zazen

Nicely put. The dynamic and act are the same, the aesthetic is different. A distinction can be made that civilizational development amplifies the tools society has (technology, weapons etc) while cultural development awakens the consciousness of the user using those tools. The problem is modernity has amplified our tools to the point they can destroy the earth, but have we awakened enough to be able to wield that power well enough. it's easy to see the shiny buildings and sophisticated military and think 'oh their developed' and equate that with moral value and development.

If Israel as claimed is the only democracy in Middle east, by the people and for the people - doesn't that represent the people of Israel? If it doesn't, then can we also say the same for the Palestinians - that Hamas don't represent the Palestinians as a whole and shouldn't be demonised or collectively punished. Should the Israeli's be collectively punished by the Muslim world for what the few politicians do or the settlers?

Members of the Israeli cabinet have said things along the lines of Palestinians are responsible sympathizers for Hamas implying they should all be dealt with - and that's in a democracy which represents the people of Israel more accurately than Hamas represents the Palestinian people. There hasn't been an election in Gaza since 2006, when the 2006 election took place a large portion of the population didn't vote as they were underage or just being born. Those children born in 2006 are now 18 years old and had no say in that election yet are held to account. How can people lay blame to Palestinians for electing Hamas 18 years ago when majority didn't even elect them but from the other side can't see the genocidal degrading language of the the Israeli politicians who actually were elected into power in much recent times by Israelis themselves - yet say those far right politicians don't represent them? So yes, Israel is such a 'developed' nation with more of a representative democracy - and what does that representation reflect in the politicians they currently have? I think this whole paradigm of 'less developed' and 'more developed' glosses over the fact that the same dynamics can be taking place from any level of development, just in a different aesthetic/colour. A stage red society can kill with tools, a stage orange society can also kill but with a different more sophisticated set of tools - same dynamic and act (killing) but different manifestation and aesthetic. A stage green person can be a warrior the same way a stage red person can - their just a social justice warrior, but in the name of stage green values they can carry out similar injustices as a stage red tribal warrior.

Wonder why they can just call for ceasefire and instead call for just a pause. Tomorrow Hezbollah will be making a statement - could be a big day and change the trajectory of what's to come.

They won't allow a single state, especially not after this attack. Too much bad blood and broken trust that will take generations to mend perhaps. Also, demographically Palestinians will outnumber Israeli's which in a democracy means they will start to have more representation and power eventually - the Israeli's won't allow that. A two state is difficult to achieve also due to distrust of being neighbours and the Palestinians attacking one day - as members of this forum have mentioned. In fact, it won't even be allowed to be a state in the true sense as they won't allow it control of its borders or to have a military - essentially occupation light. The West Bank which could be the Palestinians state is now full of settlers who are far right, moving them will be next to impossible, especially after Ben Gvir has armed them with guns. I understand the difficulty Israel faces in eradicating Hamas whilst not committing war crimes/minimising casualties and having the world come at them for it - but maybe this simply doesn't have a military solution but a diplomatic one. At least the most basic thing would be to lift the blockade, siege and occupation and stop funding/protecting and giving impunity to settlers in the West Bank , and holding them to account. The settlers who have killed Palestinians in the West Bank have not even been charged.

For a start not carpet bombing which has probably killed those very hostages. Not cutting of water, electricity, food etc for the civilians to suffer and the world to get more enraged. Those actions alone are sucking Israels support globally and only enraging the world further against it. Using special ops forces to go in and take out Hamas - only targeting Hamas once they get confirmation of their location. When an entire area is levelled, how can Israel claim that Hamas was in every one of those buildings including the only main bakery the Gazans were using? They should use precision strikes on key locations. If they bring buildings down to rubble, yet claim Hamas are in tunnels, that rubble has now just made it harder to get access to those very tunnels and only given more potential for booby traps and ambush spots amongst the rubble. They could establish good faith by ending restrictions and restarting the peace process.

100% Bro come on, I was at the London protest and there were no Swastikas - in fact there were plenty of Jews there. There was one guy waving a ISIS flag who discredits the whole cause though and who was rightly taken away by police and investigated. Agreeing to eliminate Hamas is different to agreeing to eliminate them in a way that causes mass civilian death or displacing over a million people. Your talking as if the people here who support Palestinians (or protestors) are calling for the destruction of Israel, when really its about calling for the existence for an Israel that treats and recognises the existence of Palestinians as equals and stops the blockade, siege and occupation. That's the thing, Hamas came into power in 2006, with no election since then. The children at the time never voted, and the babies born the year of 2006 who are now 18 never voted for them either - 50% of Gaza are under the age of 18 - yet they suffer because of falsely conflating that they voted Hamas in.

