations. The #MeToo movement is fighting male genetics. Woman would be better off avoiding getting themselves into a situation where the male genetics is at odds with their desires. I.E. Don't get wasted at a frat party. I was very clear with my daughters about male genetics. Whenever they had guys over in high school, I sat them all down together and had the guys say, "Yes we are pigs." Girls were embarrassed, guys were amused.
Its no surprise that gays have sex with hundreds and 1000s of guys over their lifetime. No genetics or societal pressure pushing back.
Steve: Israel: The Nation That Nobody Ever Told “No”
Big LoL. The world has been been saying No to the State of Israel for about the last 2000 years, ever since the Romans started the Diaspora about the time of the supposed birth of Jesus. And the world has been perpetrating genocide after genocide after genocide against the scattered and lost tribes of Israel for about the same length of time.
And now Iran -- in particular and by itself and through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah -- is looking to try to finish the Holocaust that Hitler's Germany made a "notable" contribution to.
A rather depressing if not quite damning indictment of the whole world, the UN in particular, that they are turning a blind eye to that state of affairs. If I were Israel, or sitting in its deliberating chambers, then I would be tempted to at least vote in favour of Israel turning everything to the east of the Jordan River into a sea of glass.
"Big LoL. The world has been saying No to the State of Israel for about the last 2000 years,"
Good God, when do we get to have a conversation about Israel that doesn't use events that took place thousands of years ago as its basis?! Especially from people who so consistently dismiss the importance of events from just 78 years ago! When do the people who use Judaism as a shield for Zionism take the time to understand Judaism well enough to know that God ordained that the Jews should live in the diaspora, and that the manmade creation of the current state of Israel is in violation of God's commands?
To be extremely clear, I'm not a religious man. At all. I'm not using the Torah as the basis for any of my ideas. But if you're going to use Judaism itself as the basis of your arguments, you should know what Judaism says on the topic. Don't take my word for it, here are 20,000 orthodox Jews speaking on the topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5o0QJ3xYVg).
But at least we finally arrive at the truth. If you're in any way "in favour of Israel turning everything to the east of the Jordan River into a sea of glass," then you are gripped by exactly the mania I'm talking about in the article.
You think it's fair to kill all of these people, to turn their land into "a sea of glass" because, what? They object to being driven from their homes and killed to make way for Zionists on a "colonising adventure"? (Jabotinsky's words, not mine.) But you don't think its fair for people who have been living on a piece of land for generations to fight back when invaders come and colonise their land, killing and displacing them in the process.
There are millions (billions?) of innocent people living in that region. Almost all of them have lived there for generations, far, far longer than the Zionists who came from around the world and declared a piece of land that people were already living on was theirs.
Yes, Jews have lived in the region for thousands of years too. They obviously have every right to continue doing so. But I'm still yet to understand the logic that says that because some Jews have been living there continuously, all Jews, from all over the world, have a right to steal land from people who have lived there for just as long.
So I ask you, when is it enough? At what point would you look at the situation over there and say, "No" to Israel?
No need to be sorry, you’re just being bamboozled by terminology. Which, in your defence, is the reason why those words have been chosen.
Judaism is not only not a Zionist religion, Zionism is in direct conflict with Judaism.
And as a fellow proselytising religion, Islam is expansionist in the same way that Christianity is. That’s why colonialism and missionary work went hand in hand. Judaism, its true, is distinct in this way.
Oh my gosh... Are you... GOYSPLAINING my own ethnoreligion to me? The one I was born into and educated in from the ages of 8 to 18???? Me, who was bat mitzvah'd in the Orient, on the ancient grounds of Jerusalem itself!? THE AUDACITY OF THESE GENTILES MAN. I CAN'T TAKE IT NO MORE. 😭😭😭
"Oh my gosh... Are you... GOYSPLAINING my own ethnoreligion to me"
Oh goodness, you're right. How terrible of me. I'm sure, as you were "born into it and educated in it," you can effortlessly show me where I've gone wrong.
Tell me, what does the Torah say about the state of Israel? How does God command Jews to treat the foreigner compared to the native-born? Please, feel free to explain where these Jewish scholars (along with several others), who clearly know less than you, have gone wrong.
