zazen

This 100% Even to the North, Hamas fired two rockets into a empty farm area not to kill but more as a sign of solidarity to the Palestinian side that we are with you, and as a cautionary warning to Israel to not be too heavy handed - but they overreacted and started going for it as well as attacking Syrian airports. @Nivsch Israel don't have strategy, they are flustered and knee jerk reacting to everything at the moment which is suicidal. Those drunk on power aren't rational and need to save face and position - Bibi built his identiy off being the strong man and saviour of Israel and will look to maintain that to distract from domestic issues. If Israel provokes Hamas from the South, Hezbollah from the North, Syria from the side and Palestinians from within thats a 4 front war they will lose without the US and allies getting involved which will then involve Iran, Russia and Turkey into a much bigger issue.

Self defence doesn't mean exterminate - which is what cutting water food and electricity covertly does including not allowing aid. If that level of self defence is justified then by that definition one could justify the holocasut as a defence against the ''perceived'' financial terrorism imposed on Europeans via interest based loans that were given at the hands of Jewish money lenders. We can keep stretching the definition of self defence to absurdity. Self defence becomes laughable when it crosses the line from penalisation to extermination of the one who caused harm. For example, a woke lefty wanting to cancel someone for not using the correct pronoun or in this case level a area more denser than Tokyo half of which have children. Its not just a population, their refugees and children.

And are still served being served by a Christian at the bar. I must confess the devil in me went down the clickbait route - should have used this instead. @PurpleTree He is versed in debate and apologetics but the problem I see with him and other muslims in particular is their delivery and tone is off-putting and aggressive - that doesn't invalidate his reasoning. They have reason to be angry but it doesn't help their cause when its brought in to debate and represent their cause. Fear and intimidation shut off the rational mind. That is also a tactic of debate, to distract and emotionalise the other side so they become more illogical and incoherent in their rebuttals.

Very well put. Saying that, who has more say and sway in the peace process - those that have more freedom of expression and more democratic power to vote in leadership and policies that are pro peace, or a people with no democratic vote or voice towards their repressive leadership. The process has to start with the ones with more power, but end with those they wish to have peace with. Side note: the same system that allows for freedom of expression also has more sophistication to propagandise its very people to be oppressive to others.

We don't know what we're talking about? Or you just cant logically respond to whats being talked about. No one's saying Jews don't have a right to exist or live there, it just shouldn't come at the expense of others living there inhumanely, especially those that were there when they got there. Scott Ritter also served in the Military during desert storm, yet he's come to a much more humane and rational view on the issue of Israel / Palestine.

Giving settlements back is difficult because the settlers epitomise the most extreme segment of the zionist movement, with the highest birth rate and demographic future. Thats a huge voting bloc the establishment don't want to upset, but that Isreali's are aware of that are causing many issues with Palestinians in the West Bank and which only provoke Hamas more. A lot of Isrealis just want to live in peace but a sizable portion also perpetuate hatred, just like among the Palestinians you have extremists who want to play zero sum games. https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/2/28/23617766/israeli-settler-rampage-palestine-violence-government From Wiki: Palestinians are the target of violence by Jewish Israeli settlers and their supporters, predominantly in the West Bank.[3] In November 2021, Defense Minister Benny Gantz discussed the steep rise in the number of incidents between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, many of which result from attacks by residents of illegal settler outposts on Palestinians from neighboring villages.[4] Palestinian police are forbidden from reacting to acts of violence by Israeli settlers, a fact which diminishes their credibility among Palestinians.[5] UN figures from 2011 showed that 90% of complaints filed against settlers by Palestinians with the Israeli police never led to indictment

Humans aren't rational creatures as much as we are rationalising ones. We die for fiction and dreams more than truth, we take them as truth when they are only symbols of it. This is why Leo says we need to go meta, beyond ego and identification. Most on this forum may be able to, and thats a forum inclined to self development, but the world to go meta? One can only hope.

