S-E

53 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

I don't know. Who are "supporters of the Israeli state"? What does that mean?

J

 

Ok. Sorry, I was unclear,  I was using the wrong word, what I meant was people who self identify as supporters of the current Israeli government policy. 

What can I say, I was using the word state and the concept government policy interchangeably, but you can see how it happened policy's are made by governments that are sometimes named right after the word state (for example) ''the state of Israel'' that's what happened.

This will be interesting.

Will all the supporters of the Israeli state name one thing they think the Israeli government is wrong about, and they should improve.

or do you feel its perfect just the way it is?

3 minutes ago, Jonathan said:

Um, context?

If we have a choice between siding with Hitler or siding with a pretty decent guy who once stole a pack of gum, we might want to not treat the two as being the same in kind and only different in mere degrees.

J

You just escalated that context war.

Yes, But were not talk about pieces of gum, we're talking thousands of human lives. If you have decided that Israeli is the ''lesser evil'' shouldn't you support them for the virtues, while condemning them for there vices?

1 minute ago, Jonathan said:

 

You left out Rand. You swear by your life and your love of it that you will never live for the sake of another man, except for Ayn Rand. You'll live for her sake.

J

How did I let that happen, how inconsiderate of me, Ive  Corrected it.

Thanks you for pointing that out Jonathan.

Maybe this is a wider question the the Israeli/Palestine one.

 The question I'll put to you now is,  should one defend the lesser of two evils?

What do you mean by  ''our objective, Western values'' 

Conscription?      is that an objective, Western value? dose a state that endorses conscription deserve standing as a moral state?

and yes the article I liked is actually pro Israeli, but by my judgment it is biased, and quite morally offensive.                                                                                                                             

''I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine'' except for Ayn Ran.

Peter do you believe that is a true picture you have painted of the average Arab?  I’m not going to argue with  you, I just want to clarify that you see them as a bunch of savages who are after Jewish blood.

 Are you being literal, or are you exaggerating for effect?

There is a lot in you post peter,

when i finish reading i will reply,  I hope you believe me when i say, i'm not a racist, and i'm not a Nazi.

i'm trying to get to the truth of a very heated topic, with massive propaganda on all sides.

i have seen ''on the biased tube.com'' some horrific things, that's what makes me kind of animated about this topic.

i need to do further research.

13 minutes ago, Peter said:

SE wrote: when i used the term Zionist i was intending to refer to ''people who believe in obtaining Israeli for the Jews at any cost to none Jews''  that seems to be the attitude of some of the settlers i have seen interviewed, end quote

 

 

Using the spelling “joo” instead of “jew” sounds like a neo-nazi-istic term to me and it may forever besmirch the user of that speeling. (yoke) Bad spelling, and neglecting to capitalize (I) infers an ignorant misguided youth, and I suggest the author edit their posts to avoid this, perhaps, unintentional slant.

 

 

Israel could have been created with a separation of church and state but it was not. I can understand the emotional desire to create a “Jewish State,” before and after WWII, BUT I remember news footage of some Zionist, terrorist bombings of the British occupiers, and a fictionalized reenactment of those sorts of activities at the movies. As an objectivist, I would urge but not use force to reestablish property rights illegitimately lost to religious, nationalistic intolerance in Israel. On the other hand, if you are at war with a country, you cannot legitimately or legally claim property there while the conflict is carrying on. Peter      

 

 

I wrote and quoted years ago . . . . This is a brief history that might be of interest to those reading this thread on Israel. There are several questions that need clarification. Who has a right to live in Israel? Was Israel’s creation in 1948, just? Which single Constitution or multiple principles of governance should be used? Can two governments exist within the same territory, like a state within a nation? Who owns the private property? What would occur if a million Palestinians some who were not born in that region, immigrate to the territory called Israel?

