Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

sure, when israel starts using its concrete for bomb shelters instead of tunnels into gaza, there will be peace

also importantly, israelis don't aspire to become martyrs, or hope their kids grow up to martyrs. that's a fundamental ideological distinction that's not easily resolvable.

yeah when you're enemy can't really kill you/hurt you it makes sense that there wouldn't be a martyrdom culture

your

fuck me and my grammar today argh

there wasn't a martyrdom culture in 48 or 67 or 73 either

or during the second intifada, no israelis were blowing themselves up in ramallah

fuck golda meir

feel like yr being a little disingenuous/smart alecky here (why would Israel build tunnels into Gaza they already control the borders, martyrdom culture has grown out of specific sociopolitical conditions and you know what those are where they came from why am I bothering etc)

xp

and fuck this whole line of reasoning, it's idiotic and morally bankrupt

where the arab nations definitely have full moral responsibility for any soldiers israel had to kill in self-defense.

going back to your original point I just don't accept this moral calculus. you kill someone, it doesn't matter what they are doing, that is YOUR choice cf. Gandhi/MLK etc. It's convenient to blame the victim but if you're alive and they are dead and you killed them, you did the killing, it is your burden to bear.

i disagree. when someone is coming to kill you i believe you have a moral obligation to kill them first.

Becoming a martyr, aspiring to basically suicide, is a result of total, complete and utter desperation. If there is no hope, if you see no hope, if you grow up seeing your grandparents and parents in despair and not having any hope for that one thing - to have your own country - to materialize, there will never be a generation aspiring to non-violent actions. Non-violent behavior hasn't gotten the Palestinians anywhere. They are being brutally suppressed for generations now. I'm not saying it's right that some (!) grow up to be a martyr, but it's certainly not incomprehensible. When you have no hope, no prospect to not being suppressed and occupied.

what if you can hide behind an iron dome

xp

Oppressed where I said suppressed xp

when someone is coming to kill you i believe you have a moral obligation to kill them first.

where does this moral obligation come from

this is reminding me of Ysehsayahou Leibovitz talking about why he isn't a humanist in that clip Hurting posted on the Hey Jews thread

bc they are insane w/ hatred.

Isn't part of this a circular thing where they (Hamas) see Israel's economic blockade of Gaza and Israeli's ongoing settlement development in East Jerusalem and West Bank and convince themselves that a more moderate approach still won't give them a country. And Israel sees Hamas in charge and based on Hamas' founding documents and ongoing behavior decides that Israel can't let up on the blockade, settlement development and responding with disproportionate force to rockets and such

obv any question of where a moral obligation comes from is tricky. we could talk about first principles - the sanctity of life, the obligation to self-preserve, etc. ultimately i think it's that when someone comes to kill you (or say a 3rd party), they have become in that moment liable for the murder they are coming to commit - instead of waiting for them to finish the murder and then charge them, which is a perversion, you can mete out the punishment beforehand. obv this becomes tricky when talking about abstract cause (iirc this principle was used to defend the assassination of rabin) but seems morally consistent to me when it comes to someone coming after you w/ a knife -- esp if you don't have a way to stop them other than killing them first.

xp the fact remains that hamas commits actions that directly lead to their own people dying. not just refraining from building bomb shelters, or inciting responses from israel. they fire missiles that are so inaccurate they often don't even cross the border and actually kill Palestinians in Gaza. that's a kind of hatred that cares more about hurting their enemy than saving their own lives. there is extensive evidence that they fire rockets from congested urban environments and then demand that residents not flee their homes. it's not just an issue of hamas believing that militant action is necessary to lift the blockade - they actively hurt their people bc they hope to hurt Israel.

in that context, yes, if they loved their children more than they hated israel, maybe there wouldn't be peace, but we'd be a lot closer than we are right now

so the victim is judged guilty of intent pre-emptively and then murdered, and the judge is exonerated of any guilt? how convenient. the self-serving nature of this logic is remarkably clear, and it's potential for abuse rather frightening to consider; this is not any kind of morality I would subscribe to (ps I am also against the death penalty)

xxxp

another golda meir quote: "I prefer to stay alive and be criticized than be sympathized."

it's not just an issue of hamas believing that militant action is necessary to lift the blockade - they actively hurt their people bc they hope to hurt Israel.

tbf this point is p indisputable; Hamas is a horrible organization. Israel, however, enables and obliges them.

another golda meir quote: "I prefer to stay alive and be criticized than be sympathized."

sheesh did she ever say anything that wasn't self-servingly moronic? there are more important things than staying alive.

