Natanyahu Lowers the Boom

[Marc]

Well, I managed not to post on this thread for a week, except for one I emptied and an accidental piece of fluff, but now, yes, right now!--I'm Back!!!! (in River City and my name is spelled "P-O-O-L"!).

Israel shouldn't stop in Gaza until there's no more Hamas to stomp on. Anybody wanna argue? Go tell it to the Israeli ambassador. I'm busy thinking about something else. Iran. (I ran to Iran.)

Almost all of Israel's geo-political war problems are from countries east of Suez, but only Iran is a major threat. What must be dealt with is how Hamas got its rockets. They weren't manufactured in Gaza.

--Brant

Very well said ! I am glad you are back here , and I hope that I could be taken off your ignore list . I promise to be good !

I read you. The "ignore" is only to make sure I count to ten before--uh, I, uh, drop one on you. The reason I left for a week was for me to cool it.

--Brant

I will take that idea , but personally count to 100 !

[moralist]

Well, I managed not to post on this thread for a week, except for one I emptied and an accidental piece of fluff, but now, yes, right now!--I'm Back!!!! (in River City and my name is spelled "P-O-O-L"!).

Israel shouldn't stop in Gaza until there's no more Hamas to stomp on. Anybody wanna argue? Go tell it to the Israeli ambassador. I'm busy thinking about something else. Iran. (I ran to Iran.)

Almost all of Israel's geo-political war problems are from countries east of Suez, but only Iran is a major threat. What must be dealt with is how Hamas got its rockets. They weren't manufactured in Gaza.

--Brant

Very well said ! I am glad you are back here , and I hope that I could be taken off your ignore list . I promise to be good !

I read you. The "ignore" is only to make sure I count to ten before--uh, I, uh, drop one on you. The reason I left for a week was for me to cool it.

--Brant

I will take that idea , but personally count to 100 !

...or even count pi.

[anthony]

(Sent on by our friend Ralph in Kfar Aza, Israel.)

Written by an Israeli:

"It has taken me some days to write down something coherent, but this is how I feel tonight.

I feel like I weigh 500 pounds.

Everyone I know feels like they are walking through water.

And sad. We are all so very, very sad.

...

This is what I know right now, today:

The ugliness, the venom and sheer, violent hatred you are seeing in Paris, London, Berlin, LA, Boston, Denver…. this is just the beginning.

We Jews are the canaries in the coal mine for all of humanity. Today, they are throwing bricks at synagogues and smashing chairs and saying “Kill the Jews.” Tomorrow it will be someone else.

Do the French really think these people will protect and safeguard the treasures of the Louvre?

Do Londoners really think these people will cherish the symbols of the British Empire?

Does anyone really think this is only about Israel and the disputed territories?

Today it is Israel, tomorrow it will be you.

Maybe that is why everyone gets so disproportionately annoyed about this conflict. Because everyone knows that after us, it could be them…

Seeing these violent anti-Israel, anti-semitic protests, hearing the sickening screams for death, we Israelis understand better than ever that we must fight for every square inch and with all we have.

It matters not how much better our military is, how much more precise our targets can be.

It only matters that when the smoke clears, Hamas is disarmed, destroyed, disabled and defeated, forever.

Hamas, NOT the people of Gaza, I feel so very sorry for them. Sorry they were misguided and elected these lunatics. Sorry that in their desperation they allowed Hamas to fill the empty bedrooms next to their children’s room with rockets. Sorry that their leaders have mansions and swimming pools and are sitting in air conditioning in another city while they are sweating and wondering where the roof over their houses went. (If not their house itself.) Sorry that they have been brought up with no inkling of who Israelis are nor what compromise is.

Defeating Hamas will be a big problem for the power brokers, because shame and honor are all that matter in this part of the world.

Honor in the Middle East does not come from whether your children are literate, how successful you are, how much money you make, how civilized your community is, nor how many paved roads you have, and whether or not you have garbage collection and recycling. Here in this part of the world-for Hamas, honor comes from getting revenge.

For them revenge is everything.

For them revenge is the only thing.

Remember, in 2005, we left Gaza. There was no blockade. They were free to build a model democracy- the first successful shining, taste of the new, proud Palestine. But they didn’t want that kind of success…

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

We will not be fooled again.

