Palestine

[buttslinger]

There's always a few different realities going on. If we were in Vegas and the toteboard had 100 to 1 odds AGAINST a real peace in the middle east by Dec 31st, would ANYONE sober bet a buck on peace?

The more real reality might be the self portraits being written here.

There's no misunderstanding or mistake going on in the middle east, it's real life in real time. Business as usual on planet earth. No one wants bloodshed, and yet there is bloodshed. If God had foretold all this to you decades ago, it wouldn't change a thing. These people have every reason to hate!!

[admires69]

I know what your saying bronco... but at the same time if my children were dying of disease and poverty and my next door neighbour was the cause?

I would try and make the idea of continuing on the path they had chosen so awful that they would be forced to reconsider their course of action, understanding that it gets worse before it gets better.

In regards to rockets being fired on london as yoshi suggested. that in affect has happened. busses have been blown up at rush hour killing lots of innocents. there was outrage in the UK, but some people here also feel that we are reaping what we have sown.

Good point re genocide. I do not personally feel that it comes to religion more the indiscriminate killing, but that is a problem with my own definition.

But I do struggle for another definition between Israel and Palestine (specifically Gaza)?

and Buttslinger... definitely not. the way its going i wouldn't put a buck on a permanent peace by 12/31/2050 either :/ for me its not a personal portrait but 12 years of historical study plus a little bit of annoyance at the blatant propaganda and just wishing the other side of the coin to be considered too.

Of course we could say that genocide gets used as a word routinely because it occurs so routinely....

[Stavros]

Genocide, like the word racism is used too often by political groups whose motives are usually to respond to public outrage -or indeed to encourage it- and to then use that as a campaigning issue to win converts to their cause, it is a tried and tested tactic but it does threaten to devalue a word that does have precise meaning and should be used sparingly. It cannot really apply to the Palestinians as for the most part they are Arabs and I don't believe Israel has a policy to exterminate the Arabs. It also diverts attention away from real political issues such as housing, water and jobs which ought to be the meat of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, not to mention the housing crisis in Israel itself where the cost of an apartment in Tel-Aviv is becoming as absurd as a renting a shed in London or Manhattan.

I know it is off-thread, but Genocide does not even apply exactly to the Yazidi in Iraq, for while the large concentration of them in Iraq are under threat, there are communities of Yazidi living in Turkey, Syria, Armenia and Georgia. It is not surprising to some that Turkey, our NATO ally has not lifted a finger to help the Yazidi as it sees them as a 'fifth column' related too closely to the Kurds -it has also been claimed that Turkey gave safe passage to Islamic militants infiltrating Syria from Turkey, has treated the wounded of the Salafi groups such as the Nusra front in clinics in Turkey, and allowed them and IS to open offices in the border towns -having used them to crush a nascent attempt by Kurds in Rojavan in Syria last year to declare autonomy. In addition to threatening to 'liberate Istanbul', IS has repaid Turkey by taking hostage the staff of the Turkish Consulate in Mosul -the largest illegal seizure of diplomats from an embassy building since the siege of the US Embassy in Tehran- suggesting that Turkey is not going to contribute to the humanitarian effort to save the Yazidi on the Sinjar mountains; and it has imposed a news blackout in Turkey on the hostages seized by the IS militants it once supported....but Turkey has got into a lather over Israel's attacks on Gaza, and Erdogan has just swapped the Prime Ministerial post to become President (through an election it must be said).

So here we are, Turkey and Iran could both have made a significant effort to deal with the humanitarian in Jabal Sinjar, though I wonder what the reaction would have been had Iran entered Iraq to do this. No, 'we' have to do it, ie the USA, Britain, France...so much for NATO -and these people think Turkey should be part of the EU!

[Prospero]

By your definition Hitlers attempts to rid Europe of the Jews was not genocide either because there were Jews in America and other nations?

[broncofan]

It's difficult to define and many tests I've seen are multi-factorial. Maybe going across borders is one relevant factor since it shows a heightened intent. I think if the effort to pursue a people is contrary to the immediate economic or perceived national security interest of a country that weighs in favor of genocide because one does not go to such lengths to pursue a people unless they believe there is something intrinsically malign about them regardless of locality.

I think like terrorist it is a word that is used not because it has unique descriptive powers but because it tends to loosen people's ability to analyze the situation. If you are able to describe a situation in detail, that is indictment enough, because the details draw a picture of what is happening and capture the moral implications as well. A broad term like terrorist or genocide is used for its associative power rather than its ability to encapsulate what is going on.

