Trump Consciousness

Because they are murdering lots of people in cold blood on the streets, there’s a difference.

I admit, there are lots of similar injustices around the world. I highlight Israel because they claim to be a civilised, democratic society and they’re closely allied to us in the UK and many others. I don’t accept that they’re a civilised society. I find it fascinating how they’re actions are ‘accepted’ by us in the west. It’s both interesting and troubling.

But you don't judge the Palestinians who also murder people in the streets in cold blood - and who would murder more if they could tear down that wall and get in?

They have a legit perspective that needs to be understood and appreciated, but the Israelis do not?

Maybe the Israeli soldier that shot the woman was just doing his job + maybe a Palestinian rocket hit his house where his wife and children were sleeping. Maybe his mother was killed by a suicide bomber. See? This kind of emotional story telling cuts both ways.

IMO, you are a Muslim and/or some kind of paid activist.
 
Haha, Once again you have dodged addressing a point that would be challenging to your position.

These things are noticed, you know.

They may well be noticed. What may also be noticed is how bias can warp one’s senses. I will answer your point in the unlikely event that anyone’s interested.

There are at least two levels to this, possibly lots more, let’s assume two, the spiritual level and the earth level.

On the spiritual level, I see the Israeli’s as I see everyone else, souls that are here to grow. All paths are possible. There is no judgement except our own.

On the earth level, I understand that the Israeli soldiers probably grew up in an environment that sways or bias’s them in a certain direction. A boy that grows up under a strict Zionist father/family that believes things a certain way will probably grow up with a similar outlook. Maybe he will go through his national service without so much as giving the slightest hoot about the Palestinians. But just maybe he was the soldier that pulled the trigger and killed the woman in yesterday’s event. He watched her cry out with pain as she crawled to her bloody death. If I’m being emotional, it’s because it was emotional. Maybe he will start to have regrets and doubt what he did was right. It’s unlikely, but just maybe. When his kids grow up, will he have the maturity to say “I really don’t want my kid to experience what I did” and make a difficult but correct Choice.

The IDF has a problem with young people refusing to serve, and choosing instead to go to jail. They are making a choice. A difficult one.

The IDF also has a problem with suicides, young people making the ultimate choice.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/2...ldiers-commit-suicide-in-nearly-three-months/

So we all go through life making choices. For some unknown reason, one of mine has been an interest in Israeli behaviour. If we didn’t make any choices, we’d soon die. So I make my ego choices, for better or for worse.

I choose to highlight what I see as an outstanding injustice, here and now on earth, others may get uptight at this. You choose to criticise my choice. From my POV we are both just doing our best.

Sorry, I’d love to write more, but I have to pray, then collect my cash! ;)
 
The tragedy is that if the West and our various NGO's didn't fall for this sort of vicious nonsense, Hamas would drop the tactic, and a lot of lives would probably be saved.

Just a reminder that the rate is around ten Palestinians dead for every Israeli. The difference is much larger for injuries/woundings.

Yet you are fixated on Hamas being vicious. Why?
 
Vortex,

Please remember to use the quoting mechanism - I'd have liked to click the backlink to find out which TES comment reminded you of that!

David

This one, to be precise and clear:

Poke the tiger 300 times, then set a child in its path.

This is a notorious tactic of propaganda. I doubt that this woman had all of her faculties - someone put her up to this. That someone is the true oppressor here. And they hide... knowing that 30% of the population will fall for this ruse - and the hate will rise.

This is not complicated.

Other than this: Why was she wearing a men's Arabian Gulf ghuthrain as her headscarf and not the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, and why a men's headpiece at all?

As for Eric - well, all of his very numerous comments made in connection with this topic.
 
Just a reminder that the rate is around ten Palestinians dead for every Israeli. The difference is much larger for injuries/woundings.

Yet you are fixated on Hamas being vicious. Why?
Well as I see it, you have this situation. One side is very strong militarily and wants to hold on to the territory that it has. The other side is very weak. Traditionally the weak side would sue for peace - which the Arabs could have done decades back. Instead, they feel that their God is the only true god and they have a duty to displace Israel into the sea. They can't do that by direct force, but if they can get enough of the world on their side, they might be able to infiltrate Israel with fighters by attacking the wall with unarmed folk and then taking advantage of the resultant breach.

Conceivably they don't arm their civilians because they might actually turn on their leaders - I don't know.

Not surprisingly, Israel doesn't want to shug its shoulders and let the killers in (as has happened in the past, with the result that they were plaugued with suicide bombers).

I wish you would respond to me with some practical alternative for the Israelis - I did respond to you with some suggestions for the Palestinians. The problem obviously is Hamas, because they want the total elimination of Israel. Anything less is seen as a stepping stone towards that elimination.