1 And thou, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal; 2 and I will turn thee about and lead thee on, and will cause thee to come up from the uttermost parts of the north; and I will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel; 3 and I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. 4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the peoples that are with thee; I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort and to the beasts of the field, to be devoured. 5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD. 6 And I will send a fire on Magog, and on them that dwell safely in the isles; and they shall know that I am the LORD. 7 And My holy name will I make known in the midst of My people Israel; neither will I suffer My holy name to be profaned any more; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel. 8 Behold, it cometh, and it shall be done, saith the Lord GOD; This is the day whereof I have spoken. 9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall make fires of the weapons and use them as fuel, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the hand-staves, and the spears, and they shall make fires of them seven years; 10 so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests, for they shall make fires of the weapons; and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD. {S} 11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place fit for burial in Israel, the valley of them that pass through on the east of the sea; and it shall stop them that pass through; and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude; and they shall call it the valley of Hamon-gog. 12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying them, that they may cleanse the land. 13 Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them, and it shall be to them a renown; in the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD. 14 And they shall set apart men of continual employment, that shall pass through the land to bury with them that pass through those that remain upon the face of the land, to cleanse it; after the end of seven months shall they search. 15 And when they that pass through shall pass through the land, and any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog. 16 And Hamonah shall also be the name of a city. Thus shall they cleanse the land. {P}
17 And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD: Speak unto the birds of every sort, and to every beast of the field: Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to My feast that I do prepare for you, even a great feast, upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh and drink blood. 18 The flesh of the mighty shall ye eat, and the blood of the princes of the earth shall ye drink; rams, lambs, and goats, bullocks, fatlings of Bashan are they all of them. 19 And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of My feast which I have prepared for you. 20 And ye shall be filled at My table with horses and horsemen, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD. 21 And I will set My glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see My judgment that I have executed, and My hand that I have laid upon them. 22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day and forward. 23 And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they broke faith with Me, and I hid My face from them; so I gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they fell all of them by the sword. 24 According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions did I unto them; and I hid My face from them. {S} 25 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD: Now will I bring back the captivity of Jacob, and have compassion upon the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name. 26 And they shall bear their shame, and all their breach of faith which they have committed against Me, when they shall dwell safely in their land, and none shall make them afraid; 27 when I have brought them back from the peoples, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations. 28 And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, in that I caused them to go into captivity among the nations, and have gathered them unto their own land; and I will leave none of them any more there; 29 neither will I hide My face any more from them; for I have poured out My spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.' {P}
-__- hadisim join the IDF these days too, my goy. 10/7 backfired on y’all pretty hard, note the date the video was made on. Also, I’m conservative and not orthodox, not that you’d know the difference. This video gets bandied about all the time and it’s still pointless for you, someone who would like to see us weakened and vulnerable, to use it as a “gotcha.”
Most people cannot recognize contemporary atrocities. It is simply not how the world is processed in adult minds.
Decent folk of European descent could not see the crimes perpetrated against millions of native Americans for centuries. The brutality of chattel slavery foisted on Africans was invisible to many civilized folk for almost as long. The native Americans, after all, did raid and kill European settlers. And chattel slaves were, after all, less than human per the rulings of God and science. And the worst among the Palestinians have absolutely committed atrocities against even the best among the Israelis.
As a high schooler I remember suggesting that the only way for the Middle East conflict to be resolved might be to arm the two sides equally and allow things to be worked out the modern way... that is to butcher the other side out of existence . I was shamed for that comment in my decent little group, but I'm even more ashamed that that is what can feel like is happening today--except for the part about equally arming each side.
The likely reality is that those who readily look past the atrocities of today--or who can see only the atrocities committed against their side--will be long and comfortably dead by the time history books in some distant future show remorse. It is more comfortable that way. More comfortable to wish our less desirable neighbors the peace of a detonated nuclear bomb or some sort of work camp.
This is not the way any of my personal heroes have argued that the world should be. This was EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of the position of Matthew's Jesus or of Rabbi Hillel or even the Utilitarian Bentham. But fighting for "doing to others as you would have done to yourself" is a hard battle as easily lost today as it was two hundred and two thousand years ago.
Thank you for fomenting the conversation even if every side gets angry because the other side is at least a little bit wrong.