Whilst its good to not take on the identity of victimhood and embrace responsibility, there definitely are victims of circumstance that exist. Like Leo always talks about Holism and the connectivity of things, the web of life affects things and spills over to affect other areas. Gen Z who have mental health problems amounting to half of them for example, is that self induced or a product of their environment - the atomisation, loneliness and lifestyle modernity provides. It's good to embrace agency but the extreme is to take the stance of hyper agency - to believe despite any situation its all on the individual to make something of himself. The right embrace responsibility and claim to be more rational then the left, yet using rationality and the logic of cause and effect - one can establish a chain of cause and affects that leads people to dire conditions that can fracture them and cripple their development to the point that everything in their life is their responsibility is absurd, inconsiderate and inhumane. ''Critics argue that these policies have hindered the economic, social, and infrastructural development of Gaza. Some of the key ways in which Israel is accused of hindering Gaza's development include: 1. Blockade: Israel has imposed a naval and land blockade on Gaza since 2007, following the Hamas takeover of the territory. This blockade restricts the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, severely limiting its access to essential supplies, including building materials, medical equipment, and fuel. 2. Restricted Access: The blockade and restrictions on movement make it difficult for Gazans to access markets, job opportunities, and medical care in Israel and the West Bank. 3. Military Operations: Periodic Israeli military operations in Gaza have caused significant damage to infrastructure, homes, and public services, making reconstruction and development challenging. 4. Limitations on Exports: Restrictions on Gaza's ability to export goods have hampered economic development and job creation. 5. Electricity and Water: Gaza experiences frequent electricity shortages due to its dependence on Israel for a significant portion of its electricity supply. Access to clean water is also limited. 6.Settlements and Land Seizures: The construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are considered illegal under international law, is viewed as an obstacle to peace and a hindrance to the development of a future Palestinian state. It's important to note that these issues are deeply intertwined with the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict and security concerns. Supporters of Israeli policies argue that they are implemented to ensure Israel's security and protect its citizens from threats emanating from Gaza.''

It takes going to the extreme end of the spectrum to make a point clear. Yes, maybe the Jews would make a Singapore out of Gaza, but that would be despite their conditions, not because of them. That doesn't make the dire conditions they would have to work through right legally or morally. If one kind of people have higher IQ and are able to create something greater than those with less IQ, does that mean its just to provide that group with lesser opportunity? The West fights for equality of opportunity, not necessarily outcome, and basic human rights, whether the use of those rights results in a Singapore or a mid level Arabian town is up to the people those rights are bestowed upon. And yes, there are parts of the world where basic needs such as food, water and electricity don't exist, but that exists more so as a natural state of their impoverished circumstance and geography - not a nurtured state of affairs at the hands of men imposed on them.

If the Amish started to get prosecuted savagely for their unorthodox way of life, and they were then sent to modern day Israel (their prophets birth place - Jesus) as a safe haven, they then started to grow in number and fight against and eventually subjugate the Jewish Israelis and put them into ghettos and into an apartheid like system - then the Jews would revolt, as they did in the Warsaw ghetto uprising against the Nazi's, would that revolt be justified? The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a heroic but ultimately tragic event during World War II, in which Jewish residents of the Warsaw Ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland rebelled against the German forces.