I contemplated this also but looking at the facts of the situation it would be unviable for a few reasons beside the fact of displacing people from their land being immoral. Europe - not just one country but a continent of wealthier countries who have more of a capability of accommodating refugees struggled to absorb 1.5 million migrants and that as well over a 8 year period. Now imagine, not 1.5 million but 2 million Palestinians (just from Gaza alone - 2.8 million extra if your suggesting all Palestinians from West Bank also) migrate to already struggling countries who aren't as wealthy as European ones, a lot of which are war torn, and that too in the span of months not years. Egypt being the closest option is already strained with its 100million + population. The 1948 Arab Isreali wars that led to significant refugees triggered multiple coups in the middle east destabilising the region. If Egypt destabilises, a population of 110 million people - Europe will face a migrant crises like no other.

@bambi Excellent points. @Inliytened1 - Regarding your statement of Hamas growing on its own: ''Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.” First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.'' - You asked earlier how Israel could deal with Hamas in more humane way? My response to which you didn't respond was ''For a start at least not transgressing international law by cutting off essentials such as food, water and electricity that sustains millions of people half of which are children and further - to block aid coming in to those people. US gave Israel precision target weapons to target Hamas not destroy Gaza and kill innocents. Of course, there will be some casualties but this is to minimise that. US also has told Israel to allow aid. Both have been defied and denied by Israel who seem to be haphazardly and ethnocentrically lashing out because their cause is dying out. Biden now has to visit due to this and we'll see what comes from it.'' - Do past historical experiences trump present day legal laws? A case can be made in extreme events such as the Holocaust. Though its not legally lawful to establish refuge for the Jews in the form of a state over existing lands it would be the right thing to do. But the right to exist as a state is made wrong by the underpinning of an ideology such as Zionism that wishes to expel that lands original inhabitants and if not expel them, mistreat, humiliate and dehumanise them. This is why Zionism denies that people even existed there (in the land of Palestine) in the first place, because if people were there they know their justification would fail and they would struggle in the moral domain. Shouldn't the perpetrators who caused extreme suffering to the Jews be the ones to give up land of their own for them to seek refuge in once and for all? Why should people of other lands suffer for the sins caused by another. Who gave them that right and authority?

Terrorist organisations have to be dealt with yes, but they also must not be created in the first place. Who and what conditions created them? How could Israel handle Hamas? To have not created it in the first place and treated Palestinians poorly only to further radicalising them into getting vengeance for having killed their parents brother and sisters. Thats the past so how about now? Well for a start at least not transgressing international law by cutting off essentials such as food, water and electricity that sustains millions of people half of which are children and further - to block aid coming in to those people. US gave Israel precision target weapons to target Hamas not destroy Gaza and kill innocents. Of course, there will be some casualties but this is to minimise that. US also has told Isreal to allow aid. Both have been defied and denied by Israel who seem to be haphazardly and ethnocentrically lashing out because their cause is dying out. Biden now has to visit due to this and we'll see what comes from it. Isreals cause is dying in the eyes of the world and isolating it in the process as the West is isolates itself from the Global South due to their crusade of regime change the past decades. World wide protests and condemnation abound apart from the elites of the West who have a vested interest in perpetual war and the continued threat of Isreals extinction by the surrounding region as a pretext to perpetuate the military industrial complex.

Is that all your response is? No recognition of the facts of international law or that Israel has transgressed? Or the ability to condemn it as people condemn the Hamas attack and rightly so. Being a moderator of a forum priding itself on self development and with ''Wisdom. Truth. Love' in your bio would expect more brother. Didn't Israel strike first in the form of occupation and death by a thousand cuts in their treatment of Palestinians including in the West Bank which is supposedly where they should be able to live in peace? This video sheds light on life in the West bank. Can't expect to treat humans like animals then call them that (as the Isreal defence minister called them) when they lash out in barbaric acts such as the Hamas attack and then play victim. The jews deserve to be protected for what they've historically suffered but not in a way that causes suffering to to others as if to be some cosmic karmic retribution to people who not only didn't cause them harm or extreme suffering ie holocaust but who protected the jews - if one only reads history.

