Politics

Wherefore choosest thou the dollar word o’er the penny word, at every opportunity? For this were an unnecessary strain, both upon thee and thine audience.

As a counterinfluence, I commend to thee the novels of one Lee Child. For, amongst the popular authors of our age, he is perhaps the most plain spoken. (Verily, he wasteth not his words.)

Tootleoo

@Muzan08 said in #9:
> Just for your information, a lot of my friends are Palestinian, I am not making fun of anything
> I am an Algerian, and I do not like your disrespectful word choices, and if you do not like my word choice, can you please tell me the reason that made you think so

There you go. THAT’S the type of diction you should use if you want to be taken seriously.

No disrespect was intended— I’m often just blunt.
As to my problems with your word choice, I think I was fairly open about that.

@kyanite111 said in #7:
> pleasant compared to the obscurantism of post-modern french philosophy
[...]
> that French scoundrel Baudrillard

Not everything you fail to understand is obscurantism.

[edit:] An interesting on-topic argument could be that both Palestine and Israel are simulacra. I mean this in the sense that while people may argue they are artificial, there is no real to go back to either.

On a more (im)pertinent note:

I have it on good authority — i.e., that of several 19th-century historians and travelers, including the illustrious Mark Twain — that Palestine never actually existed. Before the 20th century, visitors to the “Holy Land” found only a barren wasteland, without a single living soul in it, apart from themselves. I have diligently searched for a pre-20th-century source supporting the existence of a thriving Arab civilization in that part of the world, but have yet to find even one. The concensus seems to be that it’s a myth, concocted by anti Semites. ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄

Please, don’t hate the messenger! If you have a source supporting the existence of Palestine before the 20th century, kindly share it with us here. I would love to peruse it, for my own edification. (And no offense intended to anyone who currently identifies as Palestinian. This is, again, not my personal theory, but just what I have read. Twain in particular has been known to exaggerate, so I’d be happy if he was mistaken.)

Cheers from the lost city of Atlantis

I promote the idea that we should actually strive for a better world instead of supporting "causes" because we think they make us look good.

@clousems said in #8:
> And this is where your questionable diction bites you in the ass.

Feh. You knew full what the author of this "questionable diction" was saying.

youtu.be/DuABc9ZNtrA

@pawnedge said in #14:
> On a more (im)pertinent note:
>
> I have it on good authority — i.e., that of several 19th-century historians and travelers, including the illustrious Mark Twain — that Palestine never actually existed. Before the 20th century, visitors to the “Holy Land” found only a barren wasteland, without a single living soul in it ...

For more insight, try checking this ~
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jerusalem#Medieval_period

Also helpful for beginners ~
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades#Background

#17,

I read the first link, and — wouldn’t you know it? — it says “citation needed” right where I require one. (It actually says that in several key places.)

I read the second link as well, and it says only that they kicked the Jews out — then were themselves kicked out by others, in turn — not that they ever built anything there. ̄\_(ツ)_/ ̄

Confer: youtu.be/4OcaMRLTyGI?t=62 Granted, I have some sympathy with the claim that the local inhabitants (what few there were) weren’t self governing in the 19th century; for half a millennium by that point, they’d been ruled from Istanbul as part of the Ottoman Empire, by Turks who saw the Arabs more as a cow to be milked than anything else. (So they were victims of Ottoman imperialism long before the British came along.) You might go even deeper, and observe that much of the redevelopment and blooming of that territory has only come about via modern techniques of agronomy, desalinization and irrigation, which no one had access to in the 19th century. (People all over the world today are using the Israelis’ dry-farming techniques.) So it’s admittedly a bit tricky to make a historical comparison between the civilization there now and anything before it. :-/

But even accounting for this disparity, it remains the case that there is little evidence of any substantial civilization in that part of the world for a considerable time before the return of Israel in the mid-20th century. (And certainly Israel has the prior claim, by some thousands of years.) That said, I’m trying to remain openminded about this, so my request for an actual source still stands.

Cheers

well, rather than pay attention to jordan peterson and benjamin netanyahu, two of the worst sources you could ever trust on any subject, here is a good documentary from which some things can actually be learned:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnZSaKYmP2s

@lilyhollow:
As someone who is a). very poorly versed in Middle Eastern politics (to the point of my solution to this crisis being "rock, paper, scissors") and b). very unfamiliar with specific journalists and non-economic academics (because I use YouTube exclusively for music and low-budget movies), I'd like to weigh in on your point.

The burden is on you to tell us why we should discount the voices in pawnedge's video, and not the voices in yours.
I do know that Netanyahu has a vested stake in all of this. And, while he is probably one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the topic of Israel, I can understand doubting his motives.

After a bit of research, though, this Peterson guy seems fairly well informed (albeit controversial in his views surrounding political correctness). Any particular reason you are dismissing him?

Also after a bit of research, it appears that the filmmaker of the video you provided, Abby Martin, is fairly fringe and more focused on sensationalism. The documentary itself seems a little sensationalist to me-- then again, I tend to avoid documentaries about current charged political issues, since they are always going to be heavily biased towards the side the filmmaker favors.

I am not saying that pawnedge is correct in his interpretation of events (he himself has requested evidence to disprove his claim), nor that you are incorrect in yours (in fact, you never actually provided an interpretation). I am just questioning your dismissal of pawnedge's video, which appears (to me) to be a double standard. Perhaps I'm missing something? Again, this is not an area in which I am particularly knowledgeable.