@Lila9 That ISIS flag could have been easily put there to associate them and use that as propaganda - Israel has a history of lying multiple times, or it could be one of the terrorists carrying it yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean the whole organisation is ISIS. They chase and kill LGBT and women and children for not following Sharia? Do you have any proof for this? They are a movement who happen to be religious, that doesn't mean they are primarily a radical religious movement like ISIS. Are the settlers a radical religious movement? Or are there settlers who just happen to be religious and yes, among them their are radical religious individuals as well. Cope paste and search the below as the link isn't able to embed: https://time.com/6329776/hamas-isis-gaza/ Some quotes from the article: ''Gershon Baskin, who has been Israel’s lead hostage negotiator with Hamas since 2006, told me recently: “Its acts of terrorism resemble ISIS, but they don’t have the same ideology.” ''Hamas is religiously conservative, but it does not ruthlessly harass or kill non-Muslims in Gaza simply because of their faith or religious comportment. It tolerates women who don’t wear the hijab, people who sport tattoos, and teenagers who listen to American music. Christians and churches also coexist with Muslims in the Hamas-run enclave. None of this would have been possible under ISIS, a far more religiously extremist organization that tortured and mutilated people to compel their adherence to an ultra-radical version of Islam.'' ''comparisons between Hamas and ISIS abound in part because they can be politically useful. Insisting that Hamas is ISIS enables Israeli leaders to muffle criticism of the country’s treatment of Palestinians, including airstrikes in Gaza since Oct. 7 that have left at least 8,000 people dead, two-thirds of them women and children. The conflation could also help win over U.S. leaders and public opinion. '' Whilst having a religious state isn't ideal as opposed to a secular one, neither is having a ethno-state. In an Islamic state of past non Muslims including Jews lived in peace and prospered, although that wouldn't happen in a radical Islamic state like ISIS. But Israel are racist, they don't even allow DNA tests because they want Israeli's to believe they are only from this land and they mock and denigrate non white Jews - even sterilising the large Ethiopian Jewish population. Israel Forcibly Injected African Immigrants with Birth Control, Report Claims (forbes.com) ''This weekend, a report revealing that African women immigrating to Israel were subjected to mandatory contraceptive injections, effectively amounting to forced (if temporary) sterilization made global headlines. Some 130,000 Ethiopians, most of them Jewish, live in Israel. The community experiences higher poverty and unemployment rates than the rest of the country's Jewish population. In the past decade, the birth rate among Ethiopian-Israelis has declined by at least 20 percent. Advocacy groups now claim this decline is the result of a birth control regimen forced upon Ethiopian immigrant women. According to an article in Haaretz, an Israeli news source, one Ethiopian immigrant said that the doctors who injected her claimed that “people who frequently give birth suffer.”

@Something Funny @DawnC From time stamp 3:23 on discusses this very predicament - if Hamas / terrorists were in Israel, would 80 civilian causalities be killed as collateral damage to target 1 terrorist. Also, the video of Palestinians celebrating the breaking of the fence-border isn't necessarily them celebrating Hamas terrorising Israel - they didn't know at the time what was going on even. Their celebrating for the first time seeing the prison walls coming down - if you've been trapped and born in one who wouldn't? It's the same way people equivocate Palestine protests as a protest for Hamas, and getting scared 'oh look how many terrorist supporters there are in our Western lands.' Too easy to conflate. The law of distinction in warfare is completely getting overlooked in Israels actions. Special ops are there for a reason and aren't being used, instead bombardment of half of the little land Gazan's had left, in fact the only thing they had left as refugees were their homes, even that is taken away from them. And Israeli's think this is going to make them safer? These bombardments are barely getting to Hamas, their in the tunnels waiting it out for Israel to come in and be trapped. Small groups of IDF soldiers are going in. Yesterday members of the Knesset were crying at the losses they suffered already, and that's before a full invasion has even started.

@Gennadiy1981 I'm guessing it's a mixture of wisdom passed down from the ages, common patterns that are observed in nature, vagueness and self fulfilling them. Patterns such as that the region of Persian has been home to great civilisations before. Vagueness because Gog and Magog could be interpreted to be anybody if talked about vaguely. Self fulling because the prophecy themselves influence our behaviour towards them, making something abstract into something concrete. Past historical description shouldn't need to be made present day prescription, but people who take it as such make it more a probability than a possibility.

@Lila9 I see in your bio it's written Hamas is ISIS. They differ in that Hamas are resisting to keep a home land they can call a state, whilst ISIS are fighting for a global caliphate. Hamas are localist and nationalist, ISIS are Islamist globalists using the means of terror to achieve their goal - ISIS are far more extreme, radical and barbaric who interpret Islam in a radical manner. Hamas are not terrorists as much as they are resistant fighters who use terrorist tactics for their end goal, in the same way Israel uses terror tactics for their end goal. The question can be, what is a better end goal? One which resists in order to exist as a state, or one who expels and displaces those for the establishment of not just a state, but an ethno-state.

