Israel / Palestine

Basically 3 religions believe there homeland is in the same place, they've been told that through another being/propaganda. I

Everything in your head is Learnt behaviour.. you've learnt it from your Parents and the generations before them! now imagine if you were the fist human lifeform on this planet do you think your brain is programmed to no the difference between Right and Wrong - exactly - im a Genius , My brain is currently being studied by Cambridge University and NASA.

Thanks for your time - you can buy my book - 'The Professor - by Jesus Orwell' via secret website

Flippant comment - what about agnostics?

Very very simplistic - Animals are terrorial and kill each other over land. Religion just justifies it.

As more proof people on here have come to blows from here. Even the jumping on a bandwagon and pick on one person just like children in a school yard.

now imagine if you were the fist human lifeform on this planet do you think your brain is programmed to no the difference between Right and Wrong

Yes, I would still know what does and doesn’t belong in the hhsrb thread if that’s what you’re getting at.

In case anyone hasn't read it Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari has a really interesting section on religion and the progression from highly localised polytheistic religions to multinational monotheistic ones.

Also I know you shouldn't feed the troll but it's an itch I've got to scratch:

Basically 3 religions believe there homeland is in the same place, they've been told that through another being/propaganda.

They don't. Neither Mecca nor Medina are in Israel - you can fact check this using a map. Whatever credence you give to the bible, Jesus was Jewish and lived in the region modern Israel sits. All the documentary evidence says this, that's not propaganda. There isn't a "Christian homeland", the statement doesn't even make sense. IMO Ziomism is predicated on race, not religion. Many of the most furvant nutter zionists are non-practicing. Many of the most devout believe the man-made creation of Israel is blasphemous.

Hugo's definately Religious.. I had to feed the troll

Anyway why don't we talk about the Peckham vs Brixton Conflict/War that has been going on for years.. much more interesting subject in my opinion!

I didn't feel the previous poster's comment warranted a long drawn out answer, where basically he was saying that everything would be better if religion didn't exist etc etc.
Don't think a longer comment would change their mind...

When you take out South East Asia (China, Korea, Japan etc), the proportion of religiously unaffiliated people is very small.

Instead of worshipping a god and following a set of rules and a moral code from a holy book, moral values are traditionally derived from ancient philosophers and their books and teachings.

Doesn't mean that China and its neighbours haven't been at pretty much constant war over the past 4000 years...

If that's a reference to @E11_FTW 's comment, I think they got those two things the wrong way round.

Did I? Always happy to be corrected, but I was working on the basis of this sort of distinction by Rick Nason:

A complicated issue, explains Nason, is one in which "the components
can be separated and dealt with in a systematic and logical way that
relies on a set of static rules or algorithms." It may be hard to see,
but there's a fixed order in something that is merely complicated and
that allows you to deal with it in a repeatable manner.

Pumping crude oil from 6 miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico
is complicated. So is making an electric car and a reusable rocket
(just ask Elon Musk). But once you figure out how to do these things,
you can keep doing them at will.

On the other hand, a complex issue is one in which you can't get a
firm handle on the parts and there are no rules, algorithms, or
natural laws. "Things that are complex have no such degree of order,
control, or predictability," says Nason. A complex thing is much more
challenging--and different--than the sum of its parts, because its
parts interact in unpredictable ways.

Managing people is a complex challenge. So is integrating the two
merging companies or figuring out how the market will react to a new
product or strategy. Maybe you'll get lucky and figure it out once,
but whatever you did this time won't generate the same result next
time.

On this basis, the main aspects of this situation are complicated, but not inextricably complex. With apologies for a very crude example, you know that if you don't make murderous incursions into Southern Israel you won't provoke specific and calamitous reprisals, and if you don't bomb Gaza in retaliation you won't kill untold numbers of objectively innocent men, women and children. Most of the action-result pairs are predictable. And in the bigger picture, while the situation is complicated, it isn't so complex that it's impossible to see the asymmetry of it.

Again, happy to be corrected!

I'm a generally anti-religous atheist, but this is also bullshit. Although Judaism is a religion, Jews are also a race, and anyone wanting to attack someone of Jewish decent isn't going to care if they've renounced God. The same is true of the Palestinians, they may be mostly Muslim but the IDF aren't going to be checking if they're practicing before leveling the building they're in. Religion is generally stupid IMO but blaming it solely for this whole mess is stupider.

