Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[A Material Girl]

This being lengthy and complex ,I entirely base in finding the root cause and solution.

The way I see it, the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unconditional PEACE now.

[Lagayascienza]

Everything that happens has a context. This situation has a lengthy historical context, and much more besides. No skirmish happens independent of the battle; no battle independent of the war, and so on.

No matter how lengthy the historical context is, there is absolutely no moral justification for Hamas' barbaric terrorist crimes!

And, if this is right, does it not follow that no matter how lengthy the historical context is, there is absolutely no moral justification for Israel's barbaric crimes against innocent non-combatants?

Endless claims about who was there first, who did what to whom first, get us nowhere. What has to stop, is the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Palestine. We are not rooting for our football team here. Innocent children are dying as I type this. Isn't that what really matters?

[Sy Borg]

It would be easy to stop the bloodshed. Hamas just has to come out from under hospitals and schools and surrender. Hamas's role in all this tends to be hugely underplayed.

[Lagayascienza]

I don't think anyone believes Hamas has no role in the continuation of hostilities. At least, I don't.
So, yes, for Hamas to come out of hiding would be one way to settle the situation. But how likely is that? Another way would be for Israel to move the non-combatant population to enclaves that Israel makes safe, and actually take care of the refugees as human beings, before going after Hamas and causing more bloodshed. I'd be ok with that.

[Sy Borg]

If Israel created safe enclaves, guess who would infiltrate those places and use them as shields?

It seems that many think that Israel was supposed to just accept the missile attacks and kidnappings rather than retaliate. Hamas attacked to shore up their flagging support (because their governance has been so poor) and to interfere with the upcoming deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. They would no doubt consider their attack to be a great success - it's been brilliant PR, aided by half the western press, their power in Palestine remains unchallenged, and the deal with Saud was disrupted.

[Lagayascienza]

Your assessment of Hamas' strategy may be accurate, Sy Borg. I don't know. I'm no expert on the historical and political situation. I do try to look at as many sources as I can to understand the history and at as many news sources as I can in the hope of getting some sort of balanced view of the current situation on the ground.

I have no truck with any of the loony religious nonsense of either side, or with any of the he-said, she-said, we-were-here-first, no-you-weren't, nonsense. To me, that is all irrelevant now. It's about ending the suffering, or, at least, about reducing it. Israel can only benefit by being seen to do that and by really doing it. It could, for example, open safe refuges for women and children for from the action where they could get food and medical attention. And police who goes into those refuges. It is within Israel's power to do this sort of thing before it launches further assaults in Gaza. Or it can keep doing what it has been doing and so contribute to whatever PR success Hamas may be enjoying. Like you, I loathe Hamas. Hamas has been a disaster for the Palestinian people. But Israel, too, has been a disaster for the Palestinian people. The question is, What can now be done about it for the Palestinian people?

[ConsciousAI]

There is never any moral justification for attacking and harming others.

Well said! It appears that a new user on this forum would agree with you.

The way I see it, the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unconditional PEACE now.

What is PEACE unconditional?

Albert Einstein once said: "intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them".

French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas argued that of peace there can only be an eschatology. That means that peace requires a pro-active effort. Levinas wrote in his work on peace (Totality and Infinity): "Peace opposed to war is peace based on war.".

An eschatological vision of peace is 'peace by itself' as it were, or "beyond the word peace". It isn't about peace but about what lays beyond.

Your topic about the place of debate in philosophy is illustrative.

The very idea that we have chosen a side before the discussion is a roadblock to progress. We should all be on the same team if we declare we are engaging in philosophy. We should all be not just willing, but eager to see our preconceptions be disproved, because then we truly will have learned and become wiser.

I agree with this 100%, which is why I believe that debate has no place in philosophy.

I agree with this 100%, which is why I started this topic, to see if our members agreed with me or not.

Bertrand Russell, who was an activist against war, once said "the [philosophical] truth is essentially neutral, it is the same for anyone." ~ The politics of logic - Philosophy at war: nationalism and logical analysis

Bertrand Russell as an anti-war activist in 1961
bertrand-russell-activism.jpg (86.9 KiB) Viewed 482 times

[Pattern-chaser]

It would be easy to stop the bloodshed. Hamas just has to come out from under hospitals and schools and surrender. Hamas's role in all this tends to be hugely underplayed.

Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza, isn't it? The bloodshed will only stop when both sides stop. And both sides will stop only when some sort of settlement can be agreed between them, a solution that seems far away at the moment, when so many people are supporting only one side, when the suffering civilians are on both sides, or no side at all. Netenyahu's genocide is widely covered in the media now, and there is evidence that even the most rigorous and independent fact-check will confirm. This is not a one-sided issue.

[chewybrian]

Albert Einstein once said: "intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them"...

He has a point, but do we have a society of geniuses, or even intellectuals? Is that needed to make progress against the threat and reality of war? Rather than philosopher kings, I think philosopher citizens would be the best hope. I don't feel one needs to be a genius or an intellectual to be a philosopher. One needs only to be willing to turn and seek and face the truth and follow its implications. Anyone can participate, benefit, and possibly help to make progress if enough others joined in.

Bertrand Russell, who was an activist against war, once said "the [philosophical] truth is essentially neutral, it is the same for anyone."...

Of course I agree with him, but it is difficult to see truth if you are living in fear. If you haven't climbed past the first couple levels of of Maslow's hierarchy, you can't enjoy the view from the top. Our crap politics push people toward the bottom or convince them that they are always on the precipice, ready to fall to the bottom. Why?

If you place different colonies of ants in the same terrarium carefully, there will be no problem. However, if you shake the tank, it's war! There will always be a Trump or a Musk or a Murdoch who wants to shake the tank. They need to exploit others to maintain their position (which they value above justice or peace or ending hunger or protecting the environment or anything else). It's quite easy to exploit others when they are fearful, and thus not apt to think rationally. So, they create a culture of fear which sometimes leads to war.

I'm not sure we have much hope of breaking the cycle, but of course we should try. We should seek to convince others that the current models of politics and economics are less than ideal, if not outright harmful. We should try to create an environment where average citizens don't feel they are a paycheck away from disaster, or not vulnerable to the whims of some dictator or tycoon. It's a very tall order. We need to become resistant to the shaking by realizing that we are all one colony and acting in the present and future best interests of the colony.

[