The true axis of evil is the perverted versions of power, profit and prophecy meeting together in this Israel/Palestine situation. The power-profit-prophecy complex. The problem is that the incentives of power (geopolitical), profits (military industrial complex) and prophecy (religion) are dangerously converging. Power and profits have converged before with religious undertones, but this convergence is on the holy land itself in which all three Abrahamic faiths prophesize their end times. Location, location, location.. The ignorant take end time prophecies that are myth as literal, and self fulfil them into existence to hasten whatever good they are promised from it (coming of a Messiah and the return of Jesus). Many problems stem from taking myth that is fiction for a fact that is literal, not realising that the value of fiction is in its functionality, rather than its factuality. Many problems further stem from viewing prophets as the spokesperson of God, rather than the spokesperson on God. Speaking on current events becomes important when the current events at play are such currents that risk the potential to drown all that is precious to us.

In times of inequality and when the economies of empire and nations aren't doing well people look for a group to blame and this can tend towards Jews as they are a successful minority - that has happened historically. But, criticising Jews objectively for certain actions doesn't make people anti-semitic either. If you let emotion and identity consume you, you will personalise criticism and feel attacked. People feel that criticism means their emotions or past grievances of suffering the Jews have been through are invalidated, when that clearly isn't the case.

@Nivsch I'm not against Israel, but its current form and its actions are against the interest of Israelis and to a wider extent Jews who live abroad threatened by increasing anti Semitism. Israelis have the IDF to protect them in mostly Jewish cities in Israel - what about the Jews living abroad in multicultural places - the arrogance and emboldened far right of Israel and its reactions to the Hamas attack put them at risk worldwide where they IDF don't exist to protect them. They also put at risk Israel itself because of the complacency arrogance has brought them and the thinking that US will back them no matter what. I live in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in London mixed with Muslims, I have Israeli friends who live in Israel and some from the West who only go to Eilat to party in the summers and relatives in Nazareth who say they can't even post on Gaza on social media fearing the IDF will come cause trouble, so I'm aware of the different perspectives. I'd suggest watching this to hear a different perspective to the one Israeli's are propagandised into and which may work against them in the long run:

I didn't claim that, but that is what some very smart generals and military strategists have said - look up Scott Ritter and Douglas Macgregor. The IDF know so much that their border got breached by 'undeveloped' 'barbarian' 'animals' apparently.

He said could be tunnels - yet that justifies bombing a refugee camp. Ridiculous. They don't know how their border got breached yet they know where Hamas is and want the world to believe their 'targeting'. When you've got western mass media pundits deciding this shit is too evil to stake their reputations on, you're losing. Even Wolf Blitzer ( who literally worked for AIPAC ) is pushing back against an IDF official about this and Piers Morgan. CNN's Wolf Blitzer: You knew that there were innocent civilians in that refugee camp, right? IDF spox: This is the tragedy of war. We told them to move south. Blitzer: So you decided to drop the bomb anyway. IDF spox: We’re doing everything we can to minimize civilian deaths. 'All these pundits are noticing the same thing, history may look very, very unkindly on those who supported this massacre. Not even the worst empire propagandists want that to be their lasting legacy.' Another week, another loss for Israels global reputation only to fuel yet another weekend ahead of even greater protests around the world. But Israelis think this is making them safer and that this is defence when really it is creating more hostility for them to be ever defensive against their whole lives.

@Gennadiy1981 Who says Israel is winning? The IDF are made of mostly reservists who aren't professionally battle hardened soldiers. They've just made a intact city into rubble which only makes the terrain even harder to manoeuvre, paths will be laid as traps to go through and then encircled and ambushed by Hamas. These 'enemies' aren't that of decades ago, they have advanced as well and have capabilities that will make it very difficulty even for the US=Nato who are worn down by the Ukraine war which they have failed in also. The best case scenario is the IDF go in, start suffering casualties that the domestic population won't be okay with and the US come to end it and claim a 'strategic victory' to appease Israelis that something has been done about the Hamas attack when in reality it hasn't. Then bolster up the border defences and don't allow it to be breached ever again. But even US are hawkish on war so I doubt this is going to end well.

The narrative managers are still struggling with the problem that when they announced that Palestinians had escaped from their concentration camp and killed a bunch of Israelis, an inconvenient number of people started asking “Wait, what were they doing in a concentration camp?”

