It’s hard to feel empathy for people who aren’t like us. Humans, quite logically, are designed to take care of “their own” first, then their community, and lastly, if we feel safe and secure enough, the rest of the world.
I don’t find this description of Gaza as a prison of Israel’s making compelling. The Palestinian refugee crisis and the problem of statelessness is a regional issue for which there is so much blame to go around and yet the analysis I hear over and over never grapples with - heck, never teaches me anything about - the political choices of Jordan and Lebanon that have impacted the situation for the worse. You touched ever so briefly on Egypt here and then nothing. There are hundreds of thousands of stateless Palestinians (maybe half a million?) in Lebanon who are treated like crap, discriminated against, and also live in the conditions you decry (when they were in Gaza and blamed on Israel). And, by the way, what’s the excuse for the lack of human empathy expressed by Lebanon? Hamas doesn’t have “death to the Lebanese” in its charter, does it?
Honestly, the tragedy is Gaza is heartbreaking. Statelessness as a global phenomenon is a super important issue that I would love to know more about. In the Israel-Palestine context, won’t someone please shed light of the very underreported issue of how surrounding countries appear to prefer to stick it to Israel by obstructing the process by which these refugees of many generations can naturalize? And if it’s okay for them not to want to offer these people a path to full citizenship, please explain why?
"won’t someone please shed light of the very underreported issue of how surrounding countries appear to prefer to stick it to Israel by obstructing the process by which these refugees of many generations can naturalize?"
Thanks for this reply, it's given me some points to look into. But my immediate answer is that a) many Palestinians want to live in their actual homeland, not in some nearby country, b) this would be givng the Zionists exactly what they want. In fact, they've been "encouraging" Palestinians to leave Gaza and the West Bank for years, I can understand why Palestinians don't want to give them their land, and c) it is not the responsibility of neighbouring countries to solve the refugee crisis. It is the responsibility of the country that created the refugee crisis.
The reason the Israel receives the bulk of the criticism is that the region was mostly stable before Zionism. Jews, Christians, and mostly Muslims, lived there for hundreds of years mostly in peace. Then a bunch of Zionist Jews decided, as Ze'ev Jabotinsky put it (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky), that because the Zionists couldn't "offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine [...] Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population."
Everybody has their perspective on who has committed the worse atrocities or who is the most intractable, there's plenty of blame to go around for the violence over the past 76 years. But as for what triggered it, it was Zionism. I truly don't see any way to dispute this.
I really like(d) your writing when I first discovered it for me to read and enjoy (a couple of months ago). But this article is challenging that. Why do you assume that altruism--"The Gaza withdrawal was not an act of altruism"--is a virtue when it is a vice. Also why are you so damn good at pinning things to reality with your writing and along with it a real sense of "yes, this guy knows what he's saying", but then you are wishy-washy on the obvious: "Sure, religious extremism is a problem. And Islam does seem more susceptible to it than other religions." Does "seem" to be more susceptible to it than other religions--duh, how man heads have Christians cut off because they were dissed by infidels, or how many French people killed for the same reason. Not to mention to many other, Islam-Muslim “sentiments”: “... you dis me muther’f’r and I’ll f’g kill you for it for real, not just as a threat but as a real death and then I’ll get absolution from my moral authorities—who everybody is afraid to criticize, including, or especially (some) Western intellectuals ...”. Islam is a Medieval Religion--unlike Christianity that has gone through a at least two reformations—this means, re-formulations, that resulted in toning down their FAITH based “reasoning”. To my knowledge Islam has not gone through even one such re-formulation and when they say things like, "We love death more than you (Gary) love life” and “In our (Muslim) religion there is no room for Caesars (i.e., reason)” why do you refuse to see it? This is what baffles me—super duper smart people who can’t see the obvious.
"I really like(d) your writing when I first discovered it for me to read and enjoy (a couple of months ago). But this article is challenging that."
Hey there, thanks for the honest feedback. I genuinely appreciate it even if it's a little sad to hear.
I've given a great deal of thought to what exactly my job is over the years. And one of the first things I realised is that my job is not to write things that people like. Don't get me wrong, I *hope* people like my writing, of course. I try very hard to write articles that are thought-provoking and entertaining and even funny at times, but I also write about topics that I consider to be very important. Topics that provoke strong emotions/opinions. And given that nobody likes to have their emotions/opinions challenged, I'm aware that some people won't like everything I have to say.
So I consider it my job to research everything I say very carefully. And then to express it in the most sincere, honest way I know how. So that even if people don't like reading it, I can honestly say that I've told the truth to the best of my ability.
