zazen

I watched this a while back - both critique the other very well and pretty accurately. I wrote this elsewhere but it’s relevant: The flaw of religion and the way its practiced is that it takes myth as literal and a description of historical events (of their prophets) as a prescription for a present where it no longer works - principles that are more timeless can always be used but practices not. The flaw of secularism isn't so much in the state giving up religion to be a neutral governance system as it is the signal this sends socially to the people that religion doesn't hold value and them in turn giving it up - and not replacing that void with any structure to guide them and instead living entirely in the subjective world of moral relativism or scientific materialism with no spiritual depth. In both cases, it isn't so much the state or the religion itself that tends to be the problem but how the people use, interpret and react to them. A secularism that leads people to indulging the subjective world unhinges people from the biological reality they exist in. We can't debase ourselves from reality, the human body is a form through which the formless lives, the mould of our meatsuits allows spirit to unfold, the skeletal structure allows states of being to be. We won't be able to experience the formless without form or states of being without structure. Sure, these things have their flaws. Moulds become moldy, structures become rickety, forms become frigid, and base reality becomes a basement of dark ignorance when not used for what it is - a base to jump from to the heights of spirit. It’s funny because secularism has sort of given rise to three splintered extremes. The dogmatically religious, the scientific materialist and the subjective moral relativist where all is fair game in the law of attraction, manifestation and identifying however you so please. - The dogmatically religious = as a result of too much confusion that moral relativity can bring, the flood of information technology supplies and the excess subjectivity wokism puts on display - many people are regressively returning to religion (in its literal form) almost as mental-spiritual refugees. In a dazed world they seek refuge in that which never changes - dogmatic religion. Religion and tradition become anchors in a sea of excess chaos. - The scientific materialist = science and rationality became a new religion but one which scorched life with a materialist lens looking at the surface of life but blind to any depth to it. And because Being is depth, people who have and deny any depth to life or themselves will never be fulfilled by source. Rationality includes knowing when not to be - in matters of heart and spirit. -Woke left = they take the domain and world of spirit and subjectivity and missapply it to objective realty denying objective reality all together. Its not that a spiritual subjective world doesn't exist where probably worlds exist that defy the laws of nature we find on this planet - but they deny that they do live on this planet and under its laws. They do not honor the form in which they have incarnated. Maybe it’s not so much that religion and science are on different paths but on parallel ones trans-versing the same reality - hopefully to converge one day.

This video: Flawed logic and borderline colonial thinking to think because a group on its own can be disorderly, dehumanising and tyrannical amongst themselves that it gives the right of another group to come do the same on top of it.

Nice one straw-manning a single sentence out of paragraphs written in good faith to dismiss and deflect responding to any other points. Context matters. There’s a difference between Nazis who wanted to universally exterminate Jews from the planet and imperially dominate a entire continent and beyond, as opposed to Hamas who want to liberate Palestinians and seek justice though yes, through unjust means by deploying terrorist tactics - and who’s territorial aspirations are isolated and limited to their land and in defence of it - not expansionist oriented which infringes on other peoples rights or lands. There’s a reason the world came together to defeat the Nazi’s but in this situation the world votes against and condemns the war except very few. The fact that Israel is backed by a global power, has one of the most advanced militaries in the region and possibly nuclear yet still insists it needs to establish detterance capacity as if what it already has isn’t enough - yet it still gets resisted against and attacked should tell that force doesn’t work unless it totally subjugates, cleanses or genocides the other side which risks it losing its last remaining major ally being the US. US domestic support for Israel by the polls is positive mostly in older generations / boomers and the opposite in younger generations including Jews who are the most vocal and organised in protest. Once they come to power in the next decades Israel will find itself on shakey ground at the same time its domestic population becomes more far right due to settlers having the highest birth rate ( currently 13% of the population vs projected 30%+ by 2050 ). Israel and its biggest ally are on divergent paths in sentiment and vision for how a modern day Israel should look which if it continues on its current path will lead to it being left lonely in a neighbourhood it can’t afford to be lonely in.

