Shlomi Fish ([info]shlomif) wrote,
@ 2006-07-17 17:31:00
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Current mood: angry
Current music:The Beatles - With a Little Help from my Friends
Entry tags:arabs, hizbullah, israel, lebanon, politics

How Israel is Responsible for the War with the Hizbullah

It's always the easiest thing to blame's one problems on someone else. Politicians and other people are notorious for repeatedly doing that. And as usual, Israelis tend to blame "the Arabs" for the problems that they encounter today. But is it true?

This entry is going to be very flamebait, but I have to say it. I admit that I also said to myself "Damn, Stupid Hizbullah" when the situation in Southern Lebanon and Northern Israel started, but as any good Neo-Tech person, I quickly returned to my sense, and started looking at my own backyard.

So here are the points to consider:

  1. Nasarallah and friends are Doing What they're doing because they are Evil. The source of Evil is generally referred to as "Mysticism" in Neo-Tech literature. A Mystic has a shrinking self-esteem and keeps wanting to hurt others to temporarily relieve his self-esteem. See the Neo-Tech orientation for more details.

    A benevolent person generally does what he does in order to increase his or her healthy self-esteem. This self-esteem can be cognitively manifested in "fame", "money", "love", "getting work done", "peer repute" etc. All of these are generally positive values, that help a person later on in life, and just makes him feel good about himself, others and the worlds.

    Nasarallah and friends (but also many known and unknown Israelis) are causing more harm, because they need to reach new "heights" of negative achievements. The Neo-Tech link explains it better, but this was an executive summary. Just take it for granted.

    Evil does exist, and evil people too, as any person who has rudimentaly studied 20th century history knows. Evil people are capable of doing anything as bad as any evil that Tolkien could come with. However, as opposed to the formidable and often awe-inspiring Tolkienian evil, real-world evil people are generally dishounorable, lack most self-control, blame other people's for their problems, are incompetent, and generally invoke a lot of disgust.

    Note: a benevolent person can become a mystic and a mystic, given enough time and determination can return to be a good, non-harmful person.

  2. The Israeli-Arab Conflict will not be Resolved Until Israel stops having Constitutional Racism - Israel has discrimination against non-Jews directly in its constitution. From uneven immigration and citizenship laws, to lack of civil marriages, divorces and adoptions, to uneven investment between Arabic and Jewish settlements. While this does not justify irrational hatred from the Arabs, it certainly is a very good cause for it. And it is very bad.

    Despite popular belief, a private person is allowed to be racist or even (peacefully) discriminatory. This is because discrimination does not involve force, threat of force, or fraud, which are the only unethical actions. However, a government being a public monopoly must not be discriminatory to groups according to some of their properties.

    We can often hear people saying that if Israel did not have consitutional racism, it would not remain a Jewish state for much longer, or that the Palestinians will take over. This is wrong. There are already a lot of Jews in Israel, and they aren't going to magically disappear. Furthermore, I'd rather have a liberal, free-as-in-freedom, prosperous country than a discriminatory Jewish country. Moreover, if anyone causes any trouble (whether Jewish or non-Jewish) he can be exiled or otherwise ostracised.

    Finally, in Israel today there are many immigrants who are neither Jewish nor Arabs: Romanian, Philippinos, Chinese, Thais. They are hard working and passionate. Surely most of them have a precedence for getting a citizenship over the random trouble-causing Arab nationalist.

    Israeli does not belong to the Jews. No country can prevent a lawful person from immigrating to it, living there and working there. Otherwise it's exercising force in trying to get the person to leave. It's high time Israel officially becomes the Land of the Israeli and Israeli-wannabes (which it is in practice) instead of "the Land of the Jews".

This is the ultimate cause of most of the troubles Israel been having, and a lot of the criticism applied to it from the outside. I don't expect anti-Israeli terror activities to immediately stop after such a reform will be made, but after it, there won't be any real-life basis for feelings of hatred towards Israelis, and thus they won't survive for long.

For more information refer to my "A Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict", as well as my story "The Enemy and How I Helped to Fight it". The latter was written with a lot of inspiration from the situation at the Israeli-Lebanese border (back in 1996), but has a universal message, and it is very possible many Israelis who read it will feel uncomfortable about the ideas behind it. (I've started heavily revamping it recently, but am still in the process, and don't have something final).

