Rolling MENA 2014 (Middle East)

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

conspiracy always rests on an illusion of competence. really feel like obama, kerry et al are p much just winging it w/o much coherence or clue.

between libya and syria and even maidan it really looks like if they think they have a shot to oust a bad guy on the cheap (ie no "boots on ground") they'll take it, w/o any consideration of aftereffects or even the chance of success

Not sure what is the answer: ousting bad guys on the cheap w/out consideration of afteraffects is problematic; ousting bad guys on trumped up charges with boots on the ground and declaring mission accomplished is very problematic; isolationism may make some feel good but I worry about those affected by possible genocide or just otherwise suffering human rights abuses at the hands of bad guy dictators...

http://www.newsweek.com/16-french-citizens-support-isis-poll-finds-266795

One in six French citizens sympathises with the Islamist militant group ISIS, also known as Islamic State, a poll released this week found.

The poll of European attitudes towards the group, carried out by ICM for Russian news agency Rossiya Segodnya, revealed that 16% of French citizens have a positive opinion of ISIS. This percentage increases among younger respondents, spiking at 27% for those aged 18-24.

A recent Ifop poll placed French president Francois Hollande’s approval rating at just 18%.

It's not that strange that the country with by far the biggest extreme right party, that grew so big by bashing Muslims, also has the biggest group of IS 'sympathizers' consisting especially of young adults.

i mean, i think it's strange that any country would sympathize with IS

Well yeah, obv.

wiki tells me: France has the largest number of Muslims in Western Europe. The majority of Muslims in France belong to the Sunni denomination.

But the support for Isis is still troubling.

Meanwhile here's what the US is now contemplating re ISIS in one part of Iraq re another minority group:

(AP) — The Obama administration is considering launching a humanitarian relief operation for Shiite Turkmen in northern Iraq who have been under siege for weeks by Islamic State militants, U.S. defense officials said Wednesday.

The mission, if it went forward, would be the second recent U.S. military humanitarian intervention in Iraq. U.S. cargo planes dropped tons of food and water to displaced Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq earlier this month, supported by U.S. airstrikes on nearby Islamic State fighting positions.

The administration is now focused on the imperiled town of Amirli, which is situated about 105 miles north of Baghdad and just a few miles from Kurdish territory. An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people are estimated to have no access to food or water.

The head of the United Nation's assistance mission in Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, earlier this week called for urgent action in Amirli and described the situation as desperate.

Given that only between 5% and 10% of French people are Muslim, even if 100% of them were favourable to ISIS you'd still need an equal number of non-Muslims to agree with them. Neither sounds particularly likely, though the sample size was only 1000.

A senior Hamas official, who also served as a Cairo negotiator on behalf of the terror organization, had his two legs broken in what is likely an internal faction dispute related to the ceasefire, Channel 2 reports.

The details of the incident are unclear.

finally a voice for us self-hating Jews

http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-wake-of-war-leftist-self-hating-jews-find-a-voice/