I managed to avoid even knowing this was happening thanks to my superpower – unbreachable obtusality. My in-law walked down there (Metro was so jammed she could not get on) and had much the same sort of vibe you did.
The 'from the river to the sea' phrase looks to have been weaponized the way swastikas were back in 1920. So it is in my view hard to say "just a phrase" without also saying 'that has been hijacked".
But, nah, this is just the latest event in, by some measurement, a shit show of imperial and similar failures going back over a hundred of years so. Thanks to the Abraham accords (IYKYK), 10/7 may well have been the beginning of the last act of this historic tragedy. Thanks to same, the Palestinians have no global backers with much ability (if that much) to give any support of any kind of any good or help towards a resolution...
Meanwhile, for decades I've been a little amazed that the same people opposed to the founding of Israel -- the Hasids -- at some point after Likud (founded by ex-terrorists) became dominant decided to become dominant themselves. The irony is that they were opposed on religious grounds and the only thing that changed after 48 was their desire to gain some control in the state the opposed. Maybe it's me, maybe I just have some intellectual blockage or blindness preventing me from the reconciling the two positions.
But in the greater scheme of things, even I don't care what I think...
There is something--some immense defect--in people that makes them think that killing someone's family is the sure-fire way to get them to stop hating you. Nowhere is this displayed more frequently or consistently than in this conflict.
Funny how nobody questions why we are giving tons of money to a country with a higher standard of living than us with a military that is one of the more fearsome on earth, I bet our aid pretty much pays for their single payer health system.
I have no answer for what the United States can do to change the calculus in the Middle East. I don’t share the nationalism or religiosity of the players and can’t imagine what can be done to move them away from those motivations. But, both our politicians and media have decided that it’s up to us to do something about it. We protested the Vietnam War to demand our government stop its own actions. What are yesterday’s protesters doing, if not demanding our government stop others from committing war crimes? How exactly is it supposed to do that? Sure, stop sending weapons to anyone in the Middle East. Beyond that, what? Words, diplomacy, jaw-jaw while the actors engage in war-war. Anyway, when the fascists take over our government in 2024, I’m sure those protesters will find their demands ignored and themselves branded as enemies. The future doesn’t look good for the Middle East or us. Maybe we should focus on the threat at home.
Many Americans attitudes toward Palestine has evolved over the decades, and mostly for the better. What I've come to realize in my own transition can be summed in a more or less simple statement:
Your attitude towards whiteness is your attitude towards the Palestinians.
We can say it's not our fight, and of course if your neighbors aren't dying it's not. But our neighbors ARE dying — and from the same settler-colonialist attitudes that tells some group that white phosphorus is good crowd control against another. And by some WEIRD coincidence, the IDF trains US prison guards & police departments in their brutal tactics.
Another thing I always wondered about: there was an US initiative to "re-patriate" Black Americans to Liberia after emancipation. It kind of fizzled out, but the result could have very been an early sort of Israel.
I would agree with Tlaib's version of "from the river to the sea," which Mark Tessler links to the PLO's proposal for a "secular democratic state" in all of what's now Israel and the occupied territories. Aaron David Miller, the former diplomat and foreign policy wonk who knows way more about this issue than I ever will, still argues that the nationalist feelings on both the Israeli-Zionist side and the Palestinian side are so strong that they could not make a single state function. But it is also hard to see how the massive settlement policy in the West Bank could be unwound in a two-state solution.
Still, the options for a stable peace are pretty much limited to three: two states, a single democratic secular state, or a single undemocratic apartheid Jewish state with a soon-to-be-Palestinian majority. For the US to seriously push for its own current official position, a two-state solution, looks like the most likely way to get some real movement on a substantive solution going.
Just about this "from the river to the sea" slogan supposedly meaning THE OBILITERATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL, a two-state solution has been official US policy since at least the days of Kissinger, so OK, here's a map of Israel and here's a black Sharpie, draw me a Palestinian state that doesn't touch both the banks of the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Unless you're the kinda guy who'd use the Sharpie to put a single dot in the middle of the Sinai desert, can't be done.