shakey i think your position - that you should allow yourself to be killed rather than kill someone else, even the murderer - is admirable in a sort of limited way. but only when applied to yourself. the consequence of deciding upon that as a universal ethics is similar to gandhi saying that the Jews during the Shoah shouldn't have resisted. it becomes perverse imo.

and i don't know what you're familiarity is w/ jewish ethics but 'saving a life' is like pretty much the fundamental tenant of the religion. there are 3 things acc to the Torah considered so important that you can't do them to save a life - murder an innocent, gilui arayot (sexual immorality), and idol worship. everything else can be transgressed to save a life.

there are 3 things acc to the Torah considered so important that you can't do them to save a life - murder an innocent

huh how's Israel doin on this count do ya think

tbh there are special rules for war even in the torah

seems more like a midrash thing to me but yr better schooled than I am on the subject I'm sure

uh, no? midrash is something totally different. i'm talking about the 5 books of moses text.

this is reminding me of Ysehsayahou Leibovitz talking about why he isn't a humanist in that clip Hurting posted on the Hey Jews thread

― Οὖτις, Monday, August 25, 2014 2:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, there is a connection there, but Leibovitz was ironically a lot more humanistic than a lot of people who actually think they are humanists, in spite of his belief in groups.

dude I know what the torah is

some of the laws of discretionary war come from:
http://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/20-10.htm

I just don't recall where the war rules chapters are

lol xp

i don't think those passages btw are the end of moral interpretation of war obv, but they def exist. if you go far enough you'll get to the part that makes burning down olive trees in the west bank actually forbidden acc to the torah.

btw i know u know what the torah is. i was just clarifying bc 'torah' can refer to a lot of things (including oral tradition) - there's in fact torah sh'b'chsav (the written torah) which can mean the 5 books, or the complete Tanach. there's also the torah sh'baal'peh (the oral torah) which is an oral tradition expressed in the mishnah, talmud, commentaries, etc. i was just clarifying that these verses are actually from the 5 books themselves.

(there's also, in more contemporary usage, the torah niglah - the revealed torah, which includes all the above - and the torah nistar, the hidden torah, which refers to the kabbalistic/chassidic tradition)

so like i wasn't trying to offend you by specifying. it really is a very loose term.

Take it to the rolling Torah 2014 thread guys

XD

re latest attempts to establish a truce again, each side wants the other to agree first:

An Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity said Israel would consider the proposal if Hamas were to accept it.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said of Egypt's proposals that "if Israel agreed to it, we would be heading towards an agreement."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/25/us-mideast-gaza-idUSKBN0GM11320140825

there are 3 things acc to the Torah considered so important that you can't do them to save a life - murder an innocent, gilui arayot (sexual immorality), and idol worship. everything else can be transgressed to save a life.

In my orthodox Talmud Torah, they taught us about the martyrs who gave up their lives rather than bow to an idol, but told us that things were different in Torah times, and that we students should bow to the idol if someone credibly threatened to kill us should we not comply. The fact that we were explicitly instructed about best practices for this contingency tells you something about how our community sees itself in contemporary America!

i'm kinda shocked they told you that. i know that there's a rambam about when it's permissible to convert to Islam (iirc?) under particular circumstances. but i always learnt that this was still relevant in 2014 and if someone credibly threatened to kill us if we didn't bow to an idol -- we should!

we should let them kill us, i mean.

Well I should say this was definitely a "modern orthodox" shul whose constituency at the time was mostly families whose level of observance and relation with Torah were a much better fit for conservative Judaism, but who wanted a traditional service. Still, it was definitely an orthodox synagogue and not some other kind!

yeah, it's pretty interesting. obv my background is much more charedi.

hamas says gaza cease-fire imminent (again)

re our conversation about torah + war, a friend sent me this this morning:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/r95l6r6urvdyev3/NormsofWarinJudaism%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0

i can't vouch for all the interpretations but it's replete w/ relevant passages

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/2014/08/26/do_the_uae_s_airstrikes_in_libya_mean_the_united_states_is_losing_influence.html

duh

is that really a bad thing. clean up their own messes for once? Probably in a method I would not approve of and with discouraging end results, but so tired of the US playing global cop in the worst sense of the word.

Yeah, we should sit more shit out. It's better for everyone. Between this stuff and how, say, France handled/is handling Mali, the not-USA seems to be doing OK. Of course, there are also lots of countries historically and recently adept at doing nothing, which leads to the moral conundrum of when we should intervene, where and why. Which in turn leads to a "red line" mentality, which is dangerous.