Israeli-Palestinian conflict

  On 5/25/2021 at 1:53 AM, auxien said:

perhaps yeah. again i'm not terribly informed about the full political details of history re: Israel but i assumed a large part of the calculus was just the US trying to make/have/keep/insure friends (be that 'friends' or enemies of our enemies) in the right places. sure there's plenty of reasons small and large and new and old tho

it's crazy to think some dudes in a room drew up the borders in the middle east for a handful of countries. 

i wish muhammad, jebus and jewish messiah could all come back as the 1st/2nd coming x 3 and have a roundtable as 300ft tall dudes bathed in golden light as they settle all religious issues and make new rules.  simpsons or robert smigel should cartoon this for my entertainment. 

  On 5/25/2021 at 2:57 AM, ignatius said:

it's crazy to think some dudes in a room drew up the borders in the middle east for a handful of countries. 

i wish muhammad, jebus and jewish messiah could all come back as the 1st/2nd coming x 3 and have a roundtable as 300ft tall dudes bathed in golden light as they settle all religious issues and make new rules.  simpsons or robert smigel should cartoon this for my entertainment. 

Moses x Jesus x Mohammad fight club, winner takes all.

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:02 AM, usagi said:

Moses x Jesus x Mohammad fight club, winner takes all.

plot twist, they all get summoned by all the religions simultaneously but it turns out theyre just the same alien playing pranks on us so they cant show up all at once

and then Marx' disembodied spectral head appears in the sky and booms "opiate of the masses u bumbaclarts lmao"

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:02 AM, usagi said:

Moses x Jesus x Mohammad fight club, winner takes all.

  On 5/25/2021 at 6:33 AM, usagi said:

and then Marx' disembodied spectral head appears in the sky and booms "opiate of the masses u bumbaclarts lmao"

This is some good alternate-universe WWF fan fic. Almost as good as mid-90s to turn of the willenium this-universe WWF.

  On 5/25/2021 at 7:25 AM, chenGOD said:

 

 

This is some good alternate-universe WWF fan fic. Almost as good as mid-90s to turn of the willenium this-universe WWF.

a rich rich field to harvest for all kinds of hilarious madness. rick & morty should bring robert smigel on for a couple episodes to make this happen. 

remember when Saudi Arabia was killing Yemenis and causing a famine a couple years ago? With American weaponry I might add. No, you didn't care.

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:10 PM, marf said:

remember when Saudi Arabia was killing Yemenis and causing a famine a couple years ago? With American weaponry I might add. No, you didn't care.

And Yemen is still a humanitarian disaster. There are dozens of instances of conflicts, oppression and human rights abuses going on in the world right now. But only a select few are fashionable talking points for Westerners.  

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:10 PM, marf said:

remember when Saudi Arabia was killing Yemenis and causing a famine a couple years ago? With American weaponry I might add. No, you didn't care.

fuck off mate

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:15 PM, Thu Zaw said:

And Yemen is still a humanitarian disaster. There are dozens of instances of conflicts, oppression and human rights abuses going on in the world right now. But only a select few are fashionable talking points for Westerners.  

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:10 PM, marf said:

remember when Saudi Arabia was killing Yemenis and causing a famine a couple years ago? With American weaponry I might add. No, you didn't care.

Sorry, but these two posts are terrible takes. https://www.google.com/search?q=yemen&client=firefox-b-e&tbm=nws&source=lnt&tbs=ar:1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjN2umxn-XwAhXkMlkFHWkFAZoQpwV6BAgHECQ&biw=1440&bih=771&dpr=1

That was literally 5 seconds on google typing in "Yemen" clicking the news tab, then selecting archives from the drop down menu.

Yeah, the gliterati on WATMM might not have posted anything about Yemen getting bombed, but we're not really the place for that for the most part. This thread came about because of some reasons that I won't assume, but just because no one posted about it here doesn't mean people didn't care.

It's also hardly surprising that people in the US would talk about Israel-related matters, considering the Jewish population in the US is only slightly smaller than the Jewish population in Israel.

  On 5/25/2021 at 6:46 PM, chenGOD said:

 

Sorry, but these two posts are terrible takes. https://www.google.com/search?q=yemen&client=firefox-b-e&tbm=nws&source=lnt&tbs=ar:1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjN2umxn-XwAhXkMlkFHWkFAZoQpwV6BAgHECQ&biw=1440&bih=771&dpr=1

That was literally 5 seconds on google typing in "Yemen" clicking the news tab, then selecting archives from the drop down menu.

Yeah, the gliterati on WATMM might not have posted anything about Yemen getting bombed, but we're not really the place for that for the most part. This thread came about because of some reasons that I won't assume, but just because no one posted about it here doesn't mean people didn't care.

It's also hardly surprising that people in the US would talk about Israel-related matters, considering the Jewish population in the US is only slightly smaller than the Jewish population in Israel.

 

Expand  

I'm not necessarily talking about news coverage, but general discourse; for example places like this forum. 

There's this huge thread dedicated to Israel/Palestine where everyone has very strong and self-assured ideas about what the conflict is about and what must be done. We see protests all over the planet, twitter trends that never die down.

The same doesn't exist for countless other global issues.

Where the HK thread, Taiwan, Myanmar, Cyprus, Sudan, Somaliland?

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:10 PM, marf said:

remember when Saudi Arabia was killing Yemenis and causing a famine a couple years ago? With American weaponry I might add. No, you didn't care.