[Stavros]

By your definition Hitlers attempts to rid Europe of the Jews was not genocide either because there were Jews in America and other nations?

Is this not an inherent weakness in the concept of genocide? The concept may assume a universality which did not exist even in the 1930s, but there was a genocide of Jews -in Europe. The Nazis did not have access to Jews in America, IS can attack Yazidi in Syria and Turkey as well as Iraq -and Armenia and Georgia if they are so inclined. IS also does not make a distinction between Iraq and Syria or the neighbouring states but I may have been hasty in this regard as IS is clearly not finished yet with its killings. It would not surprise me if IS was planning to obliterate everyone who disagrees with them, in which case the Yazidi may be in for more punishment. My remark was not intended to diminish the attacks on Yazidi who have been the targets of mass killings before but an example of the complexity inherent in the word.

[martin48]

Genocide is usually taken to mean the partial or complete obliteration of a specific race. As for Nazi Germany - the legalized discrimination against Jews began immediately after the Nazi's came to power in 1933. In July 1941 Goring gave written instructions to Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations. At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich emphasised that once the deportation process was complete, the exterminations would become an internal matter under the purview of the SS. A secondary goal was to arrive at a definition of who was Jewish and thus determine the scope of the exterminations. Exactly when Hitler agreed with this "solution" is still a matter of debate.

Is this not an inherent weakness in the concept of genocide? The concept may assume a universality which did not exist even in the 1930s, but there was a genocide of Jews -in Europe. The Nazis did not have access to Jews in America, IS can attack Yazidi in Syria and Turkey as well as Iraq -and Armenia and Georgia if they are so inclined. IS also does not make a distinction between Iraq and Syria or the neighbouring states but I may have been hasty in this regard as IS is clearly not finished yet with its killings. It would not surprise me if IS was planning to obliterate everyone who disagrees with them, in which case the Yazidi may be in for more punishment. My remark was not intended to diminish the attacks on Yazidi who have been the targets of mass killings before but an example of the complexity inherent in the word.

[Stavros]

Genocide is usually taken to mean the partial or complete obliteration of a specific race. As for Nazi Germany - the legalized discrimination against Jews began immediately after the Nazi's came to power in 1933. In July 1941 Goring gave written instructions to Heydrich to prepare and submit a plan for a "total solution of the Jewish question" in territories under German control and to coordinate the participation of all involved government organisations. At the Wannsee Conference, Heydrich emphasised that once the deportation process was complete, the exterminations would become an internal matter under the purview of the SS. A secondary goal was to arrive at a definition of who was Jewish and thus determine the scope of the exterminations. Exactly when Hitler agreed with this "solution" is still a matter of debate.

I cannot disagree, and would only add that the definition of genocide, insofar as it has been satisfactorily defined, was made after the war. At the moment the problem is that IS is not finished yet and may continue to subject the Yazidi, and anyone else they don't approve of to their punishment.

[Ben]

Gaza zoo ravaged by Israeli shelling:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...AUDVRY.twitter

[broncofan]

You ask any Armenian of their culture's history of being oppressed by Greeks and they'll give you an earful. But how much of the world knows about it? Probably less than 5%.
.

I just want to point out the Armenian genocide was not carried out by the Greeks if that's what we're talking about. The Greeks were also victims of the massacres carried out by the Ottoman authorities. Or are we talking about something more ancient? I am not much of a historian (that's an understatement) but this is not just a pedantic point.

I don't want to be obstinate when it comes to this point. But maybe the reason anti-semitism has gotten such a hearing is because it has been such a persistent prejudice. Entire books have been dedicated not just to the study of anti-semitism but also to its promotion (from the protocols of the elders of zion to the international jew to mein kampf). It has also taken on very many forms and embraced many different charges (some impossible to defend against because they are mutually exclusive; such as the claim that Jews are behind the forces of communism and capitalism; that Jewish people are liberals and at the same time racial chauvinists).

It is not as though anti-semitism began and ended with the Holocaust. Additionally, if you actually look into the hate crime numbers, it also is consistently pretty well represented per capita, even in places where the anti-semitism is thought to be pretty mild. So, I think that whatever people know about it is justified, and they'd be justified in knowing about all forms of prejudice as well, including the persecution of the Armenians.