 

 

Here is some background. From Wikipedia: Although coming under the sway of various empires and home to a variety of ethnicities, the area of ancient Israel was predominantly Jewish until the Jewish-Roman wars after which Jews became a minority in most regions, except Galilee. The area became increasingly Christian after the 3rd century and then largely Muslim from the 7th century conquest until well past the middle of the 20th century. It was a focal point of conflict between Christianity and Islam between 1096 and 1291, and from the end of the Crusades until the British conquest in 1917 was part of the Syrian province of first the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and then (from 1517) the Ottoman Empire.

 

 

In the late-19th century, persecution of Jews, particularly in Europe, led to the creation of the Zionist movement. Following the British conquest of Syria, the Balfour Declaration in World War I and the formation of the Mandate of Palestine, Aliyah Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel) increased and gave rise to Arab-Jewish tensions, and a collision of the Arab and Jewish nationalist movements. Israeli independence in 1948 was marked by massive migration of Jews from both Europe and the Muslim countries to Israel, and of Arabs from Israel leading to the extensive Arab-Israeli conflict. About 42% of the world’s Jews live in Israel today . . . .

 

 

The Palestinian right of return is a political position or principle asserting that Palestinian refugees, both first-generation refugees and their descendants, have a right to return, and a right to the property they or their forebears left or which they were forced to leave in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories (formerly part of the British Manddate of Palestine), as part of the 1948 Palestinian exodus, a result of the 1948 Palestine war and due to the 1957 Six-Day War. Proponents of the right of return hold that it is a "sacred" right, as well as an inalienable and basic human right, whose applicability both generally and specifically to the Palestinians is protected under international law. This view holds that those who opt not to return or for whom return is not feasible, should receive compensation in lieu. Opponents of the right of return hold that there is no basis for it in international law, and that it is an unrealistic demand.

 

 

The government of Israel regards the claim as a Palestinian ambit claim, and does not view the admission of Palestinian refugees to their former homes in Israel as a right, but rather as a political claim to be resolved as part of a final peace settlement. Other disputed aspects include the issue of the territorial unit to which Palestinian self-determination would attach, the context (whether primarily humanitarian or political) by which the right is being advanced, and the universality of the principles advocated or established to other (current and former) refugee situations. end quote

 

 

Neutral Zone: In the Star Trek universe, a neutral zone is a sort of "buffer zone" between the territories of two different powers; if either party enters a neutral zone, it is considered an aggressive move (usually an act of war). In the course of the various series, the Federation develops two neutral zones: One with the Klingon Empire and one with the Romulan Star Empire; the generic term "the Neutral Zone" usually refers to the Romulan Neutral Zone. Also, a neutral zone in all but name exists between the Federation and the Cardassians.

I think we can all agree that when powers try to force change upon people it results in disaster most of the time, and in this case there was a lot of suffering caused by i would suggest the UK and UN's intervention, if there had of been a natural migration from a grass roots level, and the Jewish people gradually bought up the land they wanted as Israeli there would probably have been no conflict, if the aribs prevented them by method of racist taxes or other such legislation  that would be an act of aggression on there part, and could have been dealt with in some manner.

i have already expressed that i am sorry for referring to the Jews with a term other than Jew, Jewish People, etc,

if you think that reflects badly on me, well i regret that. but seriously,  i did not meant anything  racist by it.

and to clarify, i am not a Nazi. do you know any Natzi's? I don't, last thing i checked they were a kind of extinct spices, except in some far corners of Europe where they seam to do more motorcycle riding and beer drinking than ''Whatever Nazis used to do'' and the term now is just used an a kind of Ad hominem smear.

National, and Socialist, are two words i quite dislike, so you your estimation of me is  wrong there.

As for using the lower case letter i, funny story, i am a piety poor speller,  but i am aware that most people used capital i when referring to them selves, but why? no one i ask knows, they just say that's the way its done.

I'm trying to discover the origins of capitalization and its effect/meaning, it seems like a big topic, do you know why you used capital i?

i mean the word ''capital'' kind of seems like its indicating something, but i don't know what. ''capital I''  ''capitalize your name'' ''capital of a country''  why use the word capital, why would ''Big letters'' not work, or better still all lower case, near doubling the symbols in a language is not done for no reason, and i have not heard a good resin yet.