Hell, even if you read it as "Return to the '67 borders", that clearly can't mean the destruction of the state of Israel, because I'm fairly sure there was a state of Israel prior to '67.
I will preface and say that I despise Netanyahu and his right-wing government: most of the true religious Israeli’s didn’t even believe in the state of Israel when the UN partitioned Palestine into a two state solution. Now these same religious groups are with the settlers; another messianic religious cult of fascists and religious psychopaths and zealots.
Secondly, part of the blame goes to Trump by putting an unqualified, biased amateur in charge of Middle East policy (Kushner). Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem; he allowed Israel to annex the Golan Heights and Trump enabled Netanyahu and his right-wing fascist whack-jobs to continue building illegal settlements in the West Bank, as well as restrict movements of the people in Gaza. All this without Israel having to make any concessions to the Palestinians or Syrians for that matter.
That said, a ceasefire with Hamas isn’t the answer. They are a terrorist organization who originated in the early 90’s as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; the same people who assassinated Sadat for making peace with Israel.
Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel and they executed terrorist attacks in the 90’s during the Oslo Accords. These people’s owe their very existence to destroying any opportunity for peace. Yet, ironically, so many want the two parties to form a ceasefire.
Hamas does not want peace. They care little for the Palestinian people. Instead of building bomb shelters for the Palestinians, they built a tunnel system to attack Israel. Are the Hamas leaders so obtuse that they don’t think Israel would retaliate after being attacked?
Furthermore, instead of investing the billions they received in foreign aid from the Arab and western world, they built rockets to attack Israel with. They use the Palestinians as human shields and a ceasefire only helps them rebuild and attack again.
Additionally, the absence of war is not peace; it’s the status quo. And since Gaza was granted self-rule in 2005, Hamas has used Gaza as Staging ground to destroy Israel.
Admittedly, Netanyahu and the right-wing settlers don’t want peace either. Netanyahu for decades has weakened the Palestinian Authority and played them against Hamas, to keep the Palestinian people at war with each other.
Bottom line: we had a ceasefire before. In fact, we end up with a ceasefire every two to three years or so: Hamas attacks, Israel bombs and invades, then a ceasefire is declared, and two to three years later it’s rinse, lather repeat.
Except each time Israel tightens their restrictions on the Palestinian’s and each invasion gets more deadly due to technological advances, Hamas increased capabilities, and its ability to recruit more cannon fodder as suicide psychos.
For peace to take hold, two parties need to be committed to making a deal that neither side may love, but both sides can live with. Right now, both sides are devoid of any true leadership committed to peace.
Therefore, America and the rest of the world needs to force both sides to the table, or let the two fend for themselves without any foreign military or humanitarian assistance.
As Einstein once said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.”
I’m done supporting insanity on either side!
Just some thoughts!...:)
FYI: I find it ironic that these college students find the need to support Hamas in this war given its atrocities against Jews. Where are the same people calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, or the Saudi’s and UAE from Yemen?
I guess when it comes to defending one’s nation, or waging war on innocents, Israel is always held to a higher standard than the rest of the world.
I think the US general public is being ground down by "Israel/hamas fatigue" via the media and is conveniently kept from news about Ukraine, russia, or their own (American) country's many troubles. Not that the Middle East conflict isn't important, but it's also a useful "SQUIRRELL!!" for those who don't want reporting on other things.
I was glad to see that Zelensky was given some time on Sunday and tied russia (along with iran and n korea) to hamas.
"You're going to have to do something with these people besides continue to obliterate them"
Who, What, Where, When, and most importantly, Why? Whether it's Palestinians in the M.E. or MAGA in America, those questions are just about impossible to answer (well, the Why is the avoidance of mindless violence and bloodshed, but that's exactly what significant portions of those populations want). Whether one of these groups is justified in their anger and the other not is a rathole that offers no clarity, moral or otherwise. They're here, they're angry, and they're not going away. The government of Israel seems fine with a policy of slow obliteration, even after the failure of its eternal vigilance policy as a way of managing blowback from it. It's up to the people of Israel to decide if it is worth it, if it is making them more or less secure, and they're willing to accept where it leads them. Condemning American complicity is jake with me, but thinking America can dictate terms to Israel is just colonialism wrapped in goo-goo liberal idealism. The grownups in the War Room are still playing the Great Game because there's no better option on offer to avoid WW III, and Israel and Palestinians are trapped in a tar pit given as a parting gift from the British Empire and wrapped with a bow by the UN, the tar kept bubbling by resentful nations surrounding Israel and other actors playing the Great Game. It's in the Interest of the Palestinians and Israeli citizens to do almost anything else, but just like with MAGA in America, there are plenty of actors with plenty of incentive to keep the tar bubbling, so bubble it will.