"Most people cannot recognize contemporary atrocities. It is simply not how the world is processed in adult minds"
The evidence of my various comment sections on this topic proves you right. I just cannot understand how this blind spot works.
When I was a kid, I couldn't understand how ordinary, otherwise decent people stood by or even supported the Nazis. How they rationalised and ignored such obvious racism and cruelty and fanaticism. Today, I feel as if I've had a very close look at the psychology behind it, and I wish to God I could unsee it.
I love your Brock Turner example.
Two people go as freshman to a frat party and totally get trashed.
One passes out, one loses all inhibitions.
The one that lost all inhibitions is accused of attempted rape.
BOTH WERE EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RAMIFICATIONS THAT HAPPENED.
Society has no responsibility to protect someone who is stupid enough to get shitfaced drunk and passed out. But someone society now thinks it is.
Choose wisely when you go to a frat party. Maybe just don't go!
As for Israel and the Palestinians.
Its way, way, way, way, way easier than you try to make it out to be.
This is a religious war. Its been going on since the Muslims invaded the Levant in the 8th century. The Muslims had the might to keep the area Muslim mostly through to the 20th century. With brief losses during the crusades. When the Ottoman empire collapsed. The Muslim's lost their might. Coincidentally Hitler (which the Ottoman empire supported), happened at the same time and tried to wipe the Jews from Europe. Many Jews started immigrating to what would become Israel as a result. They also immigrated to Israel because the British divided up the Ottoman empire and created countries that had Muslim governments. The new countries (no surprise given the Ottoman Empire supported Hitler) persecuted the Jews. So those Jews migrated to the area that is Israel.
The Jews bought most of the land but also drove out the Palestinians in the some of the areas. All the Muslim nations that now surrounded the Jews given the way the British divided the Ottoman empire went to war to make sure the Jews didn't create a state. Surprise of all surprises the Jews won. Not just once but every time the Muslim's tried to drive them out. The Jews (with the help of England and the US) for the first time in centuries had the might. Rational Arabs/Muslims didn't dispute the issue and became Israeli citizens. They are still challenged because Israel is a Jewish state. Oh well.
Irrational Muslims that focus on the principal that Jews should not have a state and let alone control the city of Jerusalem that includes the Al Aqsa Mosque left or were driven out. Their goal is still to eliminate the Jewish state today and especially take back control of the Al Aqsa Mosque (i.e. Make East Jerusalem the capital of the state of Palestine). Issue with this is that the Al Aqsa sits on the most holy site in the Jewish religion, the Temple mount.
Funny thing about this is all the Muslim IMAMs acknowledged that it was the Temple mount - wait for it - until the Jews declared the state of Israel. Then they started changing their views and saying it wasn't. Isn't that convenient for them.
Your need to frame this as some morality concept ignores basic humanity 101. Might makes right. You can judge Israel all you want but for the first time since about 800BC the Jews have the might to hold the area they believe is God given to them. In fact based on the Torah, God was irritated when the Jews migrating from Egypt wouldn't take the land by force because they were scared. That's the story of Joshua and the wall of Jerusalem falling when he blew the horn.
There is no "moral" right or wrong in the Israeli/Palestinian war about the land. Its the oldest religious conflict still playing out over 1300 years later. You can try and claim some new age religious moral position but your position is no more valid than the Israelis or Palestinians.
The thing about the Jews versus Palestinians and Muslims in general is that they are a very, very, very patient bunch. They have patiently waited in diaspora for millennia. The 1st and 2nd world war and the bad choices of the Ottoman empire gave them a chance to reestablish themselves in what they view as their God given right.
From a totally pragmatic perspective, I would rather have the Jews and the state of Israel than a Palestinian state. I know the Jews could care less if I am LGBTQ or Christian for that matter. They have no goals to convert what they refer to as Gentiles.
The Muslims on the other hand are pretty clear that the world is meant to be one world Caliphate under Allah. Its just a matter of making it happen through Jihad.
Thanks for letting me verbalize how naive most thought is on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
"BOTH WERE EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE RAMIFICATIONS THAT HAPPENED."
I honestly don't know how to engage with you in good faith on statements like this. Your worldview--if this is actually representative of your worldview and not just being edgy on the internet--is so monstrous, so lacking in anything that could be described as logic or morality or even scalability at a societal level, that I don't know where to begin. It feels like we have no common moral or intellectual foundation from which to begin talking about anything.
