Yes, I mean saying bad things about Israel for the most part. They obviously think that their protests are more important than maybe telling the Palestinians that they need to be sensible and give up some stuff or that the Jews aren't going anywhere.
Answering both you and Chip. A big problem, as somebody on the other blog put it, people let their sense of morality interfere with reality. Liberals think we can turn all low achievers into high achievers or at least average students and conservatives think that people need the job and the answer is to apply disciplinary force against them. The actual truth is that there are always going to be people who are low achievers and bad employees for a variety of reasons and maybe paying them some sort UBI not to bother everybody else but go somewhere and play video games, have sex, or whatever would be a lot cheaper and more achievable than what the liberals or conservatives want.
The Facebook algorithm in it's infinite wisdom has decided to give me both Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian propaganda during the course of the Israel-Hamas War. There is a big difference in spirit between the propaganda. The pro-Israel propaganda is a lot more positive and optimistic. Most of it revolves around the beauty of sights within Greenline Israel, yes this includes Jerusalem, or the accomplishments of the Zionist movement and the Jewish people. There is almost nothing about the terrorism that Israel suffered from the Palestinians or its wars with the surrounding countries.
Pro-Palestinian propaganda is a lot more negative and dishonest. There is a lot of angry Islamic stuff about how the forces of Islam will finally defeat the perfidious Jewish state, dishonest stuff that tries to pretend that there was a country called Palestine and often tries to pass off the achievements of the Yishuv as "Palestinian", and the typical woe is us stuff without context.
There is a big sense that the Palestinian movement suffers from unreality in a really bad way. This is among actual Palestinians and their Muslim and Western allies. There are apparently people on the Further Left internet who seem to really believe that the collapse of Israel is at hand and organizations pushing for the complete destruction of Israel as the only true just solution. I have no idea how Israel is expected to negotiate with people whose sense of reality is that deluded.
I'm basically for a unilateral West Bank withdrawal but understand why Israelis on the ground might be skeptical about it based on how Gaza and South Lebanon ended up. My basic theory is that the world expects Israel to deal with a certain amount of terrorism and Jews to deal with a certain amount of anti-Semitism. By a certain amount, I mean quite a lot.
One reason why there might be more emphasis on doing something for the low achievers is that it is much harder for people who drop out of school or are bad employees to piece together a living as adults in the 21st century for a variety of reasons.
I suspect that Americans might be too diverse in basically everything to come up with a working and uniform education system. You have conservatives that don't want a system that will challenge traditional patriotism or religious feeling and traditional social beliefs. You have people who want a STEM heavy and pressure cooker system that don't care about the humanities at all and want them regulated to the sidelines. You have different types of liberals and leftists who want a humanities heavy education that will teach kids to remedy the injustices of the American past. I don't think there is anyway to square these various circles of wants and desires.
There are lots of models we can study from other developed democracies but they all have the problem of pissing off the entire political spectrum in the United States for one reason or another. Liberals aren't going to like the massive amount of tracking in Europe or the STEM and route learning heavy systems in the Asian developed democracies. Conservatives aren't going to like that the other system will not allow for heavy indoctrination in the way they want.
One reason why Americans latched onto education reform for a long time was because it was a lot easier to raise tax money for education than it was for public health measures or other welfare state measures in American politics. This turned education into a sort of holy grail and panacea for American liberals. It isn't though.
One issue with school reform in the United States at least is that nobody likes dealing with the changing demographics. There is a big Asian-American demographic with their own ideas about what a good education that go against what most Democrats or Republicans want the schools to be.
People avoid the question of "what do we want our schools to do?" because there will never ever be an agreement. Even in much more homogenous countries than the United States, there will not be an agreement on this.
I think most of the Pro-Palestinian activists care about punishing "big bad Israel" than helping Palestinians. They certainly wouldn't encourage them in endless defiance if they did care about the Palestinians.
It is going to be very tough to convince Israelis that they should withdraw from the West Bank unilaterally after the experiences of the Gaza and South Lebanon withdrawal. Some like North might think that it is because of good behavior on the part of the PA and West Bank Palestinians but Israelis believe that it is because they are there.
What most Israelis, and probably Diaspora Jews as well, thinks will happen with a unilateral Israeli withdrawal is that Tulkarm will start firing rockets at Netanya and the world will start wailing about open air prisons and whatever else if Israel attempts to defend itself.
The idea that the Palestinians might have some agency and that they have basically shoot themselves in the foot for the past century in their "No Jew" campaign doesn't occur to anybody on the Pro-Palestinian side.