Propaganda uses decent human emotion to support indecent inhumane actions. That IDF video 'message to gazans' seemed to be propoganda geared more towards the West, to make their actions in Gaza more palatable. Global sentiment turns against Israel but the one populace they can't allow to turn is that of Americans - especially Jewish Americans as that would upend US support and writing a blank cheque for their interests. Also, the message was to Gazan's but they cut their internet and conducted it in English - make it make sense lol. Similar happened with Iraq, the baby incubator story was fabricated to justify the horror that Iraq went through. The marrying of religious end day prophecies with military industrial complex and the profit motive is going to wreck the region and have ripple affects globally. The worst part is - Israel will only lean more far right because demographically the ones having the most babies are the more orthodox settler types (4 babies on average compared to 2 for more secular Israelis). What makes up 10-15% of the population will eventually become 30%+ and have a huge sway on politics and policies.

Israels current policy is that of a child frozen in an adults body. People are emoting rather than thinking in any clear way. If Israel wanted to 'win' this and secure a better peace and prosperity for themselves in the region they could stop the bombing and cutting of water electrics and food, call Hamas to the negotiating table and show the world who they claim Hamas to be which is barbaric and unreasonable ie unable to come to peace in negotiation - even better would be further to include some concessions to the Palestinians in any deals such as the Abraham accords. It would be by taking the moral high ground and not isolating itself from the world by what their doing now, including regressing of normalising with their neighbours especially Saudi Arabia. In fact, they are only uniting the two factions of Islam that are at odds with each other - Sunnis (Turkey) and Shia (Iran), they've done in one week what those sides didn't manage in 1400 years. If Israel thinks pushing Gazans into the Sinai dessert will resolve this their mistaken, their only pushing the problem further away by land but in the process stirring up more hate and an arc of revenge that will visit them in the future.

''I see people saying the US gets nothing out of its alliance with Israel and it's all one way, which is inaccurate. The interests of the US empire are massively advanced by having a nuclear-armed intelligence proxy in a strategically crucial resource-rich region constantly inflicting violence and chaos on non-US-aligned nations. Perhaps more importantly, Israel's existence serves as the ultimate argument against ever removing US troops from the middle east, which it doesn't want to do because of its interest in controlling the world's fossil fuel supply. As Joe Biden said, "If Israel didn't exist, we would have to invent it." People often point to Israel's aggressive lobbying efforts in Washington to argue that the alliance is not mutually beneficial, but lobbying is just one of the adhesives which holds an unofficial, unacknowledged empire together. You may be certain that if Washington didn't want Israel manipulating US politics in its own interests, it wouldn't be happening; the US government has plenty of laws at its disposal to shut that down if it wants. Israel has no qualms about pushing the US to give it the most it can get for the smallest possible return because it understands, quite correctly, that in the end Israel is still just an ally of convenience and the US will throw it under the bus the moment it's in the empire's interests to do so. Israel has an extensive history of aligning with hostile and unpredictable powers to advance its own interests, like the anti-semitic Christian Zionists and supporting the rise of Hamas. So the two power structures use each other for whatever they can get in exchange, and because of the way Israel was set up from the beginning their interests are aligned far more often than not.''

''We're being told that Israel needs to kill civilians by the thousands to eliminate Hamas, because Hamas must be destroyed to achieve a lasting peace. Every part of this is transparently false. Firstly the premise that Hamas must be eliminated to achieve peace is fallacious; peace can be achieved by eliminating the abuses and righting the wrongs which gave rise to Hamas in the first place. There's no rational reason to believe Hamas would continue to exist in its current iteration or keep waging violent resistance if the theft and injustice from 1948 onward were rolled back, refugees had the right to return, apartheid abuses were ended, and people were no longer kept in a giant concentration camp where they are deprived of basic human needs. Secondly the premise that you can bomb people into accepting an abusive status quo is self-evidently absurd. Even if Israel kills every single member of Hamas, there will be hundreds of thousands of survivors of this onslaught who see the depravity of Israel and refuse to accept it. You think all these orphaned boys and all these men who saw their loved ones ripped apart by military explosives are just going to be cool with the status quo from here on out? Of course not. And Israel knows this, which is why its preferred solution is to kick all survivors of this onslaught out of Gaza and into refugee camps in the Sinai desert. It knows that nothing it's doing will actually work and it refuses to make the reparations that will work, so its only other option is the elimination of Gazans one way or the other. Ethnic cleansing and mass displacement is not "peace" by any stretch of the imagination, but it might allow Israel to keep its abusive status quo intact. Those are Israel's only real options for sustainable stability: either right all the wrongs which led to this, or go the opposite direction and inflict far more wrongs to answer the Palestinian question once and for all. It's pretty clear watching all this that Israel has opted for the latter.''