Yeah, I'm wandering around somewhere in the territory between confused, horrified, depressed, and can't-we-all-just-get-along, myself. I was reading something the other day saying that Palestinians in Gaza are basically blockaded without electricity, which means no running water b/c no pumps, and no cooling, and no food, and holy fuck.
Here's Jonathan Edelstein's take on the situation. His reaction is similar to hilzoy's.
Hilzoy's post is a pretty good one. One of the best I've seen on the topic and manages to steer a careful and balanced line vis a vis the issue of blame. Edelstein's is also excellent.
For what it's worth, it seems to be that Israel's reaction has been completely disproportionate. Not because Israel hasn't been severely provoked: they have, but rather because, as the only fully functioning state involved in these events, they are the only ones fully capable of exercising restraint and performing as rational actors. Given that the other parties, as Jonathan Edelstein points out, are divided, influenced by shadowy outside forces, may have conflicting agendas, and in some cases, down-right nasty agendas, there's no-one else who can be relied upon to act with restraint and proportionality. That may be unpalatable for Israelis hurting at the kidnap of their soldiers but seem unavoidable.
because I don't feel educated enough to have an informed opinion
And this is different from 90% of blog commentary how?
Seriously, though, after reading tons of liberal blog-dwellers' opinions on Iraq, and then seeing the same folks sort of stare at the ground uncomfortably on a subject where so many of the issues are eerily similar (occupation and terror, insurgency and counterinsurgency, indefinite detention and torture without due process, etc.), it makes me wonder exactly what causes the difference is between how Americans talk - or don't talk - about them. Do most Americans just not bother to find out anything about Israel/Palestine or what?
re: 4
I wonder how much people actually don't have an opinion. I suspect it's more that people are afraid to talk about it. It's one of those issues that tends to turn rapidly into a flame war and gets very ugly, quickly.
5: Quite right. The main difference is that very few people in the US have strong, deep-seated opinions about Iraq as a country, while this is decidedly not the case for Israel/Palestine.
5: Probably worry about potential flame wars is a big part of it. But part of it is that it doesn't directly involve us, so we don't much care. I understand terrible things are going on in Darfur, but I still have no idea who all the players are or where Darfur is. Maybe I should know, but after Suri and Brangelina and the rest, I only have so much space left in my brain.
My only thought about the present Israeli-Palestinian contretemps is that we may well be fucked. As the man said, you can decide when to get on the tiger, but you can't decide when to get off it.
Yeah, anything involving Israel is a very touchy subject. I tend to avoid it not so much for that reason as I just don't believe there will ever be peace there, so it's all just arguing over who's to blame rather than how to resolve anything. And I don't really give a damn who's to blame. Plenty of that to go around.
I was about to recommend Edelstein on this topic, but I see someone got there first. He really is a wonderful blogger in general: lucid and incredibly well-informed.
4-6: Yes, but it's also that Iraq is "our" war, whereas Israel/Palestine isn't. Plus with Iraq, it's quite easy conceptually to distinguish between "Saddam" (bad) and "the Iraqi people" (victims). Whereas with both Israel and Palestine it's much harder to make those distinctions. Hamas and before it the PLO did some truly awful things, and they often did them with popular Palestinian support; the Israeli government has done some truly awful things, and it's often done them with popular Israeli support. And yet one also sees "the people" on both sides as victims of the situation, as well. And the central point of the conflict is one on which I think the west is pretty much torn: yes, Israel has a right to be a nation, but gosh, a lot of Palestinians lost their homes and don't they have a right to be a nation, too, and jesus this is all just very confusing and upsetting and honey, hand me the sports page.
I'm sensing a religious/cultural divide here.
I was just at the gym and they had the network news on one of the TV stations and I swear they had as much coverage of that goddamned racehorse with the broken foot as of what's going on in the Middle East. And more than half of their coverage of the Lebanon/Israel/Gaza situation was "But what will this mean for gas prices!", because that's the only thing that matters.
Fuckers.
"But what will this mean for gas prices!"
Yeah, because Gaza and Lebanon are just swimming in oil.