Isreals reaction is over exaggerating. Israel hasn't existed for thousands of years so how can it be persecuted for such time? Don't conflate Jews with Zionism. Zionism doesn't just believe in the Jews right to exist, but for a state to exist in land not of their own and for that population to be exiled from it. Jews and muslims lived peacefully before for thousands of years - it was the Christian West that persecuted them and put them far away from themselves in fact. If US was attacked a just response is warranted, but not a disproportionate one such as the reaction to 9/11 and the destruction of the middle east which has only spawned the continuing chaos we see now and manifests itself brutally in the form of radicals on all sides going at it with each other. You don't think Isreals over reaction here won't do the same and keep it in perpetual turmoil? Netenyahu thrives off the existence of an enemy as do extreme islamists, they need each other to justify their existence, objectives, and imbue their lives with meaning. Gradations of International law 1. Collective punishment 2. War crime 3. Crime against humanity 4. Genocide Israel's disproportionate reaction (just as America's disproportionate reaction to 9/11) would fall between 3 and 4. Why? Two statements and two actions of the Israeli government illuminate this. Statements 1. Netanyahu : ''We have to prepare for a long war.'' 2. Defence minister: ''We are cutting off all food, water, electricity and fuel to Gaza.'' Actions 1. Telling 1 million Gazans to evacuate in 24 hours (when in hospital you have new borns supplied oxygen etc you can't uproot those babies as theres no set up to take them to) 2. Denying aid to the Gazans via Egypt's border and not cooperating (even bombing some Gazans who were evacuating and following the orders) Put those statements and actions together and what do you have? If that isn't genocide it's clearly a crime against humanity and if one isn't able to admit that they are morally blind. ''Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth. The argument for it is double. First, in 570 CE, when the Prophet Mohammad was born, the Jews and Judaism were on the way to oblivion. And second, the coming of Islam saved them, providing a new context in which they not only survived, but flourished, laying foundations for subsequent Jewish cultural prosperity - also in Christendom - through the medieval period into the modern world.'' Sourced from a jewish site before you jump in to say its biased. Here the link: https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/so-what-did-the-muslims-do-for-the-jews-1.33597

@Inliytened1 This video may shed light on how Israel is in the wrong. Explaining the situation isn't justification for it. There is no justification for innocent people to be killed on either side, but the response is disproportionate and inhumane. War is war but man is not just a beast, although war can make a beast of him. We don't live according in the way of old where might is right and where conquering land is acceptable any more since boundaries have been drawn up and are to be respected by international law, including the boundaries of Israel's existence. By that same token we should also respect the international law that explicitly defines war crimes and genocide and not be selective and give certain countries impunity on transgressing those laws. Gradations of International law 1. Collective punishment 2. War crime 3. Crime against humanity 4. Genocide Israel's disproportionate reaction (just as America's disproportionate reaction to 9/11) would fall between 3 and 4. Why? Two statements and two actions of the Israeli government illuminate this. Statements 1. Netanyahu : ''We have to prepare for a long war.'' 2. Defence minister: ''We are cutting off all food, water, electricity and fuel to Gaza.'' Actions 1. Telling Gazans to evacuate in 24 hours (when in hospital you have new borns supplied oxygen etc you can't uproot those babies as theres no set up to take them to) 2. Denying aid to the Gazans via Egypt's border and not cooperating (even bombing some Gazan's who were evacuating and following the orders) Put those statements and actions together and what do you have? If that isn't genocide its clearly a crime against humanity.

@Nabd This video corroborates your points on how industry and the private sector perpetuates chaos and profits. His videos are growing popular as snippets are being shared around social media recently.