As to your specific critiques, first, there's the obvious question of how many heads *Muslims* have cut off in the past decade, say? I ask that seriously. Is it 100? 1000? Some people talk about Islamic extremism as if they're out here cutting off people's heads every day. And this simply isn't the case.
I'm not trying to dismiss the many valid criticisms of Islam that you and I could make, I'm saying that acting as is if the most extreme acts of Islamic extremism or the slogans of terrorst extremists are representative the billions of Muslims in the world is not the most sincere, honest way to represent Muslims. Any more than it would be to say that Netanyahu or Ben-Gvir represent Jews.
As for how many heads Christians have cut off, I think you'd be surprised. History has shown us very clearly that religious belief hasn't stopped anybody from committing horrible atrocities. Right now, in Gaza, people who claim to believe in a religion where "if you kill a single person you destroy a whole world" are killing people by the tens of thousands. Countless Jewish religious scholars have pointed out this contradiction. Just as Muslim scholars do when Islamists commit atrocities.
So yes, I agree with you, Islam needs reform. I do see this obvious need very clearly. And the reforms that Christianity has gone through have undeniably softened its edges when it comes to violence. If you want to talk about the various mistakes I think Islam makes with regards to its treatment of women or gay people or apostates or blasphemy, I'm right there with you. It's not that I don't see them. It's that seeing it doesn't make me even slightly more amenable to a different set of extremists killing innocent Muslims for no reason.
I could not agree more with you, although I do think that Christian extremism has also been rife, just at different points in history.. Excellently written.
"although I do think that Christian extremism has also been rife"
Haha, yep, absolutely. A lot of people conveniently forget this. Ditto for the way people talk about women's rights and gay rights, etc. Yep, a lot of muslim countries have terrible records on these things. But so did we in the West, what? 60 years ago?
To me, the argument of who is the bad guy will never be a solution to a fude. All will cling to their belief that "they" are the bad guys.
Will the day come when the desire for the end of human suffering, especially with the non-combatants, be greater than the desire for revenge. That might take too much soul searching.
Maybe I just am stupid but I have a hard time distinguishing between Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza.
Why:
- Palestinians voted Hamas as the authority.
- Palestinians did nothing to stop Hamas from eliminating the PLA
- Palestinians must have been aware that Hamas was diverting resources into building tunnels and bringing in weapons.
- Palestinians are certainly aware when Hamas operatives come out to launch missles.
- Palestinians supported Hamas on October 7 and cheered when Hamas returned
- Palestinians are not working with the IDF to out members of Hamas right now
Your article acts as if Palestinians have zero agency in trying to get out from under Hamas. Two thoughts on that:
- Are they really that incapable of doing anything to protest Hamas
-- It would be easy to tell reporters that you want Hamas out. I haven't seen any of that.
-- It would have been str8 forward to tell the UNRWA that they want Hamas out.
- If they are, I unfortunately don't have much empathy for them.
The 20% of the Israeli population that is Palestinian is not aggressive protesting the war. Why? Because they likely believe that no Muslim regime would be as democratic as Israel. There certainly isn't a Muslim country to use as an example.
If I (or you) were a Palestinian, what would you do at this point?
I'd like to say I would assist the IDF as an uncover agent in eliminating Hamas
I'd like to say I advocate for Israel to govern Gaza - the two previous experiments - the PLA and Hamas have been failures.
I'd like to say I would like to be an Israeli citizen. That would enable free movement out of Gaza. Potentially back to my home area.
The IDF states that 80% of the 40,000 killed were associated with Hamas.
You quote a different number. Why?
I don't disagree that many Palestinians have been displaced by Israel as part of forming the Israeli state. I agree that at some point Israel needs to integrated Palestinians into the Israel state.
I also agree that if I were an Israeli citizen I would likely have the same opinion that you quote here about wanting to eliminate everyone in Gaza after the Oct 7 event. Its an emotional reaction.
After 911, I thought the one possible way to out Osama Bin Ladin was to threaten to drop an Atomic Bomb on Mecca, then Medina, and continue until the Muslim world coughed him up. Pakistan was clearly protecting him. After the Embassy was stormed in Iran and the Shah overturned, I sorta like the lyrics to the song, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran. Consider how it turned out, hard to think things wouldn't have been better off today if the US had.
War sucks. It happens because people become ideologically attached to a position and that ideology trumps their personal and their kids welfare. Its likely just a function of the genetic tribal programming we as humans have.
Can humanity transcend that tribal programming. No. Genetic engineering of humans is illegal. Maybe humanity should rethink that position.