1 hour ago, anthony said:

Zionism was and is not an immoral concept, necessarily. Which version of morality do you cater to? I'm assuming Objectivism. If so, you know that one's supreme value is one's life, survival, 'flourishing'. No one can make, preserve and gain values for others, one, by one's mind, has to go it alone. Back 100+ years ago, signs emerged that the Jews of Europe were starting to be up against (more or less, what they are now) and a few prescient intellectuals starting to realise that in the long term they would not be able to freely assimilate in their countries, or, worse be put apart and repressed.  For their survival as a ethno-religious "tribe" they began overtures to the UK government for some land, somewhere, where Jews would gain autonomy and security - and tried to convince other Jews to join in. Their "holy land" was of course first pick (though most were Socialists), but other places were considered. (Canada, even East Africa, I believe)

(Individualism is right and moral, and Collectivism is anathema for me, but one must also realise that it's very hard for most people (who don't understand it, morally) to enact when you are treated and despised for your ethnicity, etc.- and lumped together with 'your tribe', with very little freedom and few rights. (As Europe used to be). I sometimes decry the particular 'tight' form of Jewish tribalism, or find it a bit irritating, but I can understand why it came about. I.e. Distrust of outsiders, after that small minority of them were ostracized, scorned, attacked, etc. for thousands of years - by collectivists and other religious groups.  Hang together or perish together, I summarize as the Zionist principle, that continues for the Jews today in some places and not improving, so e.g many French Jews have relocated in the last few years to Israel. English Jews, of families living there hundreds of years, are also considering this. Where they were safe once, is not guaranteed in future).

Two things sped up the Zionist aims. End of WW1 which released from Turkey all that land, including (now) Jordan and Palestine, to the British and French allies. End of WW2 which instantly emptied the camps of a few million dispossessed people with no place to call home. So what to do with them? The answer to the problem was obvious. Partition 'Palestine', then named the West Bank (of Jordan) and not yet properly a country in its own right.

Even up to WW2, it must be added, very, very few of the European Jews would accept moving to 'Palestine'. Those who had already, had bought land (from the landlords in Turkey)and permanently settled. The idea of farming and pioneering was mocked by most highly sophisticated Jews, then the War changed their attitudes.

Thanks for That, quite detailed. i was wrong using the term Zionist, that was a miss identification because i see that there is no ethical issue with Jews deciding they want to have  a place to live together, and that there are many ethical means to achieve that goal. and Zionism is a word to describe a Jewish home land goal.

when i used the term Zionist i was intending to refer to ''people who believe in obtaining Israeli for the Jews at any cost to none Jews''  that seems to be the attitude of some of the settlers i have seen interviewed,

Which of the following statements is more true according to your understanding of events...

The Palestinians initiated violence against the Israeli state..

The Israeli state initiated violence against the inhabitants of Palestine..

Then ask your self is expropriation of land an initiation of violence?

and was that not the beginning of the conflict?

I don't calm to be a historian, i'm asking question with the aim of improving my comprehension of the situation.

if you would let me know which answer you believe is true, and what evidence you have to support it, it would help me, and maybe others to understand better.

its my understanding that jews and aribs lived in peace until the 47 deal,

that would suggest that the conflict it not a cultural problem, it was and still is a political problem.

although now its gotten so complicated with so much hatred is hard to see any good solution..

there are ''greayish'' arias,

if you can show me that there were no inhabitants of the land taken, then maybe that's excusable,

but the evictions of natives to allow settlers to move in is not moral.... 

