Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

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greentara
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by greentara »

I really don't see a solution to the endless conflict. The eyes of the world are glued on the area. There are many serious problems around the world but not that much attention is given to conflicts in Syria, Africa and countries bordering Russia.
Where was the world when the war in Sri Lanka went on for 20 years? The brutality was mind boggling
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Alex123
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Alex123 »

greentara wrote:I really don't see a solution to the endless conflict.
In this conflict there is the wordly solution, but Israel is too nice.
Even the water melting from the snow-capped peaks can find its way to the ocean"
tlee
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by tlee »

I focus on Israel and Palestine because it is the longest running conflict because it involves Israel directly and they must always stay within the range of crimes that other countries won't act. In other countries where Israel is using other groups to do their work (like Al Queda and Syrian "rebels" and the terrorists planting car bombs in Iran) it's relatively short massacres. For example, Sabra and Shatilla with the Christian militia. History is not our main strength here, but long story short, Israel surrounded 2 cities, lit up the sky at night, and sent in a Christian militia that raped, mutilated, killed, etc. every man woman and child they could find while Israel kept it's "hands clean". These cities hosted Palestinian refuges you see, thousands. The Palestinians were hunted down even in another country, and that's how Hezbollah started.

I also focus on it because it is the heart of the conflicts in the region.
These wars, these governments being over-turned, these civil wars, they serve to destabilize and eliminate Israel's enemies.
If you talk to a Zionist and they're open with you, you'll find out that the current Israel and the Palestinian hostages don't cover the full region considered Israel. So as time goes on, Israel will start moving their borders into Iraq, which can only happen if the entire region is destabilized and no one can stop them.

So despite vague references in the media and political speeches, I don't think Israel benefits the USA at all. Rather, if you consider all the wars, it has cost (literally incalculable) tax revenue that should have been used for American health, education, research, and aid to the genuinely needy that we has humans have an obligation to.What is 6-7 Trillion $ divided among the population of Americans? My calculator can't handle that number I think.

I went to a fund raising party for a "Peace" in the Middle East organization. It was almost entirely Zionists, and I quickly became disenchanted by the organization because, I found, it was just a front for political "Israeducation" of US Americans. There was a table with some 25ish men who had been drinking alcohol and sitting near there with my GF I over heard the most bigoted racist jokes and when a speaker rose to the podium to announce the great success of the organization in implementing a "education" program for high school and primary school teachers one of these men stood up. He stood up and pointed around the room to non-Caucasians, "We own you, We own you, We own you"; he must have been all but inaudible to everyone under the sound of the speakers. You can't judge a whole movement like Zionism by some trashed people at a fund raiser, but that unabashed racism will always stand out to me as the hallmark of Zionism, the current Israel government, and their operations in the USA.

But racism is the prime tenet of Zionism isn't it? Israel is state for the Jews and Jews alone.
How could I not expect them to be racist?
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Dan74
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Dan74 »

If anyone is actually interested in the facts (wiki except for #2 - mondoweiss, an anti-Zionist strident critic of Israel site, but with some credibility and respect for facts) in relation to the post above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_ ... of_Hobeika

http://mondoweiss.net/2012/09/it-was-li ... -soul.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citiz ... cal_status

I didn't provide any counters to Al-Qaeda and the Syrian rebels being Israeli agents because that's just wild conspiracy theory with no backing provided by the poster at all.

_/|\_
Dan

PS This is not a bad little article to illustrate the kinds of mindset people fall into in relation to this horrible continuing tragedy, but more specifically the kidnapping and murder of 3 Israeli teens that sparked this latest round:

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special- ... m-1.602431

As Buddhadharma practitioners, I think we should all pause and become keenly aware of how this drama is playing out within our minds. This is samsara in action and unless we shine the torch of clarity, unless we learn to hold it in still spacious awareness, there's not much hope for our practice.
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Sherab
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Sherab »

One's world view is very important. It informs and directs one's motivation, attitude and behaviour. Buddhism recognizes this and that is why the eightfold noble path starts with right view.

The worldview of Christianity/Judaism in my opinion has in general been more subdued than in the historical past because of the progress of science and the liberalization of thoughts. So to an important extent, the worldview of these religions have been forced into a retreat. The same however cannot be said of Islam. It has yet to go through the same process. Perhaps given time, it will. Meanwhile, the worldview of Islam in its current form presents a huge obstacle to the resolution of the Middle East problem.
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Hieros Gamos
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Hieros Gamos »

Monotheism is pretty much an excuse for thuggery.
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Malcolm »

Sherab wrote:One's world view is very important. It informs and directs one's motivation, attitude and behaviour. Buddhism recognizes this and that is why the eightfold noble path starts with right view.