That’s if we look at history, which is history. What happened after those heavy handed approaches in which atrocities happened? New institutions and standards were set to prevent them again. What would also be good to look at in history is what has the response been to bombing campaigns against terrorism. Has the war on terror for 20 years worked? A good article on that: https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/its-impossible-to-bomb-a-population-into-submission-and-obedience-ed33ec9447aa What if Britian dealt with the IRA the way Israel is dealing with Hamas today? What if this war doesn’t make Israel any safer? Most sane people want Israel to be safe alongside Palestinians and to live with dignity and recognition. Ignore the extremes on both sides calling for the end of each other - that’s unrealistic and naive. It’s exaggerated when the Palestinian side equivocates Israel’s actions to the holocaust as is the Israeli side equivocating Hamas with Nazi/ISIS. Israel cant use the horrors of the Holocaust by weaponising and abusing the sympathy and grace of the world to commit present day atrocities or deny / distort reality. Genocide isn’t a event but a process, and a subset of genocide by the UN definition is ‘Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’. Raz Segal who is a Israeli scholar on the Holocaust and genocide calls it as such. Intent and incitement have been shown in varying statements from people who actually matter in the equation which are the prime minister, president and defence minister. I don’t even have to quote Ben Gvir, Smotrich or extremist settlers. Bibi Netenyahu : invoking Almalek Isaac Herzog : “it is a entire nation out there that is responsible” Yoav Gallant : “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.” A relevant post from two pages back:

@Nivsch People don’t go around saying they openly want to kill unless their psychopaths. A certain line of logic demands the most concrete black and white definition of words to be applied. Like saying Palestinians aren’t occupied because Israel left Gaza but they control majority of their life or like Israel saying they want Gazans to ‘voluntarily’ move out as if they have no responsibility in displacing them by making the place unliveable. The same reasoning is used to say the nakba was mostly a ‘voluntary’ exodus - like military groups massacring Palestinians wasn’t the catalyst that spread enough fear in them to leave. As if some Palestinians wanted a change of scenery to go from the beach to the hills and vice versa and just move around for the sake of it.

Just from yesterday. Who knows - he could be a comedian or I’m just cherry picking. How explicit do words and action need to be to establish intent? I can understand war and casualties being a natural part of it but their have been plenty of dehumanising statements from Israel which show that intentional killing could easily be believed to occur. At its best, Israel may not be targeting civilians but they don’t care enough not to harm them in targeting Hamas - at its worst, Hamas aren’t the target but the excuse for ethnic cleansing and claiming land a big proportion of Israel feel entitled to.

It’s entirely possible that attempting to bomb ‘terrorism’ out of existence doesn’t always work and what we think is in our best interest (defence via war) isn’t. When Germany and Britain were bombing each other both populations rallied together for more resilience and resistance against it. As can be seen by the increased popularity in polls for Hamas today and what in Britain was known as the ‘Blitz spirit’ - a term to symbolise their resolve, resilience and national unity in the face of hardship caused by the Nazi’s blitz bombing campaign. If Israel say they don’t want a Palestinian state it’s ironic that bombing them only nationalises them further. One can say ‘but look, the Nazi’s were defeated and there is peace now’ sure - but at what expense and what level of international acceptance at the time. Post WW2 institutions and foundational documents were created (UN, Geneva convention and universal declaration of human rights) to promote peace and equality, protect and sanctify life and persecute and prevent further war crimes and atrocities. The standard of what is acceptable has shifted. Which is why any explicit genocidal intent has to be discreet, subtle and slowly go under the radar. Another point is the difference between Nazi’s/ISIS and Hamas that Israeli apologists knowingly equate to justify and gain support from the world. Nazi and ISIS are thrown in to label and link Hamas to toxic expansionist genocidal ideologies and unjust causes the world came together to fight. The former are globalist death cults whilst the latter a localised defensive resistance movement that yes - do employ terrorist tactics that should be persecuted equally as any other group. This isn’t a defense of Hamas, just analysis of the situation - analysis isn’t approval. Something to understand about grassroots movements such as resistance on a homeland is that you can’t keep ‘mowing or cutting the grass’ to get rid of it - it needs to be uprooted from the soil. The grass (people) will keep on growing (resisting) unless totally defeated in morale through subjugation (harder for people of faith) or uprooted from their land (ethnically cleansed or genocided). Even if the motive isn’t to genocide but is only to ethnically cleanse/displace people - the inability to do so can out of frustration and desperation lead to genocide. Maybe in explicit ways (targeted killing) or indirect ways (make their land unliveable by systemic destruction - which has been stated). At its best Israel may not be targeting civilians but they don’t care enough not to harm them in targeting Hamas - at its worst, Hamas aren’t the target but the excuse to cleanse and claim land Zionism has felt entitled to and aspired to - both in the name of ‘defence’ - a term used as a verbal shield for such actions which only the spear of good conscience and intelligence can penetrate.