Stop Defending it,

condemn it.

then we can all move on. people are just looking for an excuse to label objectivists as immoral selfish etc.. don't give it to them on a plate.

ill say that it seems to me thru the smoke of time that UK/UN/Israeli was the aggressor in this situation,

and Yaron Brook was being misleading with his answer,

there are interviews of rand expressing similar views, but out of respect i don't really want to bring that up right now since she would be unable to defend her self,

but this Yaron Brook guy is here now, and i believe is casting a dark shadow on objectivisem,

he agreed that its wrong to disrespect property rights, and the expropriation of land is wrong, The End. why babel on about other topics,

Ive never heard a military  general talk of expropriating land as a method of deference or of peace making.

and why dose everyone get so defensive when Palestine is brought up?    it dose not reflect badly on jews, and it is not anti-semantic to condemn it,

a funny side note  is any defendant of crimes against Palestinians are the real anti-Semitics .....

Usage

From the outset the term anti-Semitism bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews.^[2][14] The term is confusing, for in modern usage 'Semitic' designates a language group, not a race. In this sense, the term is a misnomer, since there are many speakers of Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs, Ethiopians, and Assyrians) who are not the objects of anti-Semitic prejudices, while there are many Jews who do not speak Hebrew, a Semitic language. Though 'antisemitism' has been used to describe prejudice against people who speak other Semitic languages, the validity of such usage has been questioned.^[27][28][29]

I hope my comments don't offend anyone, and i hope i don't get banned for talking this way, but i genuinely disagree with this argument, and i feel as tho i aught to defend objectivisem from this misrepresentation...  or stand corrected if i have made a mistake in my train of logic some where.

2 hours ago, anthony said:

Cut to the chase. Does it concern you, equally, that America took land from Mexico, by treaty and by military force? Or of hundreds of more global instances of land ownership-change in history? The creation of an independent state was ratified ~de jure~ by the international court (League of Nations/UN) at the time. How many other (let's call them) "land grabs" which became nations do you know of that were internationally recognised and legal? Except it wasn't grabbed, the land in question and massive territories around it, was under the British Mandate at that time, and theres' to dispose of (after the sprawling Ottoman Empire was beaten in WW1). Directly, then, it was officially ceded by Britain to the Jews, not without controversy or struggle.

Everyone is guiltily re-visiting the historical "conquer, colonise and settle" narrative, in recent decades. One notices that only the civilised westerners wallow in that self-indulgence. Israel happens to be about the most recent of those (perceived) "colonising/settling" nations and  - plus other nastier reasons not usually explicitly made - is carrying all the burden for Western guilt, appeasement and apologism. ie. its self-sacrifice. (Plus, a powerful campaign by Islamists to discredit Israel's existence has been on the go for a long time. Useful idiots suck it up)

The word is "Jew".

I  see where your coming from, and i don't like it to look as tho i'm one of those whining social Justus warriors, i don't think that Israel, should be handed back to the ''last owners'' nether do i Aline myself with the movement of people in the US who think people who were born and raised in America have no right to the land because acquired dubiously in the past. those people who want to ''give back'' the land are being impractical, and also would have to recommit the crime of land grabbing to reach there end, plus i realize there real agenda confessed or otherwise is to do away with private property, i do not support that,

i am talking in abstractions here, in practical reality politicians and governments will do what they have always done, and i do not recognize that as a reflection an any group of people.

But i do not see any excuse for the continued land grabbing we see today,  i do not see any excuse for the  defense of such policy's  by philosophers, and i don't recognize pointing that out to be a racist action,

''Take what you want said God, and pay for it''

clearly outlines for me the moral approach, 

Before we can go any further i must clarify i have no issue with any morally sane man, woman, or ethnic/religious group, including the jews,

you labeled me as anti-semantic, so i searched it on Wikipedia.

Antisemitism (also spelled anti-Semitism or anti-semitism) is hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews.^[1][2][3] A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is generally considered to be a form of racism.^[4][5] It has also been characterized as a political ideology which serves as an organizing principle and unites disparate groups which are opposed to liberalism.^[6]

Antisemitism may be manifested in many ways, ranging from expressions of hatred of or discrimination against individual Jews to organized pogroms by mobs, state police, or even military attacks on entire Jewish communities. Although the term did not come into common usage until the 19th century, it is now also applied to historic anti-Jewish incidents.