I don’t find this description of Gaza as a prison of Israel’s making compelling. The Palestinian refugee crisis and the problem of statelessness is a regional issue for which there is so much blame to go around and yet the analysis I hear over and over never grapples with - heck, never teaches me anything about - the political choices of Jordan and Lebanon that have impacted the situation for the worse. You touched ever so briefly on Egypt here and then nothing. There are hundreds of thousands of stateless Palestinians (maybe half a million?) in Lebanon who are treated like crap, discriminated against, and also live in the conditions you decry (when they were in Gaza and blamed on Israel). And, by the way, what’s the excuse for the lack of human empathy expressed by Lebanon? Hamas doesn’t have “death to the Lebanese” in its charter, does it?
Honestly, the tragedy is Gaza is heartbreaking. Statelessness as a global phenomenon is a super important issue that I would love to know more about. In the Israel-Palestine context, won’t someone please shed light of the very underreported issue of how surrounding countries appear to prefer to stick it to Israel by obstructing the process by which these refugees of many generations can naturalize? And if it’s okay for them not to want to offer these people a path to full citizenship, please explain why?
"won’t someone please shed light of the very underreported issue of how surrounding countries appear to prefer to stick it to Israel by obstructing the process by which these refugees of many generations can naturalize?"
Thanks for this reply, it's given me some points to look into. But my immediate answer is that a) many Palestinians want to live in their actual homeland, not in some nearby country, b) this would be givng the Zionists exactly what they want. In fact, they've been "encouraging" Palestinians to leave Gaza and the West Bank for years, I can understand why Palestinians don't want to give them their land, and c) it is not the responsibility of neighbouring countries to solve the refugee crisis. It is the responsibility of the country that created the refugee crisis.
The reason the Israel receives the bulk of the criticism is that the region was mostly stable before Zionism. Jews, Christians, and mostly Muslims, lived there for hundreds of years mostly in peace. Then a bunch of Zionist Jews decided, as Ze'ev Jabotinsky put it (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ze%27ev_Jabotinsky), that because the Zionists couldn't "offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine [...] Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population."
Everybody has their perspective on who has committed the worse atrocities or who is the most intractable, there's plenty of blame to go around for the violence over the past 76 years. But as for what triggered it, it was Zionism. I truly don't see any way to dispute this.
I really like(d) your writing when I first discovered it for me to read and enjoy (a couple of months ago). But this article is challenging that. Why do you assume that altruism--"The Gaza withdrawal was not an act of altruism"--is a virtue when it is a vice. Also why are you so damn good at pinning things to reality with your writing and along with it a real sense of "yes, this guy knows what he's saying", but then you are wishy-washy on the obvious: "Sure, religious extremism is a problem. And Islam does seem more susceptible to it than other religions." Does "seem" to be more susceptible to it than other religions--duh, how man heads have Christians cut off because they were dissed by infidels, or how many French people killed for the same reason. Not to mention to many other, Islam-Muslim “sentiments”: “... you dis me muther’f’r and I’ll f’g kill you for it for real, not just as a threat but as a real death and then I’ll get absolution from my moral authorities—who everybody is afraid to criticize, including, or especially (some) Western intellectuals ...”. Islam is a Medieval Religion--unlike Christianity that has gone through a at least two reformations—this means, re-formulations, that resulted in toning down their FAITH based “reasoning”. To my knowledge Islam has not gone through even one such re-formulation and when they say things like, "We love death more than you (Gary) love life” and “In our (Muslim) religion there is no room for Caesars (i.e., reason)” why do you refuse to see it? This is what baffles me—super duper smart people who can’t see the obvious.
"I really like(d) your writing when I first discovered it for me to read and enjoy (a couple of months ago). But this article is challenging that."
Hey there, thanks for the honest feedback. I genuinely appreciate it even if it's a little sad to hear.
I've given a great deal of thought to what exactly my job is over the years. And one of the first things I realised is that my job is not to write things that people like. Don't get me wrong, I *hope* people like my writing, of course. I try very hard to write articles that are thought-provoking and entertaining and even funny at times, but I also write about topics that I consider to be very important. Topics that provoke strong emotions/opinions. And given that nobody likes to have their emotions/opinions challenged, I'm aware that some people won't like everything I have to say.
So I consider it my job to research everything I say very carefully. And then to express it in the most sincere, honest way I know how. So that even if people don't like reading it, I can honestly say that I've told the truth to the best of my ability.
As to your specific critiques, first, there's the obvious question of how many heads *Muslims* have cut off in the past decade, say? I ask that seriously. Is it 100? 1000? Some people talk about Islamic extremism as if they're out here cutting off people's heads every day. And this simply isn't the case.
