Israel / Palestine News Thread

[Hardkill]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It was a liberal democracy in its ideals from the 1700s, but the actualization of those ideals takes a lot of time and is far from ideal.

The US has always been a flawed democracy or illiberal democracy.

However, I am starting to believe that their has now been too much democracy. 

We should go back to having the major party presidential nominees in the United States chosen through a process dominated by party elites like what happened before the 1970s. That way the political elites could make sure that someone like Trump never gets nominated for president ever again.

At the same time, we of course need to get rid of the electoral college because it no longer properly represents the will of the people. Without the electoral college neither Trump nor W. Bush never would've become president.

Furthermore, I strongly believe that we need to revive the Fairness Doctrine in a revised, modern form, applicable to all media outlets in the US to promote balanced reporting in all media outlets in this day and age. Otherwise, I fear that our current media environment will truly destroy our democracy.

Edited 8 hours ago by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

We should go back to having the major party presidential nominees in the United States chosen through a process dominated by party elites like what happened before the 1970s.

That's a terrible idea.

The problem is that our democracy is corrupted by special interests, elites, corporations, and low-info partisan media. That's what needs fixing.

Democracy comes in many degrees of quality. It's not a binary. And this quality needs to be up-kept because it naturally deteriorates.

Edited 8 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Hardkill]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

That's a terrible idea.

The problem is that our democracy is corrupted by special interests, elites, corporations, and low-info media. That's what needs fixing.

Yeah, but who nominated Trump for president in 2016 and 2024? The idiotic right-wing voters who are ignorant, racist, and xenophobic did.

You even said before a number of times that too much democracy or too much populism causes complete and utter incompetent leadership.

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Hardkill said:

Yeah, but who nominated Trump for president in 2016 and 2024? The idiotic right-wing voters who are ignorant, racist, and xenophobic did.

But that's proper. Leadership needs to reflect the public. You can't skirt that.

[Hardkill]

36 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

But that's proper. Leadership needs to reflect the public. You can't skirt that.

I really think now that most people in this country have no business voting in any elections. It should only be the most educated and the most culturally developed citizens of our country who should have the right to vote. What's wrong with that?

If you're saying that leadership needs to reflect the public then why don't workers democratically elected the leaders of their companies? There is a good reason why that never happens. You know that.

Even Osho said before that democracy is so flawed because it essentially means "rule by the retarded and for the retarded..." We need real meritocracy whereby you need to have credible qualifications to be elected as a member of Congress, to be elected a governor of a state, and especially to be elected vice president and president of the United States of America.

Besides, most people don't really care that much about voting, especially these days. They want someone who can govern well, the government to have enough checks and balances, to not have corporate interests take over our government and the rest of the country, and to not have the wealthy elites become robber barons.

Edited 7 hours ago by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

It should only be the most educated and the most cultural developed citizens of our country who should have the right to vote. What's wrong with that?

What's wrong is that such elites are still biased and selfish, so they would abuse that power and not be sensitive to the needs of the lower classes.

We have done aristocracy before and it doesn't work too well.

Lower classes need to have votes because they have a unique survival agenda which elites do not understand nor represent.

Edited 8 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Raze]

22 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Yeah, but who nominated Trump for president in 2016 and 2024? The idiotic right-wing voters who are ignorant, racist, and xenophobic did.

You even said before a number of times that too much democracy or too much populism causes complete and utter incompetent leadership.

 

Except first trump had to win a primary which was decided by just 10 percent of voters and their votes were split between many candidates. Then in the general it was basically just him and Hillary with tons of special interest funds.

If we had banned money in politics, required ranked choice voting, and automatic third party ballot access, it wouldn’t have happened. 

Edited 7 hours ago by Raze

[Hardkill]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What's wrong is that such elites are still biased and selfish, so they would abuse that power and not be sensitive to the needs of the lower classes.

We have done aristocracy before and it doesn't work too well.

Lower classes need to have votes because they have a unique survival agenda which elites do not understand nor represent.

The problem with aristocracy was that it was primarily the rich and the political elites. Many of them actually weren't highly intelligent and were corrupted by status and wealth. I am saying what if you had the hard working intelligentsia who make a good living but aren't spoiled by wealth and power?