@ExplorerMystic @Breakingthewall As explorermystic mentions there is a spiritual aspect of Islam called Sufism just like Judaism has Kabbalism and Christianity has Gnosticism. All religions have a spiritual core essence that gets corrupted by the establishment created around it. It’s the simple minded that aren’t able to interpret the finer details and depths of religious texts, that renders them dangerous in certain hands and minds. Rationality and scientism killed the romantic age and the spirituality that came with it the same way Islamic Wahhabism killed the Sufism aspect of Islam. The below two videos shed light on them.

Islam had a golden age where they reasoned and used logic. Science came out of it including a whole system of law and jurisprudence. That fell away to very simplistic, dogmatic forms of Islam where free speech and thought got stamped out. But Islam is able to exist in that fashion and the hope is that it does so in the modern era. Also, a lot of cultural norms just need the appropriate reasoning behind them. The problem is when the religious simply state 'because God said so' as their justification. For example, the reasoning behind Muhammed marriage to Aisha or slavery are explained in the below videos in the Islamic and historic context in which they were practiced. Not to justify it, just to explain it and maybe understand where they come from to dispel the myth of Islam being barbaric and judged as immoral from the outset. To not derail this thread I'll refrain going into the religion of Islam any further.

Both have to be understood in their context. Here's some writing on their divergence from each other: The interpretations of essential religious states that orient themselves towards power and propagation, propagate. Muhammad oriented essence, externalised it to the world of war. Christ lived that essence but didn’t orient it towards power politics - Christianity and the crusades did. Christ embodied the height of that essence culminating as ultimate love, to the extent of turning the other cheek and sacrificing the flesh - for he knew a world beyond the flesh, that there is a here-after, not just a here now. All religions stem from the same realisation of ultimate unity - the essence of which is interpreted through the mind and vessel it’s revealed in, in the culture and time it is revealed in. Hence, the one light but many manifestations of colour - it manifests at the station the man is in, his context. Christ by exemplary example showed the western psyche that an interior spiritual world exists beyond the material world of form, a great love from which we all come - he lived in that height. Likewise Bhudda did this for the Eastern psyche. Yet religions and people solely based in the heights of the formless-God, and not based in lower realities of form, will get debased by civilisations or religions that wield the material world of form. Power politics emphasises the masculine - projecting energy into this world, striving. Eastern religions emphasised the feminine - passive energy of surrendering this world for the other world, stillness. The East never became worldly enough for they were of the other world, thus never protected, projected or propagated. The East took the feminine path of awakening to God in stillness and contemplative surrender, the West took the masculine path of striving and conquest - jihad and crusades. Muhammad had the same realisation as Christ amidst warring tribes, and being the leader of one, had to straddle the realisation of oneness and love whilst defending his people. Thus his religion took on a masculine tone and had to bridge the ethereal with the real, the ascending world of love that Christ emphasised with the descending world of lower natures brutally fighting. A whole system had to be created, an outer shell of religion - organised religion. Essential esoteric religion is an internal pilgrimage, not a external framework to deal with socio-political affairs. Yet, essence is housed in the elemental and must be maintained by the elemental truths of the material. As man is multi dimensional so shall religion be made so - body mind and soul. Religion, to deal with the world has to be made worldly, for essence is of the other world. One can’t look towards the here after whilst only partially facing the realities of the here. The Hindus have the Trimurti, Christians have the trinity and Islam also has its planes. Sharia for example is the outer layer, the laws, codes of conduct and so on. The ones who get lost on the outer layer and hug the surface of religion don’t have the fire that lit it into existence - the essence.