The Right of Return is basically a backdoor way to create a one-state solution. Nobody with common sense believes that Western liberals or leftists are going to have any say in how this new one state is organized.
It is just so freaking stupid like the person I encountered back on the other blog at the start of the conflict who thought we could create a one state where Jewish and Arab kids would learn "true history" together in school. I am not sure whether he realizes that Israelis and Palestinians might both have some very different ideas about what "true history" is than he did or what mechanism would be used to ensure that this "true history" is what gets taught.
The Right of Return is basically where all previous attempts to reach a final deal broke down. Palestinians seem to treat it as sacrosanct and so do their supporters despite the fact that it is nearly going to be impossible to get Israel to accept it.
I really have no idea how people expect the Right of Return to be implemented. Even if you hate Israel, I think you need to concede that Israel won all the battle since before it existed and this gives Israel a strong upper hand in negotiations. It is also clear that no Israeli government is going to say yes to anything but a symbolic right of return unless forced to and the rest of the world is not going to force this.
I'm not sure about this. I don't think that many Arabs like Israel but a lot of them aren't into fighting Israel to the death either. Israel doesn't seem to rouse the crowd in the region that much anymore. It is mainly non-Arab Muslims who seem to get really riled up about Israel.
Mondoweiss managed to interview a member of Hamas on their reflections on 10/7 and the year that followed. This is what he had to say:
Mousa Abu Marzouk of Hamas gave an interesting interview to Mondoweiss two days ago. In it, he said regarding Operation Al-Aqsa Flood that "I did expect such an Israeli response, given my understanding of the Zionist background and the fanatic Jewish mentality." Moreover, another reason "was the international community’s failure to prevent the occupation from liquidating the Palestinian cause. Our position has been validated because the international community has watched our extermination for a year and has done nothing practical or effective to prevent it.
The circular reasoning here is amazing in a dismal way. Hamas knew that Israel would smash Gaza because of 10/7 and that they were right to do so because the world's failure to stop it shows that Hamas is correct about the rest of the world. Hamas is an utterly monstrous organization that needs to be destroyed. They are bad for the Israelis and bad for the Palestinians. Just pure fanatics.
I also find it extremely rich that a member of Hamas is describing Jews as fanatics.
You might find this side an amusing distraction to be scoffed at but I take them rather seriously because they are part of the bigger complex that encourages the Palestinians to shoot themselves in the foot.
Most Iranians do not like the military adventurism done by the Iranian clerical regime. Likewise, many Lebanese do not like Hezbollah and thought that Hezbollah was dragging Lebanon into a war they didn't want. The Lebanese were right. There was a tweet going around after Nasrallah's death that went something like "my feed is filled with Middle Easterners celebrating and wealthy Westerners with humanities degrees crying."
Trying to re-state my post but more calmly. One thing that I've noticed from the Pro-Palestinian side is that the people who hate Israel, whether they be chattering class liberals, further leftists, or Muslims tend to really hate Israel. There are people on the Pro-Israel side who also really hate the Palestinians and want them punished but it isn't universal. On the Pro-Palestinian side, raging anger against Israel's existence seems to be universal. They want Israel gone or at least severely punished in some way in addition to the creation of a Palestinian state and they say so. Their moderates sound like Israeli extremists and it is left to Jews inside and outside of Israel to deal with these unyielding fanatics Palestinian or not.
The protestors whether they were on campus or not were menacing Jewish students or at least a substantial number of them were and the rest were looking about innocently like "who me." The Palestinian cause suffers from a big case of ureality. As mentioned above, my synagogue and other Jewish organizations have managed to say at least something about the Palestinians while on the Palestinian side it is all anger and rage against Israel without context. Like they are shocked at the attacks against Hezbollah but fail to mention that Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel since October 2023 and displaced 60,000 plus Israelis from North Israel. It is just wailing against "big bad Israel" against the poor brown indigenous people.
Palestinian leadership has been following different variants of the same failed strategy against the Jews since long before our parents were born. They failed when they were more numerically superior and Jews did not have a military force and they continue to fail to this day. Their allies tell them to go on and that Israel is about collapse and the Jews will be fleeing despite this not happening and terrorize local Jews whenever they can. The Muslims and the Further Left are just stuck in a particular mind frame about Israel and can't get out.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
Yes, I mean saying bad things about Israel for the most part. They obviously think that their protests are more important than maybe telling the Palestinians that they need to be sensible and give up some stuff or that the Jews aren't going anywhere.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
Answering both you and Chip. A big problem, as somebody on the other blog put it, people let their sense of morality interfere with reality. Liberals think we can turn all low achievers into high achievers or at least average students and conservatives think that people need the job and the answer is to apply disciplinary force against them. The actual truth is that there are always going to be people who are low achievers and bad employees for a variety of reasons and maybe paying them some sort UBI not to bother everybody else but go somewhere and play video games, have sex, or whatever would be a lot cheaper and more achievable than what the liberals or conservatives want.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
The Facebook algorithm in it's infinite wisdom has decided to give me both Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian propaganda during the course of the Israel-Hamas War. There is a big difference in spirit between the propaganda. The pro-Israel propaganda is a lot more positive and optimistic. Most of it revolves around the beauty of sights within Greenline Israel, yes this includes Jerusalem, or the accomplishments of the Zionist movement and the Jewish people. There is almost nothing about the terrorism that Israel suffered from the Palestinians or its wars with the surrounding countries.