Many Palestinians have been held by Israel which may make justice and resistance their top priority. From wiki: On 11 December 2012, the office of then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad stated that since 1967, 800,000 Palestinians, or roughly 20% of the total population and 40% of the male population, had been imprisoned by Israel at one point in time. About 100,000 had been held in administrative detention. According to Palestinian estimates, 70% of Palestinian families have had one or more family members sentenced to jail terms in Israeli prisons as a result of activities against the occupation. From human rights watch: The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future. Israeli authorities have held children, human rights defenders and Palestinian political activists, among others, in administrative detention, often for prolonged periods. The large number of Palestinian detainees is primarily the result of separate criminal justice systems Israeli authorities maintain in the occupied territory. The nearly 3 million Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, are ruled by military law and prosecuted in military courts. By contrast, the nearly half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank are governed under civil and criminal law and tried in Israeli civil courts. Discrimination pervades every aspect of this system. Under military law, Palestinians can be held for up to eight days before they must see a judge — and then, only a military judge. Yet, under Israeli law, a person has to be brought before a judge within 24 hours of being arrested, which can be extended to 96 hours when authorized in extraordinary cases. Palestinians can be jailed for participating in a gathering of merely 10 people without a permit on any issue “that could be construed as political,” while settlers can demonstrate without a permit unless the gathering exceeds 50 people, takes place outdoors and involves “political speeches and statements.” In short, Israeli settlers and Palestinians live in the same territory, but are tried in different courts under different laws with different due process rights and face different sentences for the same offense. The result is a large and growing number of Palestinians imprisoned without basic due process. While the law of occupation permits administrative detention as a temporary and exceptional measure, Israel’s sweeping use of administrative detention on the Palestinian population, more than a half-century into an occupation with no end in sight, far exceeds what the law authorizes.

Bro what if the real point of view that cares about Israelis is that this war only leads to more future threats, terrorism and anti-semitism? From a article: “Did you know that since the United States brought its “war on terror” to Africa, terrorist attacks on that continent have increased by 75,000 percent? That’s right: 75, then three zeros, percent. I learned this neat little stat from a new article by journalist Nick Turse, who also notes that “according to the Pentagon, terrorist attacks in the Sahel region alone have resulted in 9,818 deaths — a 42,500% increase.” People have been documenting the way attempts to bomb terrorism out of existence actually creates more terrorism for many years. In 2010 Professor Robert A Pape wrote an article for Foreign Policy titled “It’s the Occupation, Stupid” about his study with University of Chicago which found that suicide bombings are the result not of Islamic fundamentalism but of foreign military occupations. Some notable excerpts: “More than 95 percent of all suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation.” “As the United States has occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, which have a combined population of about 60 million, total suicide attacks worldwide have risen dramatically — from about 300 from 1980 to 2003, to 1,800 from 2004 to 2009.” “Over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American.” “Each month, there are more suicide terrorists trying to kill Americans and their allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Muslim countries than in all the years before 2001 combined. From 1980 to 2003, there were 343 suicide attacks around the world, and at most 10 percent were anti-American inspired. Since 2004, there have been more than 2,000, over 91 percent against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries.”