From your posts it seem's you have an axe to grind with them and Muslims in general. I know Palestinians and Israelis both over there living peacefully side by side. A lot of them are sick of fighting and being propagandised by vested interests in perpetuating their misery. See this video for a different perspective to your own. And this video to soften the notion of a West being the best bias. ''Yet there is another side to this tale of debasement and humiliation. By the end of the 20th century Bernard Lewis, among the most eminent historians of the Middle East, a lifelong student of Jews and Islam and himself a Jew, reflected on the 14 centuries of Jewish life under Islamic rule since Muhammad. He concluded that the situation of Jews living under Islamic rulers ‘was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst’, even if it was never ‘as good as in Christendom at its best’. Lewis continued: ‘There is nothing in Islamic history to parallel the Spanish expulsion and Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, or the Nazi Holocaust.''

Interesting take on a possible solution But does the rhetoric match the reasoning.

@An young being When seen from that view it makes life all the more richer. @PurpleTree @DocWatts True, the issue is in reforming or liberalising Islam as a lot of muslims come at Islam from a literal lens and that the word is the absolute word of God when it was actually from a man who had a god realisation and just interpreted it or misinterpreted that realisation within the context of his time, culture and intellect. I found this video to be interesting in that he points out that maybe our whole idea of freedom is wrong. Maybe what we deem as unfree societies are the more free ones. The quagmire of Western society is that its primary value is individual freedom and liberty, but such values if not exercised correctly can undermine society itself. It's tricky to balance the moral primacy of freedom with the existential social need for conformity, and the more you emphasise freedom the more you have to covertly enforce restrictions on that freedom in case of that freedom being mishandled resulting in societal harm and breakdown. So the people being indoctrinated into the fiction of a free society collides with the lived reality of it not being so by covert means (which people like to call the Matrix). This causes people to have cognitive dissonance and a disillusionment and distrust of the system itself (being red pilled to it and the existence of a Matrix they'd like to break free from) because the system people are living in bears little to no resemblance to the way its packaged to them. The main factor around which societies arrange them self is freedom, the difference is in how freedom is approached. Overtly free societies such as the West have to covertly manage that freedom to not allow it go unchecked as opposed to more overtly 'controlled' societies such as Islamic or traditional ones. If the legal matters lean towards lenience then the social matters must be more coercive. If law provides great liberty than the social contract and codes of conduct demand greater conformity. Law enforcement has prisons, social code enforcement has ostracization. In religious / traditional societies God and the social group become your 24/7 surveillance state, in liberal democratic societies the state itself is the surveillance state managing good/bad behaviour. Moral behaviour is outsourced from the self to the social group to the state. In a evolved society it would be primarily the self and ones own evolved consciousness and state of being that conducts itself more nobly. The above video is also very interesting and gives food for thought. I think a distinction can be made between culture and civilisation. We equate advanced civilisation with an advanced culture of goodness. Civilisation is about being good at developing tools and its achievements. Culture is about the user who uses those tools and the users state of awakening to God/Goodness. Civilisation is about competence and being good at the achievement of and refinement of tools. Culture is about consciousness/character, being good itself due to awakening and the refinement of the self. Culture either purifies or perverts the power that civilisational brings. Civilisation is horizontal evolution, culture is a vertical evolution that inculcates God/Goodness. What good are the tools if the users of those tools have shaky hands.

- Less economic opportunity and education for women which means many to most get married younger which gives them many more fertile years to give birth. In developed countries women pursue education and a career which postpones family formation ie average age of marriage is over 28 so they have much fewer years to have kids versus women marrying at 18-20 and having kids every 2 years so they have 5-7 by their mid 30's. - Big families are seen as a sign of status, further justified by religion as its God ordained and virtuous to bring more life into the world. - Agricultural labor for the family as kids would start working alongside the family to support them -High child mortality or lower age of mortality meant they would also have more kids as the expectation was some wouldn't make it. That has drastically changed but the culture of such expectations lingers on. -Life is lived in the short term due to a survivalist mentality , meaning no foresight into future planning or family planning -Lack of access to sex education or contraception This is changing fast as urbanisation grows and more women get into education and the workforce. Within developing countries their is a stark difference in fertility rate between the urbanites and rural people. Urbanisation also increases the cost of having many kids as urban centres have higher property prices etc