If you're reading it and is a Lebanese, be aware that my advice about not blaming other people for your own problems applies to you too. The best way to prevent the continuation of the fighting is to give an ultimatum to any Hizbullah activist you know to either leave it or otherwise be outcasted by you an other. Something like "Either you leave this wretched organisation or don't talk to me again." If the Hizbullah people will lose all their friends this way, they'll quickly stop this insanity.

Like I said, I know this post was flamebait, but I had to say it because I'm tired of people or countries blaming other entities for their own problems. Feel free to reply to this post, but please be civil, and avoid Logical Fallacies.

Cheers!


(Post a new comment)

Wow, I didn't know you were such an extreme leftist.
[info]real_skeptic
2006-07-18 08:53 am UTC (link)
A country does have a right to prevent people from immigrating to it. States are a way of protecting the interests of a particular group, and one of these interests can be maintaining a certain culture. The USA has immigration laws, other countries have immigration laws. I know of very few countries that don't have them.

There are actually countries that don't allow citizenship to anybody except their own ethnic group. Example? Japan. Their citizenship law is similar to our "Hok Hashvut" - if you are a descendent of some ancient Japanese and can prove it, you can be Japanese. Otherwise, tough shit. You can be a resident, not a citizen (exception is when the emperor grants you honorary citizenship, but that doesn't happen very often).

So Israel has a right to give precedence to Jews in its immigration rules - or to any other ethnic group. It was formed as a shelter for Jews. In addition, it has a right not to accept foreign workers as citizens. You don't get a British citizenship if you go and work there for several years. You merely get a work license. All the rest of it - not giving equality to citizens of all ethnic backgrounds, unequal budgets for Arab, Jewish and Druzian municipalities, and all the rest of it - I can't agree with you more.

But the current war did not start because the residents of Majdal Krum were treated unequally. It started, because the Hizballah wanted to ride the train that was started with the kidnapping by the Hamas. They want their prisoners back. And they got the go-ahead from Iran.

I agree with you that there's no such thing as "evil vs. good" outside the books. Somehow, people do awful things in the name of good causes. I'd say that you should mark things as "justifiable" or not, and that's of course a value judgement. Has the recent Hizballah act of war (I mean the kidnapping of the two soldiers and killing of several others) been justifiable? Was it provoked? Israel has kept the northern border quiet for a long time. Given the simple rule of "never start a fight, always end a fight", the Hizballah is in the wrong here, whatever their attributes as an Evil Cult are.

(Reply to this)(Thread)
Re: Wow, I didn't know you were such an extreme leftist.
[info]shlomif
2006-07-21 05:48 pm UTC (link)

Note: Splitting my reply into several pieces due to LJ constraints.

Wow, I didn't know you were such an extreme leftist.

I'm not really a leftist. I'm an extreme Objectivist. See what I wrote about it. Many people tend to view the political map as us, the left-winged "the good ones" vs. them, the right-winged, the "bad ones". However, Objectivists (and other Libertarians), dislike left-winged people for thinking there should be a government control on the Economy, and right-winged people for thinking that one can compromise on individual rights. And they are certainly not "middle-of-the-roaders" who tend to be pragmatic on both.

In regards to my political views (individual rights, etc.), I may be construed as extreme leftist, but like I said, I also support Economical freedom. I oppose laws that are meant to protect businesses against competitors or their customers (e.g: the DMCA), and also don't think that consumers should be limited in choice or otherwise protected from the "malevolent" producers (e.g: a compulsory FDA-like medicine control). These are all both sides of the same coin.

A country does have a right to prevent people from immigrating to it. States are a way of protecting the interests of a particular group, and one of these interests can be maintaining a certain culture. The USA has immigration laws, other countries have immigration laws. I know of very few countries that don't have them.

A country does not have such right. The fact that countries did that since the beginning of history to some extent does not make it right. (For example, Women have also been constitutionally discriminated against for much of history, yet they deserve equal rights.)

Then you say "States are a way of protecting the interests of a particular group, and one of these interests can be maintaining a certain culture.". Naturally, countries are Nature's way of making sure that when disaster happens in one place in the world, it will be limited in scope, geographically.