The oil angle was if Iran and Syria get pulled in and the general freaking out of the financial markets.
I know, and it is an actual issue, but my characterization makes for better mockery.
I feel bad for the racehorse with the broken foot.
But at least I don't care about gas prices all that much.
Fuck Barbaro.
I don't understand the Israel situation. But I have friends who are in Israel now and I'm sorta worried.
Fuck Barbaro.
Cala, Barbaro's feeling very poorly right now. You're just going to have to wait.
Oh, and after the news ended at the gym, Jeopardy came on, which had the following exchange (totally not making this up):
Question: 1980s religious leader who resigned his position as the head of the PTL Club due to scandal.
Contestant: Who is Yasser Arafat?
20: And his wife, Tammy Faye al-Ba'akir.
Oh, dude. Did you cry, weep, or sneer?
Man, I can't believe the Jeopardy people didn't catch a typo like that before the "quesiton" was read. I mean, "PTL" and "PLO" aren't really even close. It's pretty amazing that the contestant still managed to come up with the right answer.
It's probably too early for a Yngwie joke, eh?
Any commentator who takes one act from one side and then assigns blame based on that one act-- is not worth reading.
Hilzoy's comment is in that category.
Which act are you referencing? I didn't really see blame being assigned in her post.
It's probably too early for a Yngwie joke, eh?
Yes. Hold your horses.
I think we should pick up Israel and relocate the entire country to Wyoming. Obviously you get an end to terror and occupation, but the side benefits alone could justify this. Palestinians get less cramped, Israelis get to trade brown deserty nastiness for our lovely national park system, AIPAC gets to move to the beef industry and Wyomingans pick up some extra House seats and a couple hundred nukes. Everybody wins.
I think we should pick up Israel and relocate the entire country to Wyoming.
Or hell, if they're really that attached to the idea of a big desert shithole, we could give them a big hunk of New Mexico or something.
I think at one point there was an idea of creating a Jewish homeland in what is now Oregon. But I might be making that up.
Wait, this post isn't about the very special episode where Rog, Dwayne, and Rerun go to the Holy Land?
a big desert shithole
Um, have you been to Israel? Large chunks of it are breathtakingly beautiful.
You know, this idea has a lot of potential. When I was in Europe this spring, I kept thinking, wow, it's just like that mall in Vegas which is built to look like Europe. We have the technology. We can do this. We could even make it a zany reality TV summer hit.
Silvana, why do you hate America's shitholes?
Have you been to New Mexico? Large chunks of it are breathtakingly beautiful.
28: That's already been worked out by Atom and His Package
Uh, has anyone here been to Wyoming? It has many of the same qualities as NM and (I hear) Israel.
Wyoming is, in fact, fucking gorgeous.
Dry, though. I remember most of it being sort of yellowish.
39 - Not so much with the fucking these days.
New Mexico is pretty. The rocks really come in teal and purple.
41: I dunno--some of those wiry cowboy types are pretty hott.
Uh, has anyone here been to Wyoming?
Wyoming has spectacular scenery in the west--Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons etc.. In the south east, it has mostly plains.
44 - Oh, never mind. I was confusing Wyoming with South Dakota. Carry on, Wyoming.
Well, let's admit it. The west of almost everything is usually better.
46: I briefly considered the possibility that I should apologize to everyone for insulting Wyoming, but then thought that maybe some freaky legislation that I didn't know about had passed there. Whew.
Is that the one on which you should embark if you want to go west? Also: West Orange -- not better than the other Oranges, of which South Orange is the dearest to my own heart.
Also, the West Side is usually the ghetto side.
50 - No, it's me commenting for my own amusement again.
damn! and "my" s/b "your"
If it's lack of scenery you're after, I'd recommend Kansas.
Have you been to Kansas?!
31: I think it was actually upstate New York.
Yeah, yeah: "Have you seen upstate New York?"
The west of almost everything is usually better.
Well, spectacular scenery wise, in South Dakota, yes. (Although I have a hting for gently rolling farmland.)
For politics, in South Dakota, no.