We have nowhere else to go. And the rockets won’t stop. Remember they also have a border with Egypt.

The folks in Ashkelon cannot shower, have a bowel movement, get more milk or walk a dog without wondering if they are taking their lives in their own hands.

There is another Gaza underneath Gaza.

Hamas could have built hundreds of schools, hospitals, paved thousands of roads, build hundreds of kindergartens with the cement and iron they have used to build these underground bunkers and tunnels, (and you wondered why Israel put a blockade on bringing building supplies into the Gaza strip?)

These tunnels to hell are filled with ammunition.

And no women or children, not a single elderly person is brought to safety there.

They want them on the street - on the roof, standing right behind - nice and close to the terrorist firing the rocket.

Hamas has refused to let journalists out of Gaza. Why?

They need them to take pictures and record the carefully staged piles of bloody children and women. If the journalists leave, they have lost the vehicle for distributing their bloody ad campaign.

Hamas asked for a cease-fire. And they broke it. They break every single one.

Israel is setting up a massive field hospital to treat our enemies. From 8 pm on tonight there will be a working maternity ward, an operating theater…a working hospital. For… our enemies.

We are going to lose more boys. The other night we lost 13. With each day we are going to lose more.

But everyone here now understands this is a fight to the death. It is them or us.

They cannot compromise and they don’t want peace or to share or to negotiate. They want revenge even if it means killing their own people. So we have to go in there and do things none of us want to do, but we must.

So this is why we are all so sad.

Israelis want peace so badly.

But we also desperately want to live. We love life and we are not about to let anyone, let alone a bunch of deranged thugs take it away from us. So yes, this is a fight to the death for both sides.

Remember, if they win, you are next.

If we win, those symbols of civilization that everyone takes so for granted will remain standing and everyone will criticize and complain about disproportionate responses and war crimes and all kinds of other irrelevant nonsense, but secretly I think everyone will be heaving s sigh of relief."

[Selene]

Thank you Tony.

That is a well written cry for human awareness.

I find it fascinating how many folks are willing to blind their reason and walk into the death chambers.

Hannah Arendt has done some considerable writing about how predominantly docile the Jewish populations were in the 1930's.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).

I wonder if she ever ran into Ayn?

A...

[Mikee]

Thank you Tony. I agree with and believe every single word.

Adam, I read "The Origins of Totalitarianism" several times in my twenties. I also read Viktor Frankl "Man's search for Meaning" more than once. I'd forgotten those early influences. It's dangerous to forget.

[moralist]

Thanks for posting those well chosen words, Tony.

Bottom line:

"Remember, if they win, you are next."

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

They can't win. Most of the Jews are gone from Europe. Most of those who left are in the United States or Israel. The European anti-Semites are just showing off their nakednesses in public. The last diaspora was the last diaspora because nobody has any place left to go and the United States isn't going anywhere either.

--Brant

Israel is not the Warsaw ghetto--Israel is a closed fist--and while there are more termites by weight than people, the termites don't count except to provide employment opportunities for a few exterminators to protect a few houses (likely in Florida--and while 1.2 billion Muslims are human beings, not termites, they can hardly manufacture their own toothbrushes if they are Arabs, such are the blessings of Allah upon them and so and so is His--whatever

[moralist]

They can't win.

Even the Bible agrees with you: They won't win.

Greg

[anthony]

Thank you Tony.

That is a well written cry for human awareness.

A...

Yes Adam, it is that. A youthful voice, speaking to the truth as most intellectuals will not.

Most objectively, it points to the 'third way', a road to life and thriving which Hamas/Gaza would not take. "Honor" and vengeance is all that drives some people in the Arab world.

[Jules Troy]

Great post Tony!

[Selene]

Thank you Tony.

That is a well written cry for human awareness.

A...

Yes Adam, it is that. A youthful voice, speaking to the truth as most intellectuals will not.

Most objectively, it points to the 'third way', a road to life and thriving which Hamas/Gaza would not take. "Honor" and vengeance is all that drives some people in the Arab world.

Correct, Tony.

It is almost "unsightly" today, to even suggest a separate path.

It is simpler to fall back on the mythological memes and memories that are more psychologically comfortable, until you look at a dead child of the middle east.