The worldview of Christianity/Judaism in my opinion has in general been more subdued than in the historical past because of the progress of science and the liberalization of thoughts. So to an important extent, the worldview of these religions have been forced into a retreat. The same however cannot be said of Islam. It has yet to go through the same process. Perhaps given time, it will. Meanwhile, the worldview of Islam in its current form presents a huge obstacle to the resolution of the Middle East problem.
Indeed, the Islamic world never had an intellectual movement comparable with the Enlightenment, no Spinoza, no Locke, etc. The fact of the matter is that a crypto-atheism lies at the heart of enlightenment thought. There is quite a good book on this called Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic.
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Dan74
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Dan74 »

Malcolm wrote:
Sherab wrote:One's world view is very important. It informs and directs one's motivation, attitude and behaviour. Buddhism recognizes this and that is why the eightfold noble path starts with right view.

The worldview of Christianity/Judaism in my opinion has in general been more subdued than in the historical past because of the progress of science and the liberalization of thoughts. So to an important extent, the worldview of these religions have been forced into a retreat. The same however cannot be said of Islam. It has yet to go through the same process. Perhaps given time, it will. Meanwhile, the worldview of Islam in its current form presents a huge obstacle to the resolution of the Middle East problem.
Indeed, the Islamic world never had an intellectual movement comparable with the Enlightenment, no Spinoza, no Locke, etc. The fact of the matter is that a crypto-atheism lies at the heart of enlightenment thought. There is quite a good book on this called Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic.
I am not sure this is a fair assessment (and btw I don't recall a Buddhist equivalent of Enlightenment either).

The Islamic world produced advances in science (eg Alhazen), mathematics (eg Omar Khayyam), arts , architecture and technology which in their time completely eclipsed any parallel developments in Europe. Not just the zero, but words as familiar to us as algorithm and algebra are Islamic imports. If anything, there hasn't been a sociopolitical development akin to Western democracies with responsible government, but we can see it function pretty well in Indonesia and sort of Turkey, while Buddhist countries aren't doing so well (Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, etc).

Note that many countries adopted representational participatory democracies without developing them by themselves, like Japan, for instance.
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Malcolm »

Dan74 wrote:
Malcolm wrote:
Sherab wrote:One's world view is very important. It informs and directs one's motivation, attitude and behaviour. Buddhism recognizes this and that is why the eightfold noble path starts with right view.

The worldview of Christianity/Judaism in my opinion has in general been more subdued than in the historical past because of the progress of science and the liberalization of thoughts. So to an important extent, the worldview of these religions have been forced into a retreat. The same however cannot be said of Islam. It has yet to go through the same process. Perhaps given time, it will. Meanwhile, the worldview of Islam in its current form presents a huge obstacle to the resolution of the Middle East problem.
Indeed, the Islamic world never had an intellectual movement comparable with the Enlightenment, no Spinoza, no Locke, etc. The fact of the matter is that a crypto-atheism lies at the heart of enlightenment thought. There is quite a good book on this called Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic.
I am not sure this is a fair assessment (and btw I don't recall a Buddhist equivalent of Enlightenment either).

The Islamic world produced advances in science (eg Alhazen), mathematics (eg Omar Khayyam), arts , architecture and technology which in their time completely eclipsed any parallel developments in Europe. Not just the zero, but words as familiar to us as algorithm and algebra are Islamic imports. If anything, there hasn't been a sociopolitical development akin to Western democracies with responsible government, but we can see it function pretty well in Indonesia and sort of Turkey, while Buddhist countries aren't doing so well (Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, etc).

Note that many countries adopted representational participatory democracies without developing them by themselves, like Japan, for instance.
Algebra and algorithms were imported from India by way of the Arab world.
If anything, there hasn't been a sociopolitical development akin to Western democracies
Yes, this is because of the Enlightenment, especially the Scottish Enlightenment, and it's atheist impulse drove it. Such a movement could only happen because of the Reformation.

I never said that Buddhist countries had comparable developments; they could not without abandoning key features of our religion. In fact, most of the conflicts between so called Buddhist modernists and traditionalists has exactly to do with whether people place more value on Enlightenment values or Awakening values.
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Dan74
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Dan74 »

Malcolm wrote:
Dan74 wrote:
Malcolm wrote:
Indeed, the Islamic world never had an intellectual movement comparable with the Enlightenment, no Spinoza, no Locke, etc. The fact of the matter is that a crypto-atheism lies at the heart of enlightenment thought. There is quite a good book on this called Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic.
I am not sure this is a fair assessment (and btw I don't recall a Buddhist equivalent of Enlightenment either).