As for your take on Israel-Palestine, this is classic Dunning-Kruger, I'm afraid. No, it is not easy at all. Nor is it even close to sufficient to describe it as a religious war. Jews and Muslims have been living in relative peace in that region of the world for thousands of years. Far more peacefully than Christians were living in Europe (or much of the rest of the world) over the same period, for example. Zionism, a ~150-year-old political ideology, changed that, not Judaism, a ~3000-year-old religion.
If you knew this, you would know, at the very least, that your analysis here is painfully simplistic. But you have demonstrated, time and time again, that you have no interest in learning or thinking any deeper than your pre-existing biases. Much easier to dismiss everyone who knows more than you about a topic as "naive," eh?
On the don’t know how to engage me!
I have two daughters and a son. They all agree with the statement!
I’m married to a guy. He agrees with the statement.
I have many friends who do and some don’t agree with the statement.
Two people liked my comment. All I can assume is they agree with my statement.
You state my world view is monstrous. What you need to really process is that a large part of the world agrees with me. You must believe then that the world is monstrous! How’s that working out for you?
As for Jews and Muslims living in peace. I addressed that specifically. The Jews are very very very patient people. They lived in peace not because they were living in conditions they desired, only because it was their only pragmatic answer.
That’s the fundamental difference between the Jews and most Muslims. Muslims can’t be pragmatic about not having the power. Their faith in their religion as most IMAMs preach is that the Islam faith is the ONLY valid faith and the goal of the faithful is to help create a world caliphate under Allah.
As I stated, the Jews have no evangelical goals. Jehovah never called them to evangelize the Gentiles. Christians are called to Evangelize, but they are not called to create a one world faith under Jesus. Muslims are called to convert the world thru Jihad. NO OTHER RELIGION has a position like that. That’s why the Muslim world is constantly at tension with the rest of the world including India which is largely Hindu. Thats why the conflicts continue in Africa between Muslims and Christians.
The world is largely driven by religious fever, not rational thought. The UN and its concept of human rights is just a new world religion. Communism is a new world religion around collectivism. Even capitalism is in a sense a religion.
It’s always amazed me how many people don’t start with the basics of the human condition. They are caught up in their echo chamber and have no ability to walk in someone else’s shoes.
Are the Muslim wrong for their belief? No more so than any other religion is wrong. But their belief is fundamental to their clashes with other beliefs. In this case the Jews and their belief that Jehovah gave them the land of Israel including Galilee and Judea (what’s called the West Bank). Then r belief along with Evangelical Christians that they are called to rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount and restart the sacrifices Jehovah called them to in the Torah.
As I stated in my last comment, I support Israel only because they have no need to convert me as a gay person to anything else. Their religion explicitly states that. That’s why Israel is a Jewish democracy and has Muslim citizens living in Israel in peace!
"Two people liked my comment. All I can assume is they agree with my statement."
Man, you get so embarrassingly excited when you get a like. I get hundreds, sometimes even tens of thousands, of "likes" on some of my comments and articles. So do many other people. This is not a heuristic for whether someone is right. This is the most basic "appeal to popularity" fallacy. Furthermore, you have no idea which part of your comment they did or didn't agree with. In my experience, some people will clap for anything at all that defends Israel. True or not. Logical or not. This is the topic of the article, in fact.
Though no, I don't believe for a second that a large part of the world agrees that a woman who is raped while unconscious and the rapist who decided to rape her, are EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE for her rape. This is just an obviously stupid, morally broken position that fails even on the most basic principles of agency. That the children you've raised and the people you've chosen to surround yourself with agree with you (though I actually doubt this) is hardly evidence that a "large part of the world" does (you also don't appear to understand sample bias when making generalisations).
And if they did, yes, I would think they were wrong on those bases.
For thousands of years, a large part of the world agreed with slavery and marital rape and burning uppity women at the stake. Topically enough, they agreed with “converting” and chemically castrating and even executing gay people like yourself and your husband. You only have to go back in time a few decades to find this happening all over the Western world. Again, popular does not equal correct.
So if your reason for supporting Israel as it kills tens of thousands of children, oppresses millions of innocents, and risks dragging the world into a major, perhaps catastrophic war, is that they are more accepting of your homosexuality, then fine. That is perfectly in line with your generally shallow, simplistic, self-centred view of the world.