For fucking, in South Dakota, as I am no longer there to bring up the average, both sides are teh suxxor.
Oh, and western New Mexico is more scenic than eastern, but the state isn't usually divided that way.
Oh yeah, Uganda. How weird would that have been?
Also, I should really call my aunt to see how my cousins in Jerusalem are doing. Tomorrow.
I actually think it would have been interesting to see how it played out. From afar.
Have you been to Kansas?!
Corn corn corn corn.
51: What, do you have a problem with poor people, Teo?
Yeah, I feel pretty secure saying Kansas is boring, even though I know AWB is going to come in here and rip my head off for it.
I've lived in Kansas. It was boring. But I was in second grade so it's not like it mattered much.
65: I actually considered adding "NTTAWWT" or something like that to 51.
I am miffed that no one acknowledged my "What's Happening" joke in #32. Miffed, I say.
Dude. I read it and totally didn't get it until just now. "What the heck does 'What's Happening' have to with the Middle East?" Didn't even occur to me to look at the title of the post.
So I just assumed it was some kind of Jewish in-joke.
71: Yeah, I thought of Birobidzhan too, but I couldn't remember the name. Thanks, eb.
73: Fascinating. That one was new to me.
I said a number of things in the two ObWi threads. I think Hilzoy's post was relatively reasonable.
I blog at times on Israeli/Palestinian issues when things aren't flaring. If anyone is desperate to know my opinions, Google works on my blog, and I have a handy search bar in the left sidebar.
I'm not blogging on the topic at present because a) I'm pre-occupied and depressed; and b) I have little useful to say; and c) yeah, not interested in flame fests, or getting pissed off at people. Particularly because while I'm happy to have discussions with people who are familiar with the facts and history, such as the previously mentioned Jonathan Edelstein, and a smattering of other people I know, the number of folks in America and/or blogland who have such familiarity is relatively small, and at the age of 47, after decades of such discussions, I have little patience left with personally bringing people up to speed, particularly since it really takes several years of in-depth steady to really know what you're talking about. And I really don't enjoy raising my blood pressure beyond its already dangerous levels, nor the urge to start yelling at people.
And discussions with people who only know what they read in the newspaper are pretty futile, and generally far beyond unbelievably aggravating.
Besides, the situation sucks, and there's plenty of blame to go round, and unfortunately, that pretty much sums up the bottom line. The rest is detail. It's not like I have any magic answers anyone else has, and no one does.
My sister spent 20 years in SE Kansas. What a hellhole. Lots of pious Moral Moral goody-goodies, an unpleasant number of semi-criminal white trash, and far too many semi-criminal Moral Majority white trash. She escaped with the shirt on her back and lots and lots of anecdotes.
I can't think of Kansas as a boring Midwestern place at all. I think of it as mean and nasty, with a thick veneer of self-righteousness and respectability guided by religious fanaticism.
10: This pretty much sums up why I generally keep my mouth shut. Both 'sides' have an incredible history of absolutely justified grievances and interests they are entitled to protect -- both sides have a long record of absolutely inexcusable injustices they've perpetrated. I can't come up with any better global opinion than "Everyone should just move back to the 1967 borders and stop fighting," but I've got no constructive ideas about how to get from here to there.
And talking about particular atrocities on either side worries me in terms of pissing people off irretrievably, in that I will appear to be taking sides and excusing one side's bad behavior in favor of a focus on the other side. I've gotten into arguments because of inartfully saying I didn't want to talk about the justice or injustice of some Israel/Palestine issue, because the way I said it conveyed the message that I was taking sides.
79: I find that talking is a lot easier if people can believe you have an obvious bias (which people believe I do; I can't say if that's true or not, but it might be), and just write off your perceived side-taking as evidence of that bias. It's harder if you're seen as a neutral party; people are much more likely to take offense.
But then if you're me, no one listens to you, so hey.
I've driven from Missouri to Colorado, straight through Kansas. For a large chunk of the trip you can't tell visually that you're moving forward; the scenery is unchanging and the highway perfectly straight.