The Islamic world produced advances in science (eg Alhazen), mathematics (eg Omar Khayyam), arts , architecture and technology which in their time completely eclipsed any parallel developments in Europe. Not just the zero, but words as familiar to us as algorithm and algebra are Islamic imports. If anything, there hasn't been a sociopolitical development akin to Western democracies with responsible government, but we can see it function pretty well in Indonesia and sort of Turkey, while Buddhist countries aren't doing so well (Thailand, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, etc).

Note that many countries adopted representational participatory democracies without developing them by themselves, like Japan, for instance.
Algebra and algorithms were imported from India by way of the Arab world.
I don't think so, Malcolm. Both words come from Al-Khwarizmi's massive treatise. Conner and Robertson in their Mactutor History of Mathematics archive describe the contribution the following way:
Perhaps one of the most significant advances made by Arabic mathematics began at this time with the work of al-Khwarizmi, namely the beginnings of algebra. It is important to understand just how significant this new idea was. It was a revolutionary move away from the Greek concept of mathematics which was essentially geometry. Algebra was a unifying theory which allowed rational numbers, irrational numbers, geometrical magnitudes, etc., to all be treated as "algebraic objects". It gave mathematics a whole new development path so much broader in concept to that which had existed before, and provided a vehicle for future development of the subject. Another important aspect of the introduction of algebraic ideas was that it allowed mathematics to be applied to itself in a way which had not happened before
Malcolm wrote:
If anything, there hasn't been a sociopolitical development akin to Western democracies
Yes, this is because of the Enlightenment, especially the Scottish Enlightenment, and it's atheist impulse drove it. Such a movement could only happen because of the Reformation.

I never said that Buddhist countries had comparable developments; they could not without abandoning key features of our religion. In fact, most of the conflicts between so called Buddhist modernists and traditionalists has exactly to do with whether people place more value on Enlightenment values or Awakening values.
Cool, but lets be fair to Islam, hard as it is, in the current climate. Until very recent history it actually had a better track record than Christianity in many many ways.
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Hieros Gamos
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Hieros Gamos »

Dan74 wrote:a better track record than Christianity
That's hardly a ringing endorsement.
M.G.
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by M.G. »

@greentara - this conflict surely draws disproportionate attention, partly because it implicates the mythologies of so many religionists, partly because Israel is widely viewed as an American proxy by the global left and judged as such, partly because of inertia; its been a media darling for decades and has acquired a certain status as such by inertia, even though I think there's a strong argument that this matter is becoming less politically important.

If anyone cares, I post about Israel/Palestine on this site because I happen to know a lot about this matter, having been to the region several times and having spoken at length to people from all sides of this dispute. (And there are definitely more than two, as Dan74 has pointed out.)

@Alex123 - When you write that Israel has a better human rights record than the United States, that's true historically but not contemporaneously. At present, the United States affords citizenship rights to any indigenous person who wants them. The civil status of Palestinians in the West Bank is not, by world standards, a major atrocity, but is aberrant among modern, technologically advanced democracies to deny a native resident group political rights on the basis of religious or eth ethnic characteristics.

I broadly agree with you about the Hamas.

@Sherab - I've opined that this conflict does implicate Islam in many ways. I think it's fair to say there are no circumstances where a religious Islamic government could enter into peace agreements with Israel (although the Saudis have been willingly to tacitly cooperate with Israel when they felt it necessary.). I do think that Israel's actions in the occupied territories (which are partly motivated by religious Judaism) are provocative and add fuel towards Islamic fundamentalist tendencies.

@tlee - I can't speak to your personal experiences with any group of people, but I'm inclined to agree with Dan74 that ascribing Al Qaeda's actions to covert Israeli action is wild conspiracizing - and, to my mind, represents a misunderstanding of the region's political actors; Salafism home base and source of funding has always been Saudi Arabia.
Malcolm
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Malcolm »

Dan74 wrote:

Algebra and algorithms were imported from India by way of the Arab world.
I don't think so, Malcolm. Both words come from Al-Khwarizmi's massive treatise. Conner and Robertson in their Mactutor History of Mathematics archive describe the contribution the following way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mat ... _200_CE.29
Cool, but lets be fair to Islam, hard as it is, in the current climate. Until very recent history it actually had a better track record than Christianity in many many ways.
Oh nonsense. All these Abrahamic religions are predicated on ethnic cleansing. As far as I know, Islam is the only religion in the world where it is an incumbent duty for the faithful to kill apostates.
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Dan74
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Dan74 »

Hieros Gamos wrote:
Dan74 wrote:a better track record than Christianity
That's hardly a ringing endorsement.
Well, we've all had our ups and downs. But I find the increasingly common criticism and sometimes even wholesale dismissal of everything Islamic facile at best and ignorant at worst. So many people are simply clueless about the fundamental contributions Islamic cultures have made.
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Malcolm »