Religion originally stopped people killing each other

Apart from the sacrifices

I guess I just think the examples you give are terrible! Can you really say that Israelis or Palestinians know the impact of their policy? Israel doesn't know whether using more force on Palestine will prevent attacks from Hamas or provoke them; similarly it doesn't know if giving more freedom would lead to peaceful coexistence or mean they are more susceptible to attacks from some of those who don't think the Israeli state should exist.

Hamas don't know what the reaction will be to an attack - they can guess it will provoke a violent reaction, but how far, and what will the international reaction be?

The idea this is complicated but somehow all utterly predictable and capable of being modelled as it has direct consequences just seems wrong

Goats and children were popular

...the crusades, the jihads, the execution of unbelievers and schismatics, the justifications of colonial genocides etc and so on...

Goats and children were popular

Certainly with the Greeks. Oh, right...

Hmm. Terms can differ in meaning from field to field (and in casual language people use the two words interchangeably), but I do think he's gone off on his own, there. For one thing, scientific/engineering fields define complexity of a system as the number of distinct but related components (and the number of their relations). Complexity is about structure, where complication is about detail (often the implication being that it is at least unnecessary and possibly harmful). An orrery is complex, a ball of string that a cat played with is complicated. Abstraction, done well, removes or reduces complication at the cost of increased complexity.

I think your finance prof there has misunderstood something he read about Complexity Science, which, among other things, looks at the ways emergent behaviours appear in more complex systems. But Complexity Science says that a system is more than the sum of its parts and that you can't explain anything but the simplest of systems just by looking at the parts. It absolutely doesn't say complex systems cannot be understood, just that you can be caught with your pants down if you make simple assumptions. Chaos Science looks at systems or phenomena whose behaviour can be wildly or unexpectedly unpreditable, but complexity and chaos are not the same thing. Some of the classic examples from the early days of Chaos Science talked about things like the different ways water drops might behave after dropping onto the back of a spoon. Maybe it was a Chaos Science article he used for roaches in his spliff, but he should have done more reading, less smoking.

To go back to my earlier example, an orrery is complex but it's not going to surprise you. String is simple, but trying to predict what shape it will be in after a cat has played with it (or it just fell through the air from a significant height), that goes into the realm of chaos.

We talk about systems or problems having an irreducible complexity. Nobody talks about them having irreducible complication.

Frankly, either the prof or whoever (mis?)quoted him to you is talking out of their hat, to the best of my understanding of the subject.

Yes, I can see that I explained myself poorly, so let me have one more go before I delete my account and never visit this website again (which would be a shame because, you know, buying and selling bits of bikes etc...)

I think another way of looking at what I was trying to say is this:
When people react to something like war in the Middle East by saying "oh but it's all so complicated isn't it?" and part of what they mean is "you're not going to get me to condemn Israel, and here's a good rhetorical shield to help me with that", they strictly meant to say "it's all so complex", i.e. It's completely impossible to untangle so (hand-wave) we can't apportion blame or reliably say that one side has the advantage of a huge asymmetry of political and military power and thus also a higher burden of responsibility for the ultimate volume of blood shed. So the situation is complicated, but that word just doesn't mean what they think it means, or justify what they think it justifies.

gets coat
leaves forum

Israel doesn't know whether using more force on Palestine will prevent attacks from Hamas or provoke them

History tells us the answer to this. Extremism thrives off violence. Hamas is arguably only extant due to discontent with previous overuse of force by Israel, and the perceived subsequent lack of action by Fatah.
Elsewhere it is evident that increased strength of resistance has been shown in face of increasing violence.
Afghanistan (Britain)
Vietnam (France, then Japan, then France, then America)
Afghanistan (USSR)
Iraq (Britain and America)
Afghanistan (Americans and British)

Hamas don't know what the reaction will be to an attack - they can guess it will provoke a violent reaction, but how far, and what will the international reaction be?

They absolutely did know, and they knew the extent. They knew that Israel would retaliate, as it always has done and has made Policy, with an Iron Fist, and this would lead to substantial, unavoidable, civilian casualties of Palestinians.
This makes the already abhorrent action taken by Hamas even more abhorrent.
As to the international reaction- they don't care. They're zealots.

Violence doesn't work. One of the Intifadas had a set focus of following India and Gandhi's noncooperative nonviolent, though was inevitably co-opted by other elements.
Success was made on an international stage as well as within Israel, just as with India, and this has been lost to history in favour of bloody-minded violent means.

Yeah I just don't know if I agree. I don't think you can as easily apportion blame (to be clear, I think there is plenty of blame, I just don't find it as easy to say "well Israel has more firepower therefore always gets the blame").