Pro-Palestinian propaganda is a lot more negative and dishonest. There is a lot of angry Islamic stuff about how the forces of Islam will finally defeat the perfidious Jewish state, dishonest stuff that tries to pretend that there was a country called Palestine and often tries to pass off the achievements of the Yishuv as "Palestinian", and the typical woe is us stuff without context.
There is a big sense that the Palestinian movement suffers from unreality in a really bad way. This is among actual Palestinians and their Muslim and Western allies. There are apparently people on the Further Left internet who seem to really believe that the collapse of Israel is at hand and organizations pushing for the complete destruction of Israel as the only true just solution. I have no idea how Israel is expected to negotiate with people whose sense of reality is that deluded.
"
I want them to shut up.
"
I'm basically for a unilateral West Bank withdrawal but understand why Israelis on the ground might be skeptical about it based on how Gaza and South Lebanon ended up. My basic theory is that the world expects Israel to deal with a certain amount of terrorism and Jews to deal with a certain amount of anti-Semitism. By a certain amount, I mean quite a lot.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
One reason why there might be more emphasis on doing something for the low achievers is that it is much harder for people who drop out of school or are bad employees to piece together a living as adults in the 21st century for a variety of reasons.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
Kremlin confirms that Trump sent Putin COVID test kits during the pandemic:
https://www.politico.eu/article/kremlin-confirms-donald-trump-covid-test-vladimir-putin-president-russia-us-abbott-point/
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
I agree about the people suffering from too much romanticism.
"
I suspect that Americans might be too diverse in basically everything to come up with a working and uniform education system. You have conservatives that don't want a system that will challenge traditional patriotism or religious feeling and traditional social beliefs. You have people who want a STEM heavy and pressure cooker system that don't care about the humanities at all and want them regulated to the sidelines. You have different types of liberals and leftists who want a humanities heavy education that will teach kids to remedy the injustices of the American past. I don't think there is anyway to square these various circles of wants and desires.
"
There are lots of models we can study from other developed democracies but they all have the problem of pissing off the entire political spectrum in the United States for one reason or another. Liberals aren't going to like the massive amount of tracking in Europe or the STEM and route learning heavy systems in the Asian developed democracies. Conservatives aren't going to like that the other system will not allow for heavy indoctrination in the way they want.
"
One reason why Americans latched onto education reform for a long time was because it was a lot easier to raise tax money for education than it was for public health measures or other welfare state measures in American politics. This turned education into a sort of holy grail and panacea for American liberals. It isn't though.
"
One issue with school reform in the United States at least is that nobody likes dealing with the changing demographics. There is a big Asian-American demographic with their own ideas about what a good education that go against what most Democrats or Republicans want the schools to be.
"
People avoid the question of "what do we want our schools to do?" because there will never ever be an agreement. Even in much more homogenous countries than the United States, there will not be an agreement on this.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
I think most of the Pro-Palestinian activists care about punishing "big bad Israel" than helping Palestinians. They certainly wouldn't encourage them in endless defiance if they did care about the Palestinians.
"
It is going to be very tough to convince Israelis that they should withdraw from the West Bank unilaterally after the experiences of the Gaza and South Lebanon withdrawal. Some like North might think that it is because of good behavior on the part of the PA and West Bank Palestinians but Israelis believe that it is because they are there.
What most Israelis, and probably Diaspora Jews as well, thinks will happen with a unilateral Israeli withdrawal is that Tulkarm will start firing rockets at Netanya and the world will start wailing about open air prisons and whatever else if Israel attempts to defend itself.
The idea that the Palestinians might have some agency and that they have basically shoot themselves in the foot for the past century in their "No Jew" campaign doesn't occur to anybody on the Pro-Palestinian side.
"
The Right of Return is basically a backdoor way to create a one-state solution. Nobody with common sense believes that Western liberals or leftists are going to have any say in how this new one state is organized.