Dan74 wrote:
Hieros Gamos wrote:
Dan74 wrote:a better track record than Christianity
That's hardly a ringing endorsement.
Well, we've all had our ups and downs. But I find the increasingly common criticism and sometimes even wholesale dismissal of everything Islamic facile at best and ignorant at worst. So many people are simply clueless about the fundamental contributions Islamic cultures have made.
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Dan74
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Dan74 »

Dan74 wrote:
Hieros Gamos wrote:
Dan74 wrote:a better track record than Christianity
That's hardly a ringing endorsement.
Well, we've all had our ups and downs. But I find the increasingly common criticism and sometimes even wholesale dismissal of everything Islamic facile at best and ignorant at worst. So many people are simply clueless about the fundamental contributions Islamic cultures have made.
Malcolm wrote:Oh nonsense. All these Abrahamic religions are predicated on ethnic cleansing. As far as I know, Islam is the only religion in the world where it is an incumbent duty for the faithful to kill apostates.
Ok, you are shifting the argument, Malcolm. So you accept that Islam has made fundamental contributions including algebra? Yes, the Jains had mathematics but the Islamic mathematicians didn't 'steal' Jain work, but developed and advanced their own.

As for killing the apostate, it was a rule much more honoured in the breach, if you check Islamic jurisprudence. Medieval Islamic literature and poetry was indeed much more rich and free than its European counterpart perhaps because apostasy and heresy laws were not applied anywhere near as zealously as the Church and its Inquisition applied theirs. (Mind you, our current culture underestimates the power and the danger of unbridled speech. We will see many more and worse conceptual viri spread through humanity in years to come, I think. - but this is off-topic)
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Hieros Gamos
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

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Malcolm wrote:
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HAHAHAHAHA
:twothumbsup:
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

Post by Malcolm »

Dan74 wrote:
Ok, you are shifting the argument, Malcolm. So you accept that Islam has made fundamental contributions including algebra? Yes, the Jains had mathematics but the Islamic mathematicians didn't 'steal' Jain work, but developed and advanced their own.
But they did so on the basis of the numerical system, etc., developed in India. So called "arabic numerals" come from India. Further, most of the contributions of Islamic culture, apart from their own poetry, music and so on, lay in the area of transmitting the knowledge of the Hellenistic world to Europe. Even the Islamic system of medicine is called Unani, which is a corruption of Yavana, i.e. Ionian — Greek.
As for killing the apostate, it was a rule much more honoured in the breach, if you check Islamic jurisprudence. Medieval Islamic literature and poetry was indeed much more rich and free than its European counterpart perhaps because apostasy and heresy laws were not applied anywhere near as zealously as the Church and its Inquisition applied theirs.
That really depends on where you were in the Islamic hegemony, and at what period of history. Georges Bataille has a good analysis of the economic biases that drove the Islamic expansion. In fact they are very nearly the same biases which drove the spread of Christianity and later, corporate capitalism. And your assertion is fallacious — the Zoroastrians were driven from Persia where they were not slain:
Until the Jihad, in the mid 7th century Persia (modern-day Iran) was a politically independent state, spanning from the Aegean Sea to the Indus River[3] and dominated by a Zoroastrian majority.
h[url]ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Zoroastrians[/url]

People should remember the vanished Zoroastrian civilization of Persia before claiming that Islam "treated" non-Muslims better than Christians treated pagans.

In fact, all three Abrahamic religions are fundamentally pernicious which is why the site of their origin is such a total mess and has been for millennia, ever since one band, the Hebrews exterminated another band, the Canaanites.

As far as I am concerned, if Islam and its "contributions" were lost to history like the Zoroastrians, it would be no great loss for humanity.
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Dan74
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

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Ok, your post started informative and ended... well, disappointingly, to be polite. If Islamic contributions disappeared we would likely be set back scientifically, mathematically in terms of the arts, etc by centuries. Nevermind the barbaric hubris behind the nonchalant dismissal of an entire culture.

Hebrews and Canaanites? So you take the Bible as a historical account of what actually happened? But if you do, you would know that Hebrew prophets condemned their people for not killing the Canaanites and intermarrying with them and accepting their gods.

Come on! Enough with this cultural chauvinism already! We, as humanity, are heirs to all of our culture, with its sublime beauty, sweeping achievements as well as its excesses and horrors. We can no more disown it, than we can disown our karma.
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Hieros Gamos
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Re: Towards a resolution in Israel and Palestine

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Let it no longer be said that the ways of God are impenetrable. We have penetrated these ways, and there we have read in letters of blood the proofs of God’s impotence, if not of his malevolence.
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