I think it's possible to simultaneously think that (1) Israel is entitled to be a state and to defend itself, and it isn't a misreading of history to feel that Jews as a people have been historically persecuted and therefore are at risk; (2) the way it has done so has, at least some of the time, been unacceptably brutal; but (3) they are correct to feel threatened as there are those out there who don't accept their right to a state and wish them harm.

Maybe that means I'm one of those people you refer to above. I'm happy to condemn Israel for the things it has done wrong, but I don't think that means (as many on this thread appear to) that this is unequivocally a case of "Israel bad and that's all that matters"

Israel doesn't know whether using more force on Palestine will prevent attacks from Hamas or provoke them

History tells us the answer to this. Extremism thrives off violence.

Exactly. And violence begets violence. Escalation of violence, which is happening and sadly, will continue till many more people die. It's unfathomable the dark period the peoples of Palestine and Israel are entering.

Also the Americans who have restrained Israelis in previous flare ups, sound ready to step back and let the the IDF attack with no limit

Just a minor edit as a sentence of mine didn't track the way I wanted upthread.
I was trying to point out that in the face of violence, resistance grows. I worded it poorly initially.

They absolutely did know, and they knew the extent

They can guess there will be a reaction by Israel, but can they guess how the international community will react to that, both in the West and the Middle East? Which other countries might get caught up in the reaction or otherwise become involved?

Equally, I don't think this is straightforward:

Extremism thrives off violence. Hamas is arguably only extant due to discontent with previous overuse of force by Israel

2 reasons - 1. Now we are where we are, Israel ceasing to use any force doesn't remove the threat - people have long memories, and Israel doesn't know (given all the history) whether it leaves itself exposed or promotes peace if it ceases to try and stop Hamas. Look at it from their point of view - the period after Oslo seems to have been pretty violent against them.

1. There have been people who opposed the state of Israel and haven't accepted its legitimacy from the start
   

Yes but it's not as easy to stop as just saying "ok we won't be violent anymore". The people who want to attack Israel won't all suddenly say "ok we're good with you now". I agree de-escalation and reduction in violence has to be the aim and direction, but this is what I mean about this being complex - the route to doing that isn't simple

I really think you need to read deeper. I apologise that this is ad hominem, but you don't seem to have a good grasp on the history of either side.

1. Formation of Hamas:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#History

   The idea of Hamas began to take form on December 10, 1987, when several members of the Brotherhood[h] convened the day after an incident in which an Israeli army truck had crashed into a car at a Gaza checkpoint killing 4 Palestinian day-workers.... To many Palestinians it appeared to engage more authentically with their national expectations, since it merely provided an Islamic version of what had been the PLO's original goals, armed struggle to liberate all of Palestine, rather than the territorial compromise the PLO acquiesced in—a small fragment of Mandatory Palestine.... entity distinct from the Muslim Brotherhood was a matter of practicality; the Muslim Brotherhood refused to engage in violence against Israel.

2. The opposition to the formation of Israel and the basis of Israeli military policy.
   The creation of the IDF stemmed from this period
   Violence against Jews and Arabs was plentiful, and no side (especially the British) come out looking particularly good.
   Israel, much like the US, has a remnant believe (understandable from Israel, less so from the states) that they are under attack or at war. As such, your points are fine- but know the underlying basis.

There used to be a good textbook on the conflict published in 1998.
Subsequent revisions have fallen increasingly foul of partisan bias, whereas at least the first edition bias was predominantly pro-Britain.

This from Ian Dunt (of the Origin Stories podcast on Zionism) is spot on.

https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2023/10/12/even-in-the-darkness-we-cannot-give-up-on-the-hope-of-peace-for-israel-and-gaza/content.html

'It’s not useful to wave this complexity away by saying “both sides” are responsible for violence. The actions of the Israeli government – even Netanyahu’s abysmal administration – are not equivalent to Hamas. The strikes are a response to an original attack. They seek to dismantle a terror group, no matter how crudely. That is different to Hamas, whose founding charter encourages genocide, but that does not necessarily make them moral or sensible. The government is bombing a confined area without an established safe passage route into Egypt or the West Bank. Power and water have been cut off. Whichever way you cut it, that is a mass punishmen'

I'm not exactly sure what your point is here?

It reads a bit like you're saying Hamas are the good guys because they started as an offshoot of an originally charitable organisation, whereas the IDF started life as conscripting a mix of paramilitaries and terrorists?

@hugo7
Sure. Read that into it. Perhaps read my other posts first for context.
I was pointing out exactly where and when Hamas was formed.
After a breakaway sect of zealots wanted to inflict harm on people.
Hamas are distinctly, as I have repeatedly and clearly stated, not the good guys.
They are vile.