Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

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.

i think it's fine for the US to sit out this bombing campaign, but it's a little troubling that Egypt + UAE trust US so little that they didn't even coordinate the bombing (tho i've read that the US def knew it was going to happen bc of intel)

and by a little troubling - i mean that mostly in the sense that it seems like moderate middle east countries no longer trust the US to be on their side when it comes to fighting radical islam

NYT reporting the cease fire now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-strip-conflict.html

hamas of course declaring victory. if this is what victory looks like i'd hate to see defeat.

I have no problem with Egypt not being sure if the US is on their side, honestly.

details on the truce agreement:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4564456,00.html

idk that it's ever in the US's diplomatic interest to have countries not trusting them, esp on something like radical islam which obama appears to be making a priority at least re ISIS - you don't want to alienate potential allies unnecessarily.

is there any faction you can support in MENA that doesn't have you supporting one kind of radical islam or another somewhere

You also really shouldn't want to alienate people in the region by allying with murderous dictatorial regimes, imo. I know it's plague or cholera, but the fact that Egyps is mistrustful seems to speak well of Obama.

xp c'mon, egypt + UAE are demonstrably less radical than qatar or ISIS

How many demonstrators did Qatar execute last year?

I find the political philosophy that guides the Egyptian military something of a mystery. Inclined to think it's all just driven by self-preservation/cronyism and some sort of old fashioned commitment to a broader nationalism but idk.

ok, instead they fund ISIS + Hamas

Egypt's executions not driven by Islamic radicalism, is the thing. UAE's isn't either afaik.

Oh it seems to me that they are. The threat of Islamic radicalism seems quite clearly to be the excuse the autocrats are using to kill their opponents.

Also, x-post: Didn't Saudi Arabia also fund ISIS, and weren't they on your list of moderates a few months back?

I meant that the Egyptian regime is not Islamic radicals themselves

it's far less clear if Saudi Arabia has been funding ISIS, and they've definitely had tensions w/ Qatar over the latter's funding of ISIS. whether they've secretly been sending money or not, i don't know. i do remember OBL complaining about US relations w/ the Saudi royal family around 9/11, which suggests that the government at least is more moderate. still - i think it's pretty well known that Saudi Arabia exports young radicals abroad so that they don't cause trouble at home - NYT op-ed page wrote something on that topic a few days ago:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/opinion/isis-atrocities-started-with-saudi-support-for-salafi-hate.html

are not

argh

xo

they're definitely more complicit in islam radicalism than Sisi's government which is violently antagonistic to Muslim Brotherhood

Well, they are more complicit than Sisi, who's only been a leader for a short time. But being violently opposed to radical Islam does not really absolve anyone of blame. Assad and Maliki seems to me to be the biggest culpits, and they are opposing it.

but blaming assad and maliki for being heavy-handed and encouraging fundamentalism is still a step removed from countries that are directly piping funds and weapons to ISIS. even if you're unhappy bc you feel they radicalized islamists when they had an opportunity to moderate them (a similar charge lodged against Israel re Gaza, or the US re Al-Q), they still couldn't have succeeded to this level w/out actual institutional support. and when we fight ISIS, which Obama seems pretty committed to doing, the US is going to need al-abadi and sisi. assad the US will need to indirectly support (at the very least bc if the US starts bombing ISIS in Syria they'll be indirectly helping him).

G fuckin' Greenwald:

It seems pretty clear at this point that U.S. military action in the Middle East is the end in itself, and the particular form it takes – even including the side for which the U.S. fights – is an ancillary consideration. That’s how the U.S., in less than a year, can get away with depicting involvement in the war in Syria – on opposite sides – as a national imperative. Ironically, just as was true of Al Qaeda, provoking the U.S. into military action would, for the reasons Fishman explained, help ISIS as well....

The U.S. “is sharing intelligence about jihadist deployments with Damascus through Iraqi and Russian channels,” the Agence France-Presse reports today, citing one source as saying: ”The cooperation has already begun.”

From The New Hitler to U.S. Partner in less than a year: an impressive feat for both Assad and U.S. propaganda.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/26/fun-empire-fighting-sides-war