You are, of course, free to think this way. But there's point in discussing it. Your mind isn't open to reason or facts or empathy because all you care about is yourself and your narrow interests.
One more point, I'm personally not supportive of enslavement - i.e. the concept of owning a person.
But I don't live in naive morality that assumes a large part of humanity is not totally on board with "owning" other humans. The Muslim world in general largely believes that men "own" woman. Woman do not have rights outside of their husbands permission structure. Daughters do not have rights outside their father's permission structure. The real world enslavement happening today. Enslavement will never go way.
The most amusing thing about your reference to enslavement is that in the case of slavery you're totally willing to fall back on history. In the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the religious history is not relevant to you. Especially Jewish claims to the land of Israel that are the most historically documented claim of anyone in the world today.
WAKEUP!
“ The most amusing thing about your reference to enslavement is that in the case of slavery you're totally willing to fall back on history. In the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the religious history is not relevant to you. Especially Jewish claims to the land of Israel that are the most historically documented claim of anyone in the world today.”
Jesus, what the f*** are you talking about? I’m not “falling back on history” by mentioning slavery, I’m pointing out that lots of people can support things that are morally wrong.
If you prefer, forget slavery and stick to psychologically torturing and sterilising gay people. Lots of people agreed with it, some people still do today, I think they’re wrong. The fact that there are lots of them makes no difference to the morality of it. This was the point I was making.
Oh, and feel free to lay out these “most historically documented claims in history” to the land of Israel. I can’t wait to see this…
People will always believe in psychologically torturing and sterilising gay people. Lots of people agreed with it, some people still do today.
I have no moral judgement on them. In fact the UN Human Rights charter has no moral judgement on them. They believe this because of their religious faith. I do not argue about peoples religious faith or make moral judgements on their faith.
I do state that we need very clear walls between them and me. Muslims largely believe being gay is immoral. Jews have no position for me as a "gentile". I believe there needs to be a very high wall between the Muslim world and the Western World. Israel is that western world in the middle east. No judgements on whether they are morally better. Just practically better for me.
Same goes for many Muslims in the US and Conservative Christians in the US. I want a wall between their communities and the gay community. I live in CA. I feel very comfortable with CAs position on it.
When I encounter Conservatives trying to preach about being gay is a sin in the Castro, I'm very clear with them. Tell me what church you are from, I'll be there this Sunday preaching about how much you are a pharisee. They don't have an answer when I frame it that way. They don't want to tell me what church they are from because they are scared I'll really show up. They are right to be scared. I will.
It's so amusing to see your responses.
You are so much in your echo chamber do don't even notice how your comments reflect it.
This is not my blog. I'm just a commentator. I am not excited in any way about the likes. It's just a data point.
Your assessment of me as if somehow you know me, my daughters, my son, my family or my friends is indicative of your complete isolation to your echo chamber. You have a world view in your echo chamber and instead of challenging your world view you divine that you understand who I am and who the people I site are.
STEVE. WAKE UP! GET OUT OF THE ECHO CHAMBER.
Do some basic study of what humanity is and how it works. I get you don't like how it works but that's irrelevant. You're living in an imagined reality you have created for yourself (a.l.a. Zaphod Bebblebrox in hitchhikers guide).
Somehow your imagined reality is necessary for your mental well being. Good luck with that. The world does not operate on your imagined reality.
Is it or is it not fair to say that your “daughters, son, family and friends” are “ children you've raised and the people you've chosen to surround yourself with” and therefore I obviously know at least this much about them? Which is all I claimed to know.
You, sadly, after years of reading your comments, I know a little better. And my assessment of you is based on that knowledge, as well as the words you literally typed in your comment.
God, you are just dazzlingly unintelligent.
The fact that you resort to this: "God, you are just dazzlingly unintelligent." is QED for my position.
Ooooh disagree hard on your Brock Turner comment. No amount of alcohol would force a young man to fingerbang a lady passed out behind a dumpster. I dunno if he just encountered her there or they went there together but it’s still a bad thing to do.
But there we go. It did. Young guy, probably never played with a woman, first time wasted, comes by a woman, thought no one looking (there was that's how we know), and it happened. Your statement proven wrong.