Assign that dead child a label and we can all feel better.

Enough.

A...

[Backlighting]

From the AR vault, during the 1970s (?) she said:

"The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

[BaalChatzaf]

From the AR vault, during the 1970s (?) she said:

"The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

Apparently Rand never heard of algebra (named after al Japbir) or algorithms (named after al Kwarizmy).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Apparently Rand never heard of algebra (named after al Japbir) or algorithms (named after al Kwarizmy).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yeah Bob...97 mph out of the strike zone on an 0-2 pitch ... now what is your point?

[BaalChatzaf]

Apparently Rand never heard of algebra (named after al Japbir) or algorithms (named after al Kwarizmy).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yeah Bob...97 mph out of the strike zone on an 0-2 pitch ... now what is your point?

Here crude and un nuanced remarks about Arabs are stigmata of her ignorance.

While the people in Europe were covered mostly with shit, It was the Arabs who kept Aristotle's work alive and in addition did important work in physics, chemistry, mathematics and map making. d

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Apparently Rand never heard of algebra (named after al Japbir) or algorithms (named after al Kwarizmy).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Yeah Bob...97 mph out of the strike zone on an 0-2 pitch ... now what is your point?

Here crude and un nuanced remarks about Arabs are stigmata of her ignorance.

While the people in Europe were covered mostly with shit, It was the Arabs who kept Aristotle's work alive and in addition did important work in physics, chemistry, mathematics and map making. d

Ba'al Chatzaf

Really?

So I guess, Judeo-Christian intellectual tradition should just cede the field to Islam.

Got it.

A...

[moralist]

From the AR vault, during the 1970s (?) she said:

"The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

Apparently Rand never heard of algebra (named after al Japbir) or algorithms (named after al Kwarizmy).

Ba'al Chatzaf

Since this went completely over your head, Bob... it's worth a second look.

Ayn Rand: "When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

What makes men civil are their moral values... not their schooling.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

Ayn Rand: "When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

What makes men civil are their moral values... not their schooling.

Greg

What word A.R. used was civilized, not civil. Check your own quote.

I, as usual, took the matter literally and verbatim.

Highly schooled and highly civilized people (those who know a great deal and are not only steeped but pickled in abstract thought, have done cruel and wicked things). Their actions are not civil and humane but they are civilized to the core.

I have not only taken a second look. I have taken a third and fourth look.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

While the people in Europe were covered mostly with shit

Ba'al Chatzaf

You have no data to support this shit.

--Brant

my ancestors were mostly covered in fur (I have photographs)

[moralist]

Highly schooled and highly civilized people (those who know a great deal and are not only steeped but pickled in abstract thought, have done cruel and wicked things). Their actions are not civil and humane but they are civilized to the core.

Considering what she said:

Ayn Rand: "When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

So in your amoral view... if the Nazis were more highly educated than the Americans, you would support the "more civilized" Nazis.

See how silly your view is when you remove the moral factor from it?

In my view, Ayn Rand had obviously implied morality as a component to civilized men in her statement, because In her time morality was a given... today it is not. Today the government subsidized medrasas turn out highly educated moral imbeciles...

...and highly educated moral imbeciles like Obama and Kerry are running the US government today simply because they were elected by moral imbeciles.

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

Highly schooled and highly civilized people (those who know a great deal and are not only steeped but pickled in abstract thought, have done cruel and wicked things). Their actions are not civil and humane but they are civilized to the core.

Considering what she said:

Ayn Rand: "When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are."

So in your amoral view... if the Nazis were more highly educated than the Americans, you would support the "more civilized" Nazis.

I would not. I was one of their targets.

I just wanted to make a distinction between "civilized" (sophisticated, learned etc) and "civil"

Being sophisticate and learned is no guarantee of moral or ethical quality.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Marc]

A friend of mine who is a young Objectivist wrote this on Facebook .