I'm not trying to dismiss the many valid criticisms of Islam that you and I could make, I'm saying that acting as is if the most extreme acts of Islamic extremism or the slogans of terrorst extremists are representative the billions of Muslims in the world is not the most sincere, honest way to represent Muslims. Any more than it would be to say that Netanyahu or Ben-Gvir represent Jews.
As for how many heads Christians have cut off, I think you'd be surprised. History has shown us very clearly that religious belief hasn't stopped anybody from committing horrible atrocities. Right now, in Gaza, people who claim to believe in a religion where "if you kill a single person you destroy a whole world" are killing people by the tens of thousands. Countless Jewish religious scholars have pointed out this contradiction. Just as Muslim scholars do when Islamists commit atrocities.
So yes, I agree with you, Islam needs reform. I do see this obvious need very clearly. And the reforms that Christianity has gone through have undeniably softened its edges when it comes to violence. If you want to talk about the various mistakes I think Islam makes with regards to its treatment of women or gay people or apostates or blasphemy, I'm right there with you. It's not that I don't see them. It's that seeing it doesn't make me even slightly more amenable to a different set of extremists killing innocent Muslims for no reason.
I like your response. Thanks for it. I still think you are a good writer, no, a really good writer.
There aren't just Muslims in Gaza, there are Christians as well.
Bravo! Great summary of the hell unleashed in the region by decades of brutality.
It’s not nearly as complicated as the pundits and Israel apologists would make it: when people have nothing to lose, they lose it.
I could not agree more with you, although I do think that Christian extremism has also been rife, just at different points in history.. Excellently written.
"although I do think that Christian extremism has also been rife"
Haha, yep, absolutely. A lot of people conveniently forget this. Ditto for the way people talk about women's rights and gay rights, etc. Yep, a lot of muslim countries have terrible records on these things. But so did we in the West, what? 60 years ago?
To me, the argument of who is the bad guy will never be a solution to a fude. All will cling to their belief that "they" are the bad guys.
Will the day come when the desire for the end of human suffering, especially with the non-combatants, be greater than the desire for revenge. That might take too much soul searching.
Damned spelling corrupted. Feud
Maybe I just am stupid but I have a hard time distinguishing between Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza.
Why:
- Palestinians voted Hamas as the authority.
- Palestinians did nothing to stop Hamas from eliminating the PLA
- Palestinians must have been aware that Hamas was diverting resources into building tunnels and bringing in weapons.
- Palestinians are certainly aware when Hamas operatives come out to launch missles.
- Palestinians supported Hamas on October 7 and cheered when Hamas returned
- Palestinians are not working with the IDF to out members of Hamas right now
Your article acts as if Palestinians have zero agency in trying to get out from under Hamas. Two thoughts on that:
- Are they really that incapable of doing anything to protest Hamas
-- It would be easy to tell reporters that you want Hamas out. I haven't seen any of that.
-- It would have been str8 forward to tell the UNRWA that they want Hamas out.
- If they are, I unfortunately don't have much empathy for them.
The 20% of the Israeli population that is Palestinian is not aggressive protesting the war. Why? Because they likely believe that no Muslim regime would be as democratic as Israel. There certainly isn't a Muslim country to use as an example.
If I (or you) were a Palestinian, what would you do at this point?
I'd like to say I would assist the IDF as an uncover agent in eliminating Hamas
I'd like to say I advocate for Israel to govern Gaza - the two previous experiments - the PLA and Hamas have been failures.
I'd like to say I would like to be an Israeli citizen. That would enable free movement out of Gaza. Potentially back to my home area.
The IDF states that 80% of the 40,000 killed were associated with Hamas.
You quote a different number. Why?
I don't disagree that many Palestinians have been displaced by Israel as part of forming the Israeli state. I agree that at some point Israel needs to integrated Palestinians into the Israel state.
I also agree that if I were an Israeli citizen I would likely have the same opinion that you quote here about wanting to eliminate everyone in Gaza after the Oct 7 event. Its an emotional reaction.
After 911, I thought the one possible way to out Osama Bin Ladin was to threaten to drop an Atomic Bomb on Mecca, then Medina, and continue until the Muslim world coughed him up. Pakistan was clearly protecting him. After the Embassy was stormed in Iran and the Shah overturned, I sorta like the lyrics to the song, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran. Consider how it turned out, hard to think things wouldn't have been better off today if the US had.
War sucks. It happens because people become ideologically attached to a position and that ideology trumps their personal and their kids welfare. Its likely just a function of the genetic tribal programming we as humans have.
Can humanity transcend that tribal programming. No. Genetic engineering of humans is illegal. Maybe humanity should rethink that position.
Have you ever experienced combat and/or spent a significant amount of time where was was taking place?
Fortunately not.
I have experienced being cancelled in the divided states.