Men are genetically predisposed to breed. The experts even say that humans are really not genetically predetermined to be monogamous. Its a religious/cultural concept.
That's why it was common and still is in many places for the man to go get his rocks off and his wife didn't really care. She has the children and the income.
Our society is trying to push men to be something that their genetics does not. Just as it tried to push me as a gay man to be str8. I had no problem living with a woman and having kids. Given my sex driven genetics, I could still get hard and cum when I was young. But as much as I tried, I was always sexually attracted to guys. My wife was aware but what should she do.
Genetics wins out over cultural limitations. The #MeToo movement is fighting male genetics. Woman would be better off avoiding getting themselves into a situation where the male genetics is at odds with their desires. I.E. Don't get wasted at a frat party. I was very clear with my daughters about male genetics. Whenever they had guys over in high school, I sat them all down together and had the guys say, "Yes we are pigs." Girls were embarrassed, guys were amused.
Its no surprise that gays have sex with hundreds and 1000s of guys over their lifetime. No genetics or societal pressure pushing back.
It’s really rare, maybe once a year, that I read something that is so false and idiotic that even the words “and” or “the” are lies.
😅 Thanks for your input Shelley. I eagerly await your fact-based refutation of anything I've said. I very strongly suspect it will never come.
Steve: Israel: The Nation That Nobody Ever Told “No”
Big LoL. The world has been been saying No to the State of Israel for about the last 2000 years, ever since the Romans started the Diaspora about the time of the supposed birth of Jesus. And the world has been perpetrating genocide after genocide after genocide against the scattered and lost tribes of Israel for about the same length of time.
And now Iran -- in particular and by itself and through its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah -- is looking to try to finish the Holocaust that Hitler's Germany made a "notable" contribution to.
A rather depressing if not quite damning indictment of the whole world, the UN in particular, that they are turning a blind eye to that state of affairs. If I were Israel, or sitting in its deliberating chambers, then I would be tempted to at least vote in favour of Israel turning everything to the east of the Jordan River into a sea of glass.
"Big LoL. The world has been saying No to the State of Israel for about the last 2000 years,"
Good God, when do we get to have a conversation about Israel that doesn't use events that took place thousands of years ago as its basis?! Especially from people who so consistently dismiss the importance of events from just 78 years ago! When do the people who use Judaism as a shield for Zionism take the time to understand Judaism well enough to know that God ordained that the Jews should live in the diaspora, and that the manmade creation of the current state of Israel is in violation of God's commands?
To be extremely clear, I'm not a religious man. At all. I'm not using the Torah as the basis for any of my ideas. But if you're going to use Judaism itself as the basis of your arguments, you should know what Judaism says on the topic. Don't take my word for it, here are 20,000 orthodox Jews speaking on the topic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5o0QJ3xYVg).
But at least we finally arrive at the truth. If you're in any way "in favour of Israel turning everything to the east of the Jordan River into a sea of glass," then you are gripped by exactly the mania I'm talking about in the article.
You think it's fair to kill all of these people, to turn their land into "a sea of glass" because, what? They object to being driven from their homes and killed to make way for Zionists on a "colonising adventure"? (Jabotinsky's words, not mine.) But you don't think its fair for people who have been living on a piece of land for generations to fight back when invaders come and colonise their land, killing and displacing them in the process.
There are millions (billions?) of innocent people living in that region. Almost all of them have lived there for generations, far, far longer than the Zionists who came from around the world and declared a piece of land that people were already living on was theirs.
Yes, Jews have lived in the region for thousands of years too. They obviously have every right to continue doing so. But I'm still yet to understand the logic that says that because some Jews have been living there continuously, all Jews, from all over the world, have a right to steal land from people who have lived there for just as long.
So I ask you, when is it enough? At what point would you look at the situation over there and say, "No" to Israel?
Judaism is a Zionist religion, sorry. And Islam is an expansionist religion. You see how these two ideologies clash? That’s why people are dying.
“ Judaism is a Zionist religion, sorry”
No need to be sorry, you’re just being bamboozled by terminology. Which, in your defence, is the reason why those words have been chosen.
Judaism is not only not a Zionist religion, Zionism is in direct conflict with Judaism.
