91 wrote:
The ideology you are putting forward, is utterly simplistic. Your views lead you to say nice things about bad people.
I recommend this book:
Double Bind: The Muslim Right, the Anglo-American Left, and Universal Human RightsIn it, the author (who is a left-wing feminist) takes the view that the Anglo-American left has thrown itself in with some quite horrible religious fascists (the Muslim far-right) in an effort to seem progressive and, in doing so, has utterly abandoned and vilified its genuine left-wing counterparts fighting for freedom, secularism and democracy in many Muslim countries. She is not a fan of the EDL or the anti-Islam right, but she puts the case forward that it's quite possible to be against certain American and British foreign policies without turning into a West-hating lover of religious totalitarians.
With
thomas81, it's all or nothing thinking and it's utterly destructive.
Disliking hardline unionism in Northern Ireland doesn't mean that you throw your hat into the ring with extremist physical force republicans and hate all things British/Unionist.
Disliking certain aspects of Israeli policy (the control of Judea and Samaria is in itself a controversial subject in Israel proper, with many Zionists wanting to eventually leave the West Bank) doesn't mean you start defending awful genocidal, racist Islamist terrorists.
Disliking elements of the Tories doesn't mean you lurch to the extreme far-left.
Moderation is the key. Political views are often nuanced. I've met left-wingers that I've agreed with on some things but strongly disagreed with on others. I've met right-wingers that I've agreed with on some things and disagreed with on others. I've met all kinds of people that I've disagreed with.
He has an extreme black and white view of the world promoted by ideology. I'm happy to have an open opinion on some things. I'm still thinking about whether we should keep the BBC, abolish it altogether or keep some parts of it for example. I'm also in several minds about NHS reform and all sorts of things.
91 wrote:
Israel exists, it is not going anywhere. Palestinians exist, they are not going anywhere both need to live together and making the cases that you have been do not help matters, one bit.
It promotes hatred and war and enmity and more people's misery.
It's great that you can promote that kind of division from another continent but miserable if you actually have to live and breathe that every single day.
And of course, the Israel-'Palestine' conflict is actually pretty marginal compared to the unimaginable horrors carried out all around the Middle East at this very moment.
I would love to see a genuine solution to this conflict that all sides are happy with. Unfortunately, I have very little hope for the future, having considered the past. If anything is to change, Palestinian society in general is going to have to undergo an unbelievable sea change in order for this to happen. There is more than enough space for both sets of people to have their own state. The Arabs and Palestinians have to accept basically what they have rejected since the 1930s, and that is the fact that Jews are not
dhimmis in the Middle East, but are equal citizens in that part of the world. This (unfortunately) goes back to Islam and Muhammad, which is why I have so little hope.
Interestingly, I actually found an article, written by Efraim Karsh. What he said actually surprised me greatly. He paints most pre-1948 Mandatory Arabs in a very positive light and says that most Arabs did not want to fight and didn't have a problem with the emerging State of Israel but were whipped up into a frenzy by powerful Arab political figures of the time.
Quote:
1948, Israel, and the Palestinians: Annotated TextSixty years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the only state in the world that is subjected to a constant outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and blood libels; whose policies and actions are obsessively condemned by the international community; and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged not only by its Arab enemies but by segments of advanced opinion in the West.During the past decade or so, the actual elimination of the Jewish state has become a cause célèbre among many of these educated Westerners. The “one-state solution,” as it is called, is a euphemistic formula proposing the replacement of Israel by a state, theoretically comprising the whole of historic Palestine, in which Jews will be reduced to the status of a permanent minority. Only this, it is said, can expiate the “original sin” of Israel’s founding, an act built (in the words of one critic) “on the ruins of Arab Palestine” and achieved through the deliberate and aggressive dispossession of its native population.
This claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian “refugee problem” forms, indeed, the central plank in the bill of particulars pressed by Israel’s alleged victims and their Western supporters. It is a charge that has hardly gone undisputed. As early as the mid-1950’s, the eminent American historian J.C. Hurewitz undertook a systematic refutation,[1] and his findings were abundantly confirmed by later generations of scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most influential of Israel’s revisionist “new historians,” and one who went out of his way to establish the case for Israel’s “original sin,” grudgingly stipulated that there was no “design” to displace the Palestinian Arabs.
Last edited by Tequila on 30 Oct 2013, 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
30 Oct 2013, 11:43 am
This man is his hero!