Countries should also protect other interests of their citizens, either by using the government or by voluntary or commercial organisations within them. But the "maintaining a certain culture" argument is ridiculous. "Oh my god! My precious culture! How should I protect it from the influence of the evil foreigners who come and bring their own different cultures. What shall we do?..." Get real.

Countries should protect the life, liberty and happiness of the people living within them, not their "culture". People who are alive, free and happy can create, maintain and evolve a rich culture, that may be heavily influenced from many other external sources. A static culture is a dying culture, and even in a place without a lot of external influences a culture evolves. But like I said, life, individual rights and freedoms and the happiness of the individuals are much more important than "culture". I hope you agree.

There are actually countries that don't allow citizenship to anybody except their own ethnic group. Example? Japan. Their citizenship law is similar to our "Hok Hashvut" - if you are a descendent of some ancient Japanese and can prove it, you can be Japanese. Otherwise, tough shit. You can be a resident, not a citizen (exception is when the emperor grants you honorary citizenship, but that doesn't happen very often).

That's not good. Many past and present Japanese have immigrated to the US, to Europe and elsewhere, and gained citizenship, yet people who originated from these countries cannot become citizens in Japan? Of course, Israel is not better, and that's not good either. The law should be changed in both Israel and Japan. But we should look at our own back yard rather than try to say that we can be bad just because other countries are as bad.

A person should grow independently of others, while having the ideal man as his ideal. See what I wrote about it previously. So should a country.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)
In my opinion, it's a fact!
(Anonymous)
2006-07-29 04:36 pm UTC (link)
Let's hold off ideology for a while and look at some facts.

It's not quite true that non-Japanese can't become Japanese citizens except by imperial sanction (though admittedly the requirements for naturalization are quite stringent, and even after naturalization one may or may not face de facto discrimination from full-blood Japanese). For famous examples of white people who became naturalized Japanese citizens, look up Wikipedia for "Arudou Debito" and "Lafcadio Hearn".

On the flip side, saying "they're wrong because I believe such-and-such and they believe the opposite" is a sure formula for bogosity. If you like Neo-Tech and Objectivism, at least make up your mind as to whether to present them as objective truths or just your own pet beliefs -- because one of the things that irritate me to no end is when people present such-and-such as objective fact and when this "fact" is attacked it suddenly becomes just an opinion. As I like to say: "In my opinion, it's a fact!"

-- bi (http://mncw.tk/)

(Reply to this)(Parent)
Re: Wow, I didn't know you were such an extreme leftist.
[info]shlomif
2006-07-29 06:14 pm UTC (link)
But the current war did not start because the residents of Majdal Krum were treated unequally. Right, but the discriminatory nature of the Israeli bylaws gives a lot of fuel and factual real-world basis to the entire Israeli-Arab strife. Without completely eliminating it, we can possibly never have hope of resolving it. With doing so, the situation will be heavily improved. I agree with you that there's no such thing as "evil vs. good" outside the books. I could not understand this sentence. I said that evil exists in the real world, only it exists in many places, including Israel and the States. And ironically, some of the people who claim to be good and often perceived as such are in fact very evil. Given the simple rule of "never start a fight, always end a fight", the Hizballah is in the wrong here, whatever their attributes as an Evil Cult are. I never said the Hizbullah is right. It isn't, and has no legitimate right to attack us. However, Israel does not have any legitimate right to discriminate against non-Jews either. And this is part of the source of the problem with the Hizbullah. Like I said, it's high time people stopped blaming others for their own problems, and start looking in their own back-yards.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

[info]kromag
2007-06-22 10:19 pm UTC (link)
Ok,let's accept all palestinians as rightful israeli citizens(and you have to,if there is a free immigration,as you suggest).What about religion issue?What about all those palestinians(and it would be a million or two) that think that WHOLE Palestine belongs to muslims and wouldn't accept it any other way and ready to fight for it?I talk to a very moderate israeli arabs and they say:"another 50,or 100 years you will be gone,it's our land".
Talking about the land,what about claims of palestinian fugitives for their land and property,and it will happen.
Bottom line:DON'T BE SO NAIVE.
I'm not against immigration to Israel for not Jews,in fact,it already happens and Israel has only adjust some internal issues(like civil marriage).But I'm not against such immigration as long as Immigrants are not Arabs and there is nothing wrong about that.

(Reply to this)

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