And as a fellow proselytising religion, Islam is expansionist in the same way that Christianity is. That’s why colonialism and missionary work went hand in hand. Judaism, its true, is distinct in this way.
Oh my gosh... Are you... GOYSPLAINING my own ethnoreligion to me? The one I was born into and educated in from the ages of 8 to 18???? Me, who was bat mitzvah'd in the Orient, on the ancient grounds of Jerusalem itself!? THE AUDACITY OF THESE GENTILES MAN. I CAN'T TAKE IT NO MORE. 😭😭😭
"Oh my gosh... Are you... GOYSPLAINING my own ethnoreligion to me"
Oh goodness, you're right. How terrible of me. I'm sure, as you were "born into it and educated in it," you can effortlessly show me where I've gone wrong.
Tell me, what does the Torah say about the state of Israel? How does God command Jews to treat the foreigner compared to the native-born? Please, feel free to explain where these Jewish scholars (along with several others), who clearly know less than you, have gone wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5o0QJ3xYVg
I bet you won't. Because if you could, you wouldn't have to rely on non-arguments like, "oMg, DiD u JuSt GoYsPlAiN????😭"
G-d says your a big fat poof, btw.
1 And thou, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say: Thus saith the Lord GOD: Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal; 2 and I will turn thee about and lead thee on, and will cause thee to come up from the uttermost parts of the north; and I will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel; 3 and I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. 4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the peoples that are with thee; I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort and to the beasts of the field, to be devoured. 5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD. 6 And I will send a fire on Magog, and on them that dwell safely in the isles; and they shall know that I am the LORD. 7 And My holy name will I make known in the midst of My people Israel; neither will I suffer My holy name to be profaned any more; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel. 8 Behold, it cometh, and it shall be done, saith the Lord GOD; This is the day whereof I have spoken. 9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall make fires of the weapons and use them as fuel, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the hand-staves, and the spears, and they shall make fires of them seven years; 10 so that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests, for they shall make fires of the weapons; and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD. {S} 11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place fit for burial in Israel, the valley of them that pass through on the east of the sea; and it shall stop them that pass through; and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude; and they shall call it the valley of Hamon-gog. 12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying them, that they may cleanse the land. 13 Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them, and it shall be to them a renown; in the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD. 14 And they shall set apart men of continual employment, that shall pass through the land to bury with them that pass through those that remain upon the face of the land, to cleanse it; after the end of seven months shall they search. 15 And when they that pass through shall pass through the land, and any seeth a man's bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamon-gog. 16 And Hamonah shall also be the name of a city. Thus shall they cleanse the land. {P}
17 And thou, son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD: Speak unto the birds of every sort, and to every beast of the field: Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to My feast that I do prepare for you, even a great feast, upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh and drink blood. 18 The flesh of the mighty shall ye eat, and the blood of the princes of the earth shall ye drink; rams, lambs, and goats, bullocks, fatlings of Bashan are they all of them. 19 And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of My feast which I have prepared for you. 20 And ye shall be filled at My table with horses and horsemen, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD. 21 And I will set My glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see My judgment that I have executed, and My hand that I have laid upon them. 22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God, from that day and forward. 23 And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they broke faith with Me, and I hid My face from them; so I gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they fell all of them by the sword. 24 According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions did I unto them; and I hid My face from them. {S} 25 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD: Now will I bring back the captivity of Jacob, and have compassion upon the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name. 26 And they shall bear their shame, and all their breach of faith which they have committed against Me, when they shall dwell safely in their land, and none shall make them afraid; 27 when I have brought them back from the peoples, and gathered them out of their enemies' lands, and am sanctified in them in the sight of many nations. 28 And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, in that I caused them to go into captivity among the nations, and have gathered them unto their own land; and I will leave none of them any more there; 29 neither will I hide My face any more from them; for I have poured out My spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord GOD.' {P}
-__- hadisim join the IDF these days too, my goy. 10/7 backfired on y’all pretty hard, note the date the video was made on. Also, I’m conservative and not orthodox, not that you’d know the difference. This video gets bandied about all the time and it’s still pointless for you, someone who would like to see us weakened and vulnerable, to use it as a “gotcha.”
Ridiculous. These things are not comparable at all.
Mike Huckabee did publicly condemn the murder of Sayfollah Musallet, fyi.