Ideological indoctrination doesn't just apply to Hamas but to Israeli's themselves - even citizens of the West are subjected to propaganda by their own elites. In fact, the more sophisticated a society (developed) the more sophisticated the tools at their disposal to propagandise the populace. We just have to be aware of the fact that both sides have bad actors propagandising for their own interests. Just because something or someone doesn't cause a dynamic to be set in motion (Israel) doesn't mean it doesn't contribute to it going on. This is the fallacy of the conspiratorial minded who think everything is caused by the few, and it’s opposite extreme thinking everything is random and blind to the fews contribution to affects that effects the masses.

Israel makes the living conditions of Gaza un-livable. Yet people have the nerve and blindeness to claim Israel has a much better living standard in comparison and implying that Palestinians would be better off there.

@BlueOak Great take. As in spiral dynamics, stage of development are just that - a development. Not an imposition from others who have developed to that stage. Although, spiral stages are themselves in a hierarchy of their own so its natural to view a stage red society as inferior, but a mistake nonetheless. Other cultures shouldn't be interfered in by imposing cultural ideas from their own cultural stage. That robs them of their growth process, and what is imposed will try to be disposed of in rebellion. Lower stage societies view the struggles the West is going through and deduce that they are better than them, which entrenches further to their own stage. Maybe once the West comes out the other side of its current growth process and looks to a lot more solid they can then contemplate its merits and be incentivised to develop towards it. These two videos show the psychology and perspective of how more traditional conservative societies view themselves as superior - in this case particularly from an Islamic lens. What multiculturalism has done it seems is clashed different perspectives, values and stages of growth towards each other in a pressure cooker. Each questioning the others validity, assumptions and way of life which brings about the current confusion, cognitive dissonance and identity crisis. Out of this friction evolution could bring us to our supreme identity which integrates them all together, but thats a lengthy and tumultuous process. Quotes on multiculturalism from Ken Wilber ''Multiculturalism is a noble, logocentric, and rational endeavor that simply misidentifies its own stance and claims to be not rational because some of the things it tolerates are not rational. But its own tolerance is rational through and through, and rightly so. Rationality is the only structure that will tolerate structures other than itself.'' ''The "multicultural movement," which claims a universal tolerance of all cultures freed from the "logocentric, rational-centric, Eurocentric" dominance and hegemony, is a step in the right direction, with all good intentions, but ends up being self-contradictory and finally hypocritical. It may claim to be "not rationalcentric," but in fact cultural tolerance is secured only by rationality as universal pluralism, by a capacity to mentally put yourself into the other person's shoes and then decide to honor or at least tolerate that viewpoint even if you don't agree with it. You, operating from the pluralism of rational worldspace, might decide to tolerate the ideas of a mythic-believer; the problem is, they will not tolerate you – and, in fact, historically they would burn your tolerant tail at the stake in order to save your soul (whether your saviors be Christian, Marxist, Muslim,or Shinto).''

The natural power imbalance man has over woman is not earned by him or his will, nature and evolution earned it. Virtue isn't found in power that has been given by nature but their use of that power by their own will. The existence of power asymmetry isn't immoral or oppressive but it becomes so in how mans spirit makes it so. The extreme versions of the feminist movement reflexively overcompensate in political power for what they lack in physical power against men. Physical power is a natural state of biology whilst political power is a nurtured state of affairs. Men didn't intend on this power asymmetry for its a natural occurrence and shouldn't be vilified as a gender for what nature has given, but they should be held accountable in their misuse of that power. A lot of the structure of traditional societies are made on the framework of these power imbalances, a framework nature gave. Its not that mens position as providers or protectors have a inherent divine value to them making them superior to women as much as it is a natural state that has functional value and places each gender in their most efficient roles for them to survive as a species.