Some good discussion the last few pages. As Leo has mentioned it can lead to wasted energy when it devolves to outrage and bad faith. Understanding is beneficial up to the point it leads to active change in the right direction in the form of a vote (political power) or a purchase (financial power) - you can vote or finance the wrong things (more war and elite capture). That necessitates making a moral judgement on what is more right or wrong which I think (wrongly perhaps?) is fine - spirituality doesn’t mean resigning our moral conscience because we see all sides to a issue and are above humanity sitting in a lofty place of detached enlightened - pluralism isn’t necessarily neautralism. Understanding all sides doesn’t mean standing with all of them - and in the case that both seem equally right or valid to the extent of causing a moral quandary - one can understand that both sides need to stand together elsewhere in a new unitive position to improve the situation towards peace and prosperity. In the past we didn’t have the speed of information transfer we do today, we couldn’t talk to the other side to understand them which affects change in each other, today we can. Though we can still clash or echo chamber ourselves at least the option to step out of it or jailbreak our biases exists more than ever which makes forum discussion valuable. We can at least understand that the base instincts and incentives to survive trump intelligence and conciousness. That if we can’t engage the warring sides intelligence or conscience we can at least use our intelligence and good conscience which isn’t drowned in emotional, reflexive and instinctual revenge to pull their instincts and incentives in a better direction in the form of political votes and finance. If opinion didn’t matter propaganda wouldn’t be valued or used - if money didn’t matter anti-BDS or boycott laws wouldn’t be put in place. It’s because the world is more globalised and connected that we can exert more influence. On a political level cutting diplomatic ties, aid, imposing sanctions. On a financial level big and small buying from certain businesses and boycotting others or scrapping trade deals and reorienting supply chains - all have a level of Influence.

“Killing with bombs is something you do from afar. IDF soldiers looks at screens and hit some buttons, and poof, there’s a tiny explosion cloud. It’s not like looking someone in the eye as you run them through with a blade. It’s distant. It’s detached from reality. Another part of it is that with bombs you can say you’re not intentionally killing civilians, even while you take actions that you know will kill a lot of civilians like firing military explosives into a densely populated area. Ostensibly it’s not that you want to kill civilians, it’s that you don’t care enough about their lives to refrain from killing them in that instance. These dynamics help protect the people deploying the bombs from the guilt and trauma of killing large numbers of civilians, which actually makes it easier for them as a collective to kill large numbers of civilians. It lets them feel like they’re perpetrating less evil when in reality they are perpetrating more. Which of course benefits the power structure who is ordering them to deploy the bombs. It’s like the invention of execution by firing squad: people in power needed to be able to kill their enemies, so they invented a system wherein multiple executioners fire at the victim simultaneously so that none of them can be sure that they fired the fatal shot. Sometimes one of the guns would even contain a blank cartridge, thereby feeding into the executioners’ ability to compartmentalize away from the reality of what they were doing by letting them believe they may not have even fired a bullet. This method of execution allowed for executions to continue in whatever numbers were deemed necessary, without putting a drain on troop morale. With bombs the same dissociation dynamic is used to a much, much deadlier effect. Both the public and the troops are given the ability to psychologically compartmentalize away from reality and pretend no great evil is being done, the end result of which is to allow much, much more evil to be done. Israeli forces are massacring Gazans no less brutally than if they were mowing them down with machine guns or stabbing them with bayonets, but because the method of massacre lets them dissociate, it allows for a much higher degree of compliance from the troops and a much higher degree of consent from the public. A tremendous amount of depravity hides behind the completely baseless western delusion that murdering people with bombs is less of an atrocity than murdering them with bullets or blades. In reality, murder is murder and dead is dead. The sooner we can get real with ourselves about that as a civilization, the better.”