It is just so freaking stupid like the person I encountered back on the other blog at the start of the conflict who thought we could create a one state where Jewish and Arab kids would learn "true history" together in school. I am not sure whether he realizes that Israelis and Palestinians might both have some very different ideas about what "true history" is than he did or what mechanism would be used to ensure that this "true history" is what gets taught.
"
The Right of Return is basically where all previous attempts to reach a final deal broke down. Palestinians seem to treat it as sacrosanct and so do their supporters despite the fact that it is nearly going to be impossible to get Israel to accept it.
I really have no idea how people expect the Right of Return to be implemented. Even if you hate Israel, I think you need to concede that Israel won all the battle since before it existed and this gives Israel a strong upper hand in negotiations. It is also clear that no Israeli government is going to say yes to anything but a symbolic right of return unless forced to and the rest of the world is not going to force this.
"
I'm not sure about this. I don't think that many Arabs like Israel but a lot of them aren't into fighting Israel to the death either. Israel doesn't seem to rouse the crowd in the region that much anymore. It is mainly non-Arab Muslims who seem to get really riled up about Israel.
"
Florida meteorologist breaks down n the air and admits he is scarred:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/climate/john-morales-weatherman-hurricane.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwY2xjawFyzutleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQ-S94Nq7m8LyYwMNatetn9bqJfpw5ij32mXQpzvqtnRyz97ERekgaMm4A_aem__dRB89hMX4LMgFHps5I5vw
"
Mondoweiss managed to interview a member of Hamas on their reflections on 10/7 and the year that followed. This is what he had to say:
Mousa Abu Marzouk of Hamas gave an interesting interview to Mondoweiss two days ago. In it, he said regarding Operation Al-Aqsa Flood that "I did expect such an Israeli response, given my understanding of the Zionist background and the fanatic Jewish mentality." Moreover, another reason "was the international community’s failure to prevent the occupation from liquidating the Palestinian cause. Our position has been validated because the international community has watched our extermination for a year and has done nothing practical or effective to prevent it.
The circular reasoning here is amazing in a dismal way. Hamas knew that Israel would smash Gaza because of 10/7 and that they were right to do so because the world's failure to stop it shows that Hamas is correct about the rest of the world. Hamas is an utterly monstrous organization that needs to be destroyed. They are bad for the Israelis and bad for the Palestinians. Just pure fanatics.
I also find it extremely rich that a member of Hamas is describing Jews as fanatics.
"
You might find this side an amusing distraction to be scoffed at but I take them rather seriously because they are part of the bigger complex that encourages the Palestinians to shoot themselves in the foot.
"
I think you mean that Trump would be far worse.
On “The Unavoidable Truth About Iran”
Most Iranians do not like the military adventurism done by the Iranian clerical regime. Likewise, many Lebanese do not like Hezbollah and thought that Hezbollah was dragging Lebanon into a war they didn't want. The Lebanese were right. There was a tweet going around after Nasrallah's death that went something like "my feed is filled with Middle Easterners celebrating and wealthy Westerners with humanities degrees crying."
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
Trying to re-state my post but more calmly. One thing that I've noticed from the Pro-Palestinian side is that the people who hate Israel, whether they be chattering class liberals, further leftists, or Muslims tend to really hate Israel. There are people on the Pro-Israel side who also really hate the Palestinians and want them punished but it isn't universal. On the Pro-Palestinian side, raging anger against Israel's existence seems to be universal. They want Israel gone or at least severely punished in some way in addition to the creation of a Palestinian state and they say so. Their moderates sound like Israeli extremists and it is left to Jews inside and outside of Israel to deal with these unyielding fanatics Palestinian or not.
"
The protestors whether they were on campus or not were menacing Jewish students or at least a substantial number of them were and the rest were looking about innocently like "who me." The Palestinian cause suffers from a big case of ureality. As mentioned above, my synagogue and other Jewish organizations have managed to say at least something about the Palestinians while on the Palestinian side it is all anger and rage against Israel without context. Like they are shocked at the attacks against Hezbollah but fail to mention that Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel since October 2023 and displaced 60,000 plus Israelis from North Israel. It is just wailing against "big bad Israel" against the poor brown indigenous people.
Palestinian leadership has been following different variants of the same failed strategy against the Jews since long before our parents were born. They failed when they were more numerically superior and Jews did not have a military force and they continue to fail to this day. Their allies tell them to go on and that Israel is about collapse and the Jews will be fleeing despite this not happening and terrorize local Jews whenever they can. The Muslims and the Further Left are just stuck in a particular mind frame about Israel and can't get out.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.