Maybe I am wrong, but that is how I have come to see this awful conflict.

David
 
Yet you are fixated on Hamas being vicious. Why?

Because HAMAS just recently joined the ranks of the civilized world with their 2017 charter for the first time. And because HAMAS came in from the outside, to kill.

Prior to that, they were operating on a 1988 'Covenant' charter from pre1000's Sassanid/Umayyad Empire doctrine, which cited that it was their holy right to conduct genocide on their claimed lands - that they had done so in the past, and that they intended to subject each and every nation of the 'Ad-Dajjal' they did not like, from Morrocco to Indonesia (not just Israel and 'All Jews'), to genocide as their holy duty.

There are a lot of people on the planet who took umbrage with this. This doctrine manufactured mortal enemies across the globe and escalated hate to unprecedented levels. Amazing how that occurs.

The entire world had to step in and force them to grow up. And yes, a LOT of people do not trust HAMAS as a result. This does not serve to make people who criticize HAMAS as an oppressive entity all Zionists, nor alt-right, nor lacking in virtue or empathy for the oppressed. Only a simpleton looks at the world in this manner.

One can critique both sides in this conflict.
 
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Actually I don't think that. But do please remember the Crusades. But let's separate religion from nations and empires. It was Europeans who, in recent times, invaded Islamic homelands - to take their oil. The extent to which those Europeans were more than nominally Christian is an untested question. But it would be wrong to blame Christianity for doing the invading.

It is probably reasonable to assert that the West sorted itself out when it figured that internal division and conflict was mutually destructive. I don't think Islam has gotten to that stage - mind you the West is working hard to ensure that it doesn't - because a united Islamic bloc could be a problem.

I am not a fan of the Abrahamic faith tradition religions generally. They all have a sense of entitlement and imagined moral superiority that can get out of control if exploited by cunning people of low moral character and bucket loads of ambition. The modernist distortions of Christianity and Islam in particular are very worrying - they see they have their backs to the wall and are defending against a rising tide inimical to their values. Their solution is to invoke extreme responses as defiant and transformative gestures.

We can object to Islamic terrorism as the manipulation of the vulnerable in service of dark ends, but let us weigh that against the Christians who crave Israel engaging in an end of times conflagration that will usher in the return of Christ - and see that as a kind of deranged suicidal act that imperils fa remora than those who just happen to be with the blast radius of a suicide bomb.

You may assert that Islam has not changed - except that the invasion of Spain and Eastern Europe was empire building - and now it is about defending turf and existential threat. The kind of aggression has changed - now it is frequently asymmetrical - just like the Russians actually.

This is the paradox of being so armed to the teeth. The US has invested so much in conventional weaponry nobody wants to take it one toe to toe. So you get what is politically called terrorism (because that masks the fact that defence against it very difficult).

You have to look at the history of the evolution of Christianity to understand that what we fear in Islam was once feared in Christianity - an extreme moral critique rooted in deep existential fear that led to murder and terrorising of those thought to be a threat.

I am not pro Islam. I am pro not getting sucked into misrepresenting motive to serve political agendas and not employing dimwitted macho solutions concocted by screwed up hawks with equally screwed up religious motives.

There is a problem that requires a solution. But the people who see the problems are not necessarily the people who have the best solutions. This is an eternal problem with politics. Solutions cost money and that means there is profit to be made and fame to be won. Politicians are fine for saying there is a problem but awful at analysing it and coming up with a solution. Were it otherwise we'd not be in the mess we are in. We are told the problems we have are because they are huge and the people involved are bad [or whatever] - and that's almost never the case. We mostly have the wrong people devising and delivering the solutions - on both sides of the political divide.

I suspect Eric has already answered this better than I will, but a few quick points:

1) Equating Christianity with Islam dangerously obscures the danger posed by Islamists. There is no Christian equivalent to Islamic terrorism, though the press might wish otherwise.

2) All so-called "Islamic" territory was gained through invasion and conquest. All land currently occupied by Muslims was taken from the original inhabitants of the region by force. They conquered the lands of Israel, Spain, North Africa, etc and planned to continue their march to total domination until stopped by the Crusades. Personally, I'm glad the crusades happened, and only regret they didn't totally succeed at pushing Muslim conquerors out of stolen territories. For the same reason, I am glad that Israel has recovered some of their former territory, and did so peacefully, though they have had to defend it militarily once acquired.

Best regards,

AP
 
What people don't get about Trump is that he's somewhat above that. He already has money and power. Yes. His ego is big and requires feeding, and, oddly, that is a plus. His greatest trophy would be to genuinely make America great.


Well spotted, Eric. I am amazed I haven't seen anyone else point this out before.
 
This is so misguided on so many levels.

Israel attacks three different countries including Iraq in a weekend recently!