No need to be rude. I gave you the respect and civility to reply cordially at length as we were having a good discussion 3 pages back but the thread got flooded since. Me sharing posts of geopolitical takes from Dugin or prominent members of Israeli society (Herzog writing on a bomb) who exert actual influence and can shift policy in Israel isn't propaganda - I'm not quoting / cherry picking random Israeli's or far right extremists like like Ben Gvir, neither am I sharing mutilated body images from Gaza to stir up hate which I could easily do. Sharing that information is obviously like sandpaper to the ego as it doesn't make Israel look good. What's cringe is when Israel apologists get confrontational over it and into a mental cage with those who share a different perspective, then verbally jew-jitsu around opposing points the IDF have successfully propagandised them into like online Jewhadists - that's me being petty now. It's all love though. Here's where we last left off in case you missed it:

Isaac Herzog is the president of Israel’s Labour Party ( the supposed left wing ). I thought this image being shared was photoshopped then found it on his own Twitter - signing bombs to be dropped on Gaza. Scapegoat Bibi all you want but Israel’s problem is deeper and beyond just Netenyahu.

Geopolitical link tree. Alexander Dugin (Putins brain / right hand which Leo mentioned on his blog:

We've already gone over what these offers entailed. They were offered 'less than a state' or Israel's definition which doesn't meet the international standard. Watch just 2 min of this video from 16-18 minute - she was part of the peace negotiations during the Oslo accords. Yitzhak Rabin - ''He also described his vision of a Palestinian “entity” he described as “less than a state.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pm-rabin-speech-to-knesset-on-ratification-of-oslo-peace-accords#google_vignette

No one says Israel can't defend itself - its how it defends itself. Defence has become a label to cover other motives such as ethnic cleansing and land grabbing. Establishing deterrence capacity isn't defence either - which is literally the state quo of Israeli military strategy - to be disproportionate and scare / terrorise any hostilities into submission. Look up Dahiya doctrine. Israel thinks it's safer going down this route when it is probably the opposite. Israeli's will only have true safety once the Palestinians are given the dignity of a state on what was once their land and not 'less than a state' demilitarised and with Israeli security within it. Or live under a democratic state with equal rights which Israel will never allow because the Palestinians will out number the Israeli Jews. A poll shared by Israels UN representative showing majority in Israel agree with ‘voluntary’ migration of Gaza residents to other countries ie ethnic cleansing. Whilst we’re talking of UN: Israel don’t like journalists or investigation because they know the truth is ugly for them.

Someone holding the gun with a finger on the trigger is still oppressive - whether the trigger is pulled or not. Resisting that oppression isn’t necessarily a disorder though it can be resisted in disorderly ways - seeking justice can be done unjustly. The boycott movement which is a peaceful form of protest helped South Africa end its apartheid - the BDS movement against Israel is thwarted and stopped by legislation and laws. So when peaceful forms of protest are no longer available they are left with the un-peaceful forms of it - they seek life through death. From the Israeli perspective security controls and defence the way Israel defines it isn’t seen as oppressive but it is to the outside world. A argument can be made that a certain group runs a society better than another - again in the case of South Africa which is now ruining its own nation due to corruption etc I’ve heard a similar case been made for Palestinians that live better lives under Israeli leadership. If one group is less developed it’s not the right of another to ‘spread development’ to them in unjust ways by stripping them of their rights and dignity. If they mess things up or fight each other that’s their right within their society - we can’t rob a society of its growth. People complain about Islam being spread by the sword in the past but remain silent when the US spread democracy by the gun - something being critiqued only now once they feel the repercussions of it via extremism, refugee crises and loss of credibility on the world stage. Should the US be stripped of its rights and sovereignty because of its bad behaviour in the world? A child is governed by an adult but a society is not to be governed by another - and even then modern parenting tells us children are to be treated with dignity or else they rebel.