I don't demand or expect that Rep. Mike Johnson (R.-Civitas Dei) begin every public statement with 'I donʼt endorse a Day Of The Rope, in fact I think it an evil idea.' but I'd like him to be on-record with that and some indication that he means it.
The crowds at the demos included both Jews (lefty, and of at least one of the most oppressive Chasidic sects) and people who'd be happy to see all Jews die, as well as what I'll wish (I never understood 'hope', it seems to indicate that my wishes could affect probabilities) were a large majority who just don't want their relatives maimed and killed and I don't demand that the latter continually denounce the murders that set-off this round, but I'd be happier knowing that they knew that Hamas are at best only slightly more concerned with keeping their loved ones whole than are the Israelis.
And, frankly, I think everyone does know what 'from the river to the sea' means, the differences are between those who support a secular, egalitarian, probably-at-least-social-democratic, single-state solution and those who want various levels of religiously-controlled state and various degrees of Judenreinschaft achieved with various degrees of murder, expulsion, and retention-with-oppression…and the same for secularists and disagreeing Islamists.
I managed to avoid even knowing this was happening thanks to my superpower – unbreachable obtusality. My in-law walked down there (Metro was so jammed she could not get on) and had much the same sort of vibe you did.
The 'from the river to the sea' phrase looks to have been weaponized the way swastikas were back in 1920. So it is in my view hard to say "just a phrase" without also saying 'that has been hijacked".
Just a couple of worthless thoughts...
But, nah, this is just the latest event in, by some measurement, a shit show of imperial and similar failures going back over a hundred of years so. Thanks to the Abraham accords (IYKYK), 10/7 may well have been the beginning of the last act of this historic tragedy. Thanks to same, the Palestinians have no global backers with much ability (if that much) to give any support of any kind of any good or help towards a resolution...
Meanwhile, for decades I've been a little amazed that the same people opposed to the founding of Israel -- the Hasids -- at some point after Likud (founded by ex-terrorists) became dominant decided to become dominant themselves. The irony is that they were opposed on religious grounds and the only thing that changed after 48 was their desire to gain some control in the state the opposed. Maybe it's me, maybe I just have some intellectual blockage or blindness preventing me from the reconciling the two positions.
But in the greater scheme of things, even I don't care what I think...
There is something--some immense defect--in people that makes them think that killing someone's family is the sure-fire way to get them to stop hating you. Nowhere is this displayed more frequently or consistently than in this conflict.
"Also I’m always interested in history, especially when I’m living in it,"
Who was it who observed that the AmEng idiom "you're history" is ... really revealing?
Funny how nobody questions why we are giving tons of money to a country with a higher standard of living than us with a military that is one of the more fearsome on earth, I bet our aid pretty much pays for their single payer health system.
I've been learning to trust Uncle Joe's instincts pretty far. Maybe he's got a plan for this.too.
I have no answer for what the United States can do to change the calculus in the Middle East. I don’t share the nationalism or religiosity of the players and can’t imagine what can be done to move them away from those motivations. But, both our politicians and media have decided that it’s up to us to do something about it. We protested the Vietnam War to demand our government stop its own actions. What are yesterday’s protesters doing, if not demanding our government stop others from committing war crimes? How exactly is it supposed to do that? Sure, stop sending weapons to anyone in the Middle East. Beyond that, what? Words, diplomacy, jaw-jaw while the actors engage in war-war. Anyway, when the fascists take over our government in 2024, I’m sure those protesters will find their demands ignored and themselves branded as enemies. The future doesn’t look good for the Middle East or us. Maybe we should focus on the threat at home.