Look at the Israeli conflict and ask yourself why you judge Israel as immoral whenever they kill civilians. If you analyze your thinking you will conclude that the reason is because you believe that all civilians, by their very nature as civilians, are innocent. Now ask yourself what it means to be innocent.
.
I bet you've never asked this question. To be innocent means to be free of moral guilt. It means to value life and the things that make life possible. Valuing life is not as simple as desiring life. No matter how much one may desire to live, an act of evil will not turn into an act of virtue. Desire does not supersede reality. Neither does hoping, or dreaming, or wishing, or waiting. Reality, for man, constitutes a causal hierarchical integration of thought AND action. Those who take thoughtless actions are in this regard just as disintegrated, hopeless and immoral as those who think but who take no action. It is impossible to fight for life in a vacuum, either by abandoning thought and/or by abandoning action.
.
Now in regard to the population of Gaza, if you take a survey of their actions you will find very little evidence to justify that they value life in general, or even their own lives in particular. The expenditure of resources on weapons of war, without regard for self defense, is one such example. When one surveys their thinking, one is likely to discover even fewer evidence to support rationality, morality, values and life. Their ideas, whenever they are not concretely stated, advocate mysticism, faith, and concern for the supernatural. When they are explicitly stated, their ideas plainly state that in order to abide by mysticism, faith, and the supernatural, it is one's duty, indeed highest duty, to seek the destruction of the earthly, the secular, the ones who wish to live on Earth.
.
In light of this evidence it is impossible for me to stand for Gaza in any regard, including the destruction of its civilian population. Other than merely existing, as do inanimate objects, the citizens of Gaza manage to exist in a very poor, mediocre and self-destructive manner, making them in my view less significant than simple inanimate objects. Imagine the indecency of having to respect the rights of a dynamite whose fuse was lighted and which is placed within your proximity. Yet that is how many in the media and elsewhere view the conflict. And the false premise of this is egalitarianism, the doctrine which reduces good and evil to a choice between apples and oranges that don't even have a color, a taste, or any value whatsoever to the chooser. The population of Gaza is not comprised of innocent civilians. If they were innocent, they would have done what Israel is doing now a long time ago.

Like

[Selene]

I am not one to "cherry pick," however, this is a well reasoned paragraph. hope the quote function works.

I bet you've never asked this question. To be innocent means to be free of moral guilt. It means to value life and the things that make life possible. Valuing life is not as simple as desiring life. No matter how much one may desire to live, an act of evil will not turn into an act of virtue. Desire does not supersede reality. Neither does hoping, or dreaming, or wishing, or waiting. Reality, for man, constitutes a causal hierarchical integration of thought AND action. Those who take thoughtless actions are in this regard just as disintegrated, hopeless and immoral as those who think but who take no action. It is impossible to fight for life in a vacuum, either by abandoning thought and/or by abandoning action.

[Jules Troy]

See this is why I said carpet bomb them. They as a society worship death. They hate the israeli's more than they love their own children. Anyone who would sanction and brainwash their own child to strap on a suicide bomb in my eyes no longer qualifies as being an innocent civilian. Anyone who cheers in the streets over the act of 911 is not human. The ones that are and seek a better life affirming way of living already LEFT!

The exception being very young children that simply are children.

HAMAS does not even offer the tunnels built as shelter for the civilian population to be safe in. No they want them out in the open as cannon fodder close by the rocketeers. These so called civilians know what they are doing and are willing martyrs.

Fuck my own ass if I was stuck in that shithole with incoming laser guided missiles coming my way is be booking it to some nice already destroyed worthless non target area!

[moralist]

Marc, quoting an Objectivist:

In light of this evidence it is impossible for me to stand for Gaza in any regard, including the destruction of its civilian population. Other than merely existing, as do inanimate objects, the citizens of Gaza manage to exist in a very poor, mediocre and self-destructive manner, making them in my view

less significant than simple inanimate objects.

Imagine the indecency of having to respect the rights of a dynamite whose fuse was lighted and which is placed within your proximity. Yet that is how many in the media and elsewhere view the conflict. And the false premise of this is egalitarianism, the doctrine which reduces good and evil to a choice between apples and oranges that don't even have a color, a taste, or any value whatsoever to the chooser.

The population of Gaza is not comprised of innocent civilians.

If they were innocent, they would have done what Israel is doing now a long time ago.

This paragraph aptly highlights the evil of moral equivalence.

I don't value life... I value the life of the good.

The evil forfeit their right to life the instant they violate the lives of others or enable other evil people to do the same.

Greg