@Lila9 Very sad indeed. What’s caused them to be this radical? 2 million Gazans out of 2 billion Muslims is 0.1% of the Muslim population. If Jew hating and explicit incitement of killing was a uniquely Muslim thing we’d see a lot more of it but it’s unique to Gaza because of the situation their in. It’s easy to indoctrinate kids when their childhood is taken from them in various form. Things like toys, musical instruments, chocolates and diapers have been banned at times by Israel to name a few things. If people claim the current destruction and death in Gaza is Hamas’s fault and not Israel’s, can people also claim that Palestinian radicalisation is partially the fault of Israel imposing conditions on them that make it easy to radicalise in?

I can understand that it can take a dispassionate look at reality to come up with the most compassionate actions that don’t always seem compassionate on the surface. Most sane people either side agree to want peace and prosperity - I think they differ on the best method to getting there (war vs ceasefire for example) and how it will manifest (a Palestinian state militarised vs de-militarised or Palestinian areas occupied by some Israeli presence / security apparatus). Part of integrating is elevating. Maybe in the case of war this means not losing the dynamic of war but elevating the nature of it to a non physical domain. Instead of physical war which spills blood we elevate it to a war of idea’s spilt onto the table of discussion - though I do realise for that to take place there first needs to be a certain amount of peace that allows the fight or flight response to not be present blunting either sides ability to reason with eachother. This seems to be the reasoning behind a ceasefire beyond the simply instinctive response to stop bloodshed and which people can easily virtue signal with. “This war is not going to take away any underlying causes, only a bona fide peace treaty can do that. This war is about removing Hamas and Gaza's military capabilities. I assume that after the war Israel will retain some security control like it has in the West Bank.” People will argue that whatever designates security control is part of the underlying cause that keeps the cycle going. That is the current status quo which you rightly pointed needs changing but which there isn’t a clear objective solution to except remove Hamas and continue as is until Hamas 2.0 props up or a West Bank style security presence which also gets resistance and condemnation for the settler expansion IDF are complicit in by their lack of prosecution. Having laws aren’t enough but rule of law and implementation of it is needed also. That keeps the situation as an occupied / occupier dynamic which Israel will deny or say it isn’t an accurate label of the situation because they know what comes from that isn’t in their favour legally / morally. If Palestinians aren’t given a state in the full sense and Israel remain in some way then it needs to be called for what it is which is occupation or a one state within which different districts with different laws exist for different peoples akin to apartheid.

I can understand that it can take a dispassionate look at reality to come up with the most compassionate actions that don’t seemingly look compassionate. Most sane people either side agree to want peace and prosperity - I think they differ on the best method to getting there (war vs ceasefire for example) and how it will manifest (a Palestinian state militarised vs de-militarised for example or occupied by some Israeli presence / security apparatus). Part of integrating is elevating. Maybe in the case of war this means not losing the dynamic of war but elevating the nature of it to a non physical domain. Instead of physical war which spills blood we elevate it to a war of idea’s spilt onto the table of discussion - though I do realise for that to take place there first needs to be a certain amount of peace that allows the fight or flight response to not be present blunting either sides ability to reason with eachother. This seems to be the reasoning behind a ceasefire beyond the simply instinctive response to stop bloodshed and which people can easily virtue signal with. “This war is not going to take away any underlying causes, only a bona fide peace treaty can do that. This war is about removing Hamas and Gaza's military capabilities. I assume that after the war Israel will retain some security control like it has in the West Bank.” People will argue that whatever designates security control is part of the underlying cause that keeps the cycle going. That is the current status quo which you rightly pointed needs changing but which there isn’t a clear objective solution to except remove Hamas and continue as is until Hamas 2.0 props up or a West Bank style security presence which also gets resistance and condemnation for the settler expansion IDF are complicit in by their lack of prosecution. Having laws aren’t enough but rule of law and implementation of it is needed also. That keeps the situation as an occupied / occupier dynamic which Israel will deny or say it isn’t an accurate label of the situation because they know what comes from that isn’t in their favour legally / morally. If Palestinians aren’t given a state in the full sense and Israel remain in some way then it needs to be called for what it is which is occupation or a one state within which different districts with different laws exist for different peoples akin to apartheid.