8 minutes ago, Raze said:

Except first trump had to win a primary which was decided by just 10 percent of voters and their votes were split between many candidates. Then in the general it was basically just him and Hillary with tons of special interest funds.

If we had banned money in politics, ranked choice voting, and automatic third party ballot access, it wouldn’t have happened. 

You do have a point.

Edited 7 hours ago by Hardkill

[Leo Gura]

Let's return this thread to Israel/Palestine.

You can open a new thread to discuss democracy or whatever else.

Edited 6 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Raze]

 

Edited 7 hours ago by Raze

[Nivsch]

4 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

They consider the West Bank Israel

West bank is originally a Jordanian land.

4 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

Israel does not recognize Palestine as a soverign country,

*Israel's Right wing. 

[Nivsch]

4 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

Come on Leo. Do you really believe that? Cant you see how they bully and oppress Palestinians which they occupy.

The Palestinians have 50% of the responsibility they are seen as a constant threat and as an enemy in the eyes of many Israelis and Right wing governments.

Edited 6 hours ago by Nivsch

[Nivsch]

Aside to key people from Israeli society, I will start to add official (translated to english) twitts of top Israeli mainstream channels that get the highest rating above all with a big gap:

Channel "Kan" 11 ,Channel 12 and Channel 13 .

There is also channel 14 which is the rigid very ideology driven Right wing one but 1. Has far less rating and popularity, and 2. talkings from there are anyway overemphasized here so there is no point to add more of the same but rather to show the side which rarely seen in the foreign media but seen the most in our media and represents better how things are seen from the Israeli eyes.

Edited 3 hours ago by Nivsch

[zazen]

7 hours ago, Karmadhi said:

USA was not a liberal democracy until the civil rights act.

I think we have different ideas of a liberal democracy maybe.

To me a liberal democracy is a country that treats all humans as equal and does not torture, abuse, rape, murder people even if they are not citizens

Interesting video:

A lot of Americans like to hail the constitution as an inked embodiment of their progress - they assume a purity of purpose that never existed in the founding of that document. The initial Constitution didn’t extend voting rights to non-whites, women or non-landowners - it was for white male landowners (the wealthy elite). As voting rights expanded, the value of voting contracted as elites consolidated and entrenched themselves in the state apparatus, what often gets called ‘the establishment’ or ‘deep state’. That’s why critics of democracy including Westerners themselves feel disillusioned and often say democracy is more an illusion than a reality - because special interests (elites) still control things just as before.

As Leo said, ideals take time to materialise. I’ll add that vested interested also use those ideals as a cloak of rhetoric to cover up underlying power dynamics, where that power actually lies and who it serves. Similarly, the idea or ideal of a chosen people gave moral cover to European settlers in the new Americas and set the tone for justifying their “manifest density” - that they are divinely ordained to expand and claim land. This is where Israel and America are similar, except that America has fulfilled its manifestation (domestically) and Israel hasn’t - though this same attitude still causes America to seek and maintain global hegemony which is why critics claim America or ‘the West’ hasn’t evolved from its colonial days.

Early European settlers were heavily influenced by the Bible as it was the most widely read book at that time. This is why in America places have Biblically referenced names like Salem, Jericho, Bethlehem, Hebron and Zion. Thomas Jefferson who is considered a man of Enlightenment said the following: “The acquisition of the country from the Indians is to be carried on by the extension of our settlements..by driving them back within narrower limits.” Sounds similar to what’s coming out of Israel today.

 

Edited 2 hours ago by zazen

[Davino]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

What's crazy is that Islam recognizes as valid all the major Jewish prophets and they believe in the same God as Jews. Yet they treat Jews like aliens.

Not only that, Islam incorporates the Torah as part of its few sacred literature:

Quote

The religious texts of Islam include the Quran (the central text), several previous texts (considered by Muslims to be previous revelations from Allah): including the Tawrat (Torah) revealed to the prophets and messengers amongst the Children of Israel, the Zabur (Psalms) revealed to Dawud (David) and the Injil (the Gospel) revealed to Isa (Jesus), and the hadith (deeds and sayings attributed to Muhammad, which comprise the sunnah).

Wikipedia

One needs to understand Islam through the lens of being the last spiritual tradition in the Abrahamic Religious school of thought and mysticism.

Edited 2 hours ago by Davino