Many Americans attitudes toward Palestine has evolved over the decades, and mostly for the better. What I've come to realize in my own transition can be summed in a more or less simple statement:
Your attitude towards whiteness is your attitude towards the Palestinians.
We can say it's not our fight, and of course if your neighbors aren't dying it's not. But our neighbors ARE dying — and from the same settler-colonialist attitudes that tells some group that white phosphorus is good crowd control against another. And by some WEIRD coincidence, the IDF trains US prison guards & police departments in their brutal tactics.
Another thing I always wondered about: there was an US initiative to "re-patriate" Black Americans to Liberia after emancipation. It kind of fizzled out, but the result could have very been an early sort of Israel.
I would agree with Tlaib's version of "from the river to the sea," which Mark Tessler links to the PLO's proposal for a "secular democratic state" in all of what's now Israel and the occupied territories. Aaron David Miller, the former diplomat and foreign policy wonk who knows way more about this issue than I ever will, still argues that the nationalist feelings on both the Israeli-Zionist side and the Palestinian side are so strong that they could not make a single state function. But it is also hard to see how the massive settlement policy in the West Bank could be unwound in a two-state solution.
Still, the options for a stable peace are pretty much limited to three: two states, a single democratic secular state, or a single undemocratic apartheid Jewish state with a soon-to-be-Palestinian majority. For the US to seriously push for its own current official position, a two-state solution, looks like the most likely way to get some real movement on a substantive solution going.
Just about this "from the river to the sea" slogan supposedly meaning THE OBILITERATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL, a two-state solution has been official US policy since at least the days of Kissinger, so OK, here's a map of Israel and here's a black Sharpie, draw me a Palestinian state that doesn't touch both the banks of the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Unless you're the kinda guy who'd use the Sharpie to put a single dot in the middle of the Sinai desert, can't be done.
Hell, even if you read it as "Return to the '67 borders", that clearly can't mean the destruction of the state of Israel, because I'm fairly sure there was a state of Israel prior to '67.
I will preface and say that I despise Netanyahu and his right-wing government: most of the true religious Israeli’s didn’t even believe in the state of Israel when the UN partitioned Palestine into a two state solution. Now these same religious groups are with the settlers; another messianic religious cult of fascists and religious psychopaths and zealots.
Secondly, part of the blame goes to Trump by putting an unqualified, biased amateur in charge of Middle East policy (Kushner). Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem; he allowed Israel to annex the Golan Heights and Trump enabled Netanyahu and his right-wing fascist whack-jobs to continue building illegal settlements in the West Bank, as well as restrict movements of the people in Gaza. All this without Israel having to make any concessions to the Palestinians or Syrians for that matter.
That said, a ceasefire with Hamas isn’t the answer. They are a terrorist organization who originated in the early 90’s as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; the same people who assassinated Sadat for making peace with Israel.
Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel and they executed terrorist attacks in the 90’s during the Oslo Accords. These people’s owe their very existence to destroying any opportunity for peace. Yet, ironically, so many want the two parties to form a ceasefire.
Hamas does not want peace. They care little for the Palestinian people. Instead of building bomb shelters for the Palestinians, they built a tunnel system to attack Israel. Are the Hamas leaders so obtuse that they don’t think Israel would retaliate after being attacked?
Furthermore, instead of investing the billions they received in foreign aid from the Arab and western world, they built rockets to attack Israel with. They use the Palestinians as human shields and a ceasefire only helps them rebuild and attack again.
Additionally, the absence of war is not peace; it’s the status quo. And since Gaza was granted self-rule in 2005, Hamas has used Gaza as Staging ground to destroy Israel.
Admittedly, Netanyahu and the right-wing settlers don’t want peace either. Netanyahu for decades has weakened the Palestinian Authority and played them against Hamas, to keep the Palestinian people at war with each other.
Bottom line: we had a ceasefire before. In fact, we end up with a ceasefire every two to three years or so: Hamas attacks, Israel bombs and invades, then a ceasefire is declared, and two to three years later it’s rinse, lather repeat.