“The attacks Saturday and Sunday targeted Iranian forces and their proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, in what appeared to be a significant escalation of Israeli efforts to contain the expansion of Iranian influence in the region that could jeopardize the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and draw Lebanon into a new war.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html?noredirect=on

For all the time I've been watching the conflicts in the middle east, Israel has been responding to attacks. In other words, defensively. And then their defensive sorties are mischaracterized as "attacks." Coverage of Israel is unbelievably unfair.

I remember in 2006, when I had just moved to the Netherlands, Israel had to deal with the issue of a kidnapped soldier named Gilead Shalit. He and his platoon were ambushed by Palestinians or Hamas. His entire platoon was murdered, then Shalit was kidnapped. Israel asked for the return of their soldier, without asking anything for the five or so soldiers that were killed. They tried several ways to get Shalit back, all involving negotiation. Then, they said something along the lines of, "Okay, we've tried everything else. You've had our soldier for a long time now. You've got thirty days. Return him or face the consequences."

Thirty days passed. Shalit was not returned. Israel then launched raids designed to weaken his captors and to persuade them to release Shalit. At that point, I saw a CNN international edition story about this. They called it an "unprovoked attack" by Israel against the Palestinians/Hamas. They talked to an Israeli ambassador for about 45 seconds, asking questions like, "How can people in your country live with themselves, knowing their leadership are a collection of savage bloodthirsty barbarians?" They then put on a Palestinian/Hamas representative for over ten minutes (I checked). To him they directed such softball questions as, "How does it feel to perpetually be the victim of Israel's utterly unjustified attacks?"

It was amazing to me how distorted the coverage was, and how distorted it remains. Personally, I think the Israelis have been far too willing to negotiate with their enemies. They were attacked by invading forces and took territory, the Gaza strip and the West Bank, for defensive purposes. They should have kept it but they wanted to be friendly, so they gave the Palestinians the benefit of the doubt. Now they have to put up with random murderous rocket attacks. An argument could be made that they are justified to not only take back that territory, but all territory currently occupied by people who attack them militarily.
 
Just a reminder that the rate is around ten Palestinians dead for every Israeli. The difference is much larger for injuries/woundings.

Yet you are fixated on Hamas being vicious. Why?
The figures here are irrelevant. If a group of fifty criminals descend on your house and attack, intent on dragging you out, torturing you, then kill you, they are in the wrong. If you happen to have a roof mounted machine gun and take them all out, they are still in the wrong for attacking in the first place.

AP
 
The figures here are irrelevant. If a group of fifty criminals descend on your house and attack, intent on dragging you out, torturing you, then kill you, they are in the wrong. If you happen to have a roof mounted machine gun and take them all out, they are still in the wrong for attacking in the first place.

AP

Yep. The Israelis happen to be more efficient at defending themselves than the Palestinians are at killing them.

Don't brings rocks and knives to a gun fight. Don't shoot rockets at people that have the ability to track the rockets back to the source and then annihilate the source. That shouldn't have to be explained to anyone but crazy people.

Of course the number of Israelis killed by suicide bombers and other Palestinian terrorists from year 2000 to date is around 1,000; not to mention the greater number injured and maimed. I'm pretty sure that if suicide bombers were killing that many people in the UK, that some here would have a different outlook.

Then again, maybe not...

...In the US, maniacs with semi auto rifles have randomly killed around 300 people and liberals are going apoplectic about banning "assault" rifles. They accuse the National Rifle Association of being "terrorists" for supporting the right to own such weapons per the Constitution. Consistency is not a hallmark of liberals.
 
All so-called "Islamic" territory was gained through invasion and conquest. All land currently occupied by Muslims was taken from the original inhabitants of the region by force.

The progressive supporters of Islam in the West (in reality) could give a flying flip about Islam or the people of the Levant/Palestinians. It is nothing but a virtuous costume of opportunity. They possess not the least idea what Islam is, nor what socialism is - nor the sordid history of either. Few of them are aware of the Jordanian refugee efforts. These were not people who were 'displaced' - hundreds of thousands fled from being EXTERMINATED (every man woman and child). Few of them are aware of the enormous effort which went on in rebuilding Iraq. And we did not 'take their oil'. Surprise! That all turned out to be a bunch of malevolent propaganda from this same group of virtue fakers.

Same thing in Africa - a decade there and I have yet to see a progressive liberal there working to make things better. 99% of the people there are capital developers, Christian missions workers (while I am an atheist - I do respect this), USAID and other foundation professionals, volunteer doctors, rail and mine workers, embassy and medical staff and Chinese men in black suits with briefcases full of money.

Our progressives live in a cocoon and make the mistake of thinking that everyone they argue with and hate, also lives in a cocoon.
 
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