True. As societies develop and evolve so do the standards of right and wrong and things that used to be or are currently seen as popular may not be in the future. Though popular perspectives also can’t be dismissed outright - like how we in modern times do more easily to religion and tradition which have truths that can become distorted. It’s the distortions we detest. Partial truths are often hijacked by dirty distortions of that truth. For example the Black Lives Matter movement - massive protests happened signalling a certain truth that resonated with the masses - one being that police can act out brutally and blacks are over represented in these statistics. Like a dirty bomb, the dirty distortion of that truth is that this is intently done by white people leading to a simplistic ‘white man bad’ meme. Then the cause is hijacked by bad agents wishing to sneak in their ideologies - in the BLM case anarchist sentiments of defunding the police.

@Lila9 @Vrubel Silly caption from Jake shield lol good that a Israeli media outlet shared that. It doesn’t detract from the interview shedding light and providing some nuance on who Hamas are that’s all - maybe whilst there are cruel people among them there are also normal ones who joined because they saw no other way out of their situation including a lot more normal people who will probably join now after Israel’s atrocities who if or when they come up again in a few years it will be easy to reflexively refer to them as savage animals. Sharing a different view point isn’t establishing a moral high ground - it’s not like people are going around saying their moral the way Israel claims to be the most moral army. It’s just understanding the situation a bit better rather than the base assumption and reflexive labeling of ‘virus’ or ‘savage’ which dehumanises - though not done with ill intent or in a vacuum either - dehumanisation shuts down neural pathways to understanding, which blinds us to their cause, which blinds us to the root of the issue and the eventual solution. As Vrubel mentioned adding an Islamist ideaology to these kind of conditions is a recipe for repeated October 7’s. It’s much harder to destroy the ideology than it is to improve / change the conditions which breed that extremist kind of ideology - though changing the conditions by coming to a peace agreement isn’t easy either. But with every bomb Israel thinks gets rid of Hamas it likely only reinforces revenge within their psyche and a victimhood mentality that brings a level of entitlement with it that will demand more concessions in a future peace deal that Israel will be too stubborn to accept - the status quo and cycle continues. You teach them how you want to be treated - and when or if they (Hamas 2.0 or a future Palestinian state) organise in the future Israel better hope they don’t want to seek revenge for how its treated them in the present. Vrubel - you mentioned the way Hamas / Gazans act makes the world lose sympathy for them but to me (maybe I’m echo chambered) it seems the opposite - if anything the Palestinian cause has garnered more sympathy worldwide than ever before by looking at the global protests, social media and condemnation for Israel’s actions from nations and global organisations. Happy holidays to all 🎄

What about the similar phrase used in the likud party charter? Same way people thought the Black Lives Matter slogan was a call for genociding white people - though some extremists were amongst that movement / organisation for sure. What could be heartwarming is that Christians and functioning churches exist in Gaza - something the Mayor of Jerusalem (not a random person) denied because it goes against the narrative that Hamas / Gazans are anti-semite savages. For the mayor of such a holy city to lie and deny facts that lead to dehumanisation that causes such unholy crimes upon the holy land isn’t heartwarming however - especially during Christmas - yet the evangelical Zionists will still cheer on ironically. Maybe also this: Could be that hostages were taken mostly as a bargaining chip in exchange for their women and children detained without due course for rock throwing. And as a leverage as any other form of protest or leverage are shut down by Israel including the BDS movement which South Africans used to successfully free themselves. As the saying goes when all means of peaceful protest are shut down the violent means become the last - though Israel could say that when peaceful means of self defence don’t work they must resort to violent means of defence.

Israel’s situation is almost like its own thing. People automatically jump to the most obvious definition of the word and where it originated in South Africa. But if the situation is close enough to fit the definition for many organisations and prominent people to use it then surely it must have some truth. Here’s a amnesty article / report on it which can be downloaded in any language: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/israel-palestinians-are-living-under-system-apartheid-major-new-report Former Israeli peace negotiator and advisor to former PM Daniel Levy even uses the word in the video above that Raze shared.