Except each time Israel tightens their restrictions on the Palestinian’s and each invasion gets more deadly due to technological advances, Hamas increased capabilities, and its ability to recruit more cannon fodder as suicide psychos.
For peace to take hold, two parties need to be committed to making a deal that neither side may love, but both sides can live with. Right now, both sides are devoid of any true leadership committed to peace.
Therefore, America and the rest of the world needs to force both sides to the table, or let the two fend for themselves without any foreign military or humanitarian assistance.
As Einstein once said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.”
I’m done supporting insanity on either side!
Just some thoughts!...:)
FYI: I find it ironic that these college students find the need to support Hamas in this war given its atrocities against Jews. Where are the same people calling for Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, or the Saudi’s and UAE from Yemen?
I guess when it comes to defending one’s nation, or waging war on innocents, Israel is always held to a higher standard than the rest of the world.
A few people were protesting at the Raytheon facility down the road. I'm thinking of maybe a sign that says: Arm Ukraine , Not Israel..
I think the US general public is being ground down by "Israel/hamas fatigue" via the media and is conveniently kept from news about Ukraine, russia, or their own (American) country's many troubles. Not that the Middle East conflict isn't important, but it's also a useful "SQUIRRELL!!" for those who don't want reporting on other things.
I was glad to see that Zelensky was given some time on Sunday and tied russia (along with iran and n korea) to hamas.
By the way, Roy - not to be off-topic, but this story looks like something in your wheelhouse:
"Mike Johnson Admits He and His Son Monitor Each Other’s Porn Intake in Resurfaced Video
'I’m proud to tell ya, my son has got a clean slate," Speaker of the House says of his "accountability partner'"
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/mike-johnson-son-monitor-porn-intake-covenant-eyes-1234870634/
"You're going to have to do something with these people besides continue to obliterate them"
Who, What, Where, When, and most importantly, Why? Whether it's Palestinians in the M.E. or MAGA in America, those questions are just about impossible to answer (well, the Why is the avoidance of mindless violence and bloodshed, but that's exactly what significant portions of those populations want). Whether one of these groups is justified in their anger and the other not is a rathole that offers no clarity, moral or otherwise. They're here, they're angry, and they're not going away. The government of Israel seems fine with a policy of slow obliteration, even after the failure of its eternal vigilance policy as a way of managing blowback from it. It's up to the people of Israel to decide if it is worth it, if it is making them more or less secure, and they're willing to accept where it leads them. Condemning American complicity is jake with me, but thinking America can dictate terms to Israel is just colonialism wrapped in goo-goo liberal idealism. The grownups in the War Room are still playing the Great Game because there's no better option on offer to avoid WW III, and Israel and Palestinians are trapped in a tar pit given as a parting gift from the British Empire and wrapped with a bow by the UN, the tar kept bubbling by resentful nations surrounding Israel and other actors playing the Great Game. It's in the Interest of the Palestinians and Israeli citizens to do almost anything else, but just like with MAGA in America, there are plenty of actors with plenty of incentive to keep the tar bubbling, so bubble it will.
I don't demand or expect that Rep. Mike Johnson (R.-Civitas Dei) begin every public statement with 'I donʼt endorse a Day Of The Rope, in fact I think it an evil idea.' but I'd like him to be on-record with that and some indication that he means it.
The crowds at the demos included both Jews (lefty, and of at least one of the most oppressive Chasidic sects) and people who'd be happy to see all Jews die, as well as what I'll wish (I never understood 'hope', it seems to indicate that my wishes could affect probabilities) were a large majority who just don't want their relatives maimed and killed and I don't demand that the latter continually denounce the murders that set-off this round, but I'd be happier knowing that they knew that Hamas are at best only slightly more concerned with keeping their loved ones whole than are the Israelis.
And, frankly, I think everyone does know what 'from the river to the sea' means, the differences are between those who support a secular, egalitarian, probably-at-least-social-democratic, single-state solution and those who want various levels of religiously-controlled state and various degrees of Judenreinschaft achieved with various degrees of murder, expulsion, and retention-with-oppression…and the same for secularists and disagreeing Islamists.