Israel offered them weapons FYI

this stuff is all very related and the whole "why do you care about x but not x" when we're all just folks online discussing current events is asinine

it's gross to try to use the victims of saudi arabia's brutality to deflect attention from the decades of brutality the israeli regime has inflicted upon palestinians. you really gotta be an asshole to think this is worthwhile behavior. always looking for some worse thing to point so you don't have to come up with a defense for the thuggish and grotesque behavior of israel. it's all so easy to see through, the smug laziness of people who pull of the millions suffering some place else or those who resort to the cowardly canards of false charges of antisemitism. it's all quite clear to see, the fact that there are people itt resorting to "wondering about the real reason for people disliking israel's behavior" in 2021 is just evidence your brains have expired ages ago. 

seriously repulsive shit.

me calmly smoking a cigarette watching someone murder my children: “I can’t rush to judgment here. What about my unconscious biases? What about the saudis?”

I feel very passionately about what's happening in Myanmar and Pakistan right now. But I don't talk about it here, cos I know people don't have an interest; ideas would largely be ill-informed and the thread would quickly die.

The West takes its cue from the press and from their peers as to which conflict they're going to give a shit about. And most of the discussion is completely inconsequential to those saying pretty radical things (eg "Abolish Israel").

It's not a competition or distraction of "whataboutism". It's just a phenomenon worth pointing out. Certain conflicts become bigger talking points in the West than others. 

>stop talking about stuff youre not as smart as me, also talking about stuff means youre a bad person for not talking about other stuff instead, im not an idiot like you guys

  On 5/25/2021 at 7:43 PM, Thu Zaw said:

The West takes its cue from the press and from their peers as to which conflict they're going to give a shit about.

This is what Baudrillard writes about in The Gulf War Did Not Take Place - the chasm between what actually happens and what is relayed by the press is a matter of representation and interpretation - the geographical distance from an event becomes the inverse of how much it interests or matters to (most) people. Baudrillard called it a virtual war - a carefully scripted media event (he invokes his own theories of hyperreality and simulacra, but I'll desist).

people's focus changes as things change.  it's overwhelming to track all the fucked up violence in the world. yemen, HK, phillipines, myanmar.. syria etc.. all have had lot's of attention and discussion over the last many years. wrapping my head around all of them is a challenge honestly.. 

the 'new thing' is always going to get more attention or move to the front of people's thoughts. that's just how our brains work. israel has always been a special case because of how attention they get in the USA politically and how connected many americans are to israel. 

  On 5/25/2021 at 5:10 PM, marf said:

remember when Saudi Arabia was killing Yemenis and causing a famine a couple years ago? With American weaponry I might add. No, you didn't care.

speak for yourself, dropkick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Heights

Trump Heights (Hebrew: רמת טראמפ‎, Ramat Trump, [ʁaˈmat ˈtʁamp]) is a planned Israeli settlement in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights named after and in honor of the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump.^[1][2][3][4] Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights are widely regarded as illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.^[5]

  On 5/25/2021 at 7:00 PM, Thu Zaw said:

I'm not necessarily talking about news coverage, but general discourse; for example places like this forum. 

There's this huge thread dedicated to Israel/Palestine where everyone has very strong and self-assured ideas about what the conflict is about and what must be done. We see protests all over the planet, twitter trends that never die down.

The same doesn't exist for countless other global issues.

Where the HK thread, Taiwan, Myanmar, Cyprus, Sudan, Somaliland?

You may not have scrolled all of the "How does the world view China?" thread, but there is plenty of discussion there on HK and Taiwan.

Myanamr, I mean my social media feed is full of it cause I worked there and have some journalist friends who are still there. But on a board dedicated to a niche music genre with like what, 200 really active posters (that's being generous), how many do you expect to have a good understanding of something happening a world away (the majority in the US, UK)? If you read Myanmar newspapers, there's not a whole lot of coverage of all the bullshit happening in the US.

People are still local to a large degree. Israel is a different story because of the longevity of the issue, the relationship the UK and the US have with Israel, and the Israeli population in the US.

  On 5/25/2021 at 9:02 PM, chenGOD said:

People are still local to a large degree. Israel is a different story because of the longevity of the issue, the relationship the UK and the US have with Israel, and the Israeli population in the US.

 

Do you think, in that case, the attention given by the West in the situation of Israel/Palestine is led, not by concern of a potential war and humanitarian crisis, but by vested interests and of Western citizens choosing their side, and by doing so, stoking inter-religious tensions and hatred?

People ignore other international conflicts because they haven't got a vested political or religious interest. The humanitarian fallout isn't of concern. 

  On 5/25/2021 at 10:27 PM, Thu Zaw said:

Do you think, in that case, the attention given by the West in the situation of Israel/Palestine is led, not by concern of a potential war and humanitarian crisis, but by vested interests and of Western citizens choosing their side, and by doing so, stoking inter-religious tensions and hatred?

People ignore other international conflicts because they haven't got a vested political or religious interest. The humanitarian fallout isn't of concern. 

I think that's a big assumption to make. People ignore other conflicts for any number of reasons - lack of capacity to process that much information in a meaningful manner, more local issues taking up more of their time, or lack of awareness in the first place. Someone may know about the treatment of Rohyinga in Myanmar, but they may not know much in detail. Or they may not have read about it all, if their reading/information habits are more directed to local issues or issues where they are experts/work. That doesn't mean they are not concerned about the human cost.

With respect to your first point, there are a lot of angles for consideration, some will undoubtedly be vested interest (after all, International Relations are still largely based on realism, and occasionally offensive realism -as an aside, Mearsheimer and Walt's book "the Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" is a very good read), some will be over concerns of war, some will be involved precisely for humanitarian reasons. Since the division of Palestine can be traced back in the modern era to the Paris Peace Accords (as a rough starting point), that's more than 100 years of context, which will inevitably lead to many positions being taken, some disingenuous, others not. I don't think that putting it in black and white terms such as "being led by vested interests and Western citizens choosing sides" is a very helpful position, because of all that context.

people running through the cancer ward screaming about aids. 

edit: this is some shit.