This dose not describe me as a man, or the nature of my post at all, you are mistaken. in fact i don't know why you mentioned.

I bring up the Palestine conflict only because it concerns Any rand,

i am not unfairly picking on the Jewish people, i am not picking on them at all, i am questioning  the foundation and foreign policy of the Israeli government, from a purely intellectual prospective.

i abhor all crime, it just so happens that the particular government i turn my eye to today is the Israeli one.

the fact that crimes are perpetrated every day in every country, is no resin to excuse crime. and should not exclude them from debit, and dose  not make the man pointing out the crimes of a particular ''Government'' a racist against the people supposedly represented by that government.

would you rather i start on the US government and there supposed crimes? ok i'll start an other thread  for that....... happy?

So to end off....

Are none of you going to refute my understanding of the events that lead to the conflict? am i correct in my historical understanding of the lead up to today?

I actually hoped i was wrong and some one would inform me that there was no crime committed, that the original people were paid for there land, or there was some lawful explanation for this.

i will continue to research into this topic more,

But this, This is Very disappointing.......

and re the joo comments, i'm sorry if this offended anyone, i suppose it could have been taken the wrong way. this was not intended to be a derogatory term, i thought it  was a funny way to avoid the whole ''anti-Semite complications''. i recognize my mistake, and i Honorable apologize to any whom it may have offended. now pleas don't bring it up again, i have apologized/corrected, and no more can be squeezes out of it.

So this always seems to happen in the end, I think ayn rand was a very smart woman, and a great philosopher, and for about 6 months reading everything i could find on objectivisem i could not find any problems,  i think ''if'' there was a platonic world of forums, objectivisem would be its philosophy . But, i knew she was a joo, and there seem to be two types of joo, Zionists who support the Israeli state, an none Zionists who may even protest it,  i searched YouTube for rand's thought's on Palestine and the west bank, it seems she had some views in common with the Zionists. This i a huge disappointment for me, because from my understanding of the conflict it was initiated by Zionists, violating the none aggression principle.

my understanding of the conflict is the UK along with the EU expropriated land from  Palestine to give to the ''joo's'' without compensation to the owners of the land,

it seems ridiculous that anyone would try to defend this act of theft, Off course they do, and don't do a very good job of it,

i'm open to the fact that there may be more to it, and i may be mistaken in my understanding of the conflict, but ask a Rabi what is his clam to Palestine and he will say '''The Torah says so'' ask rand and she says they are savages who initiated conflict. which to my current understanding is untrue,

If anyone has an understanding of this topic id be very interested to hear your take,

just don't bother with any religious arguments like ''the joo's had a hard time'' or the joo's lived there 4,000 years ago, or my book says its ok.   none of thees are acceptable by my standard as rational, and i really don't know why people still use them.

and last but not least the disclaimer....

I like the joo's,  i think they seem as a culture to be very intelligent, i respect that. i just don't understand the Israeli thing.

That is interesting,  Funny that Jews are also the most successful religion in business and academia.  Although as for altruism, ''from my understanding'' Jews seem to have an altruistic approach to fellow Jews, but a very none altruistic approach to none Jews, this  is what I think makes it such a strong religion for its size.

Thanks Micheal  I'm sometimes guilty of typos, ''and maybe a few misspellings''    I'll try my best not to drop literary crumbs on your forum.

What do you mean he didn't sound sincere? surly your not suggesting the great BBC would hire an actor just to plug there agenda 

I couldn't bear it alone...

don't know much about the self esteem movement,  is it part of the ''every body gets a gold meddle''  type policy's in schools and the like? 

I loved the ending with the young man who found his self esteem in serving others,  its like they were shoving it in Rands face.  I mean out of all the examples of ''positive altruism'' surly he was not seriously being held up as one of them.

Cheers William, this is my first forum post in a while, i'm after getting rusty....

heard this on the history of ideas today. 

(quote the BBC,  ''high self esteem correlates with racism''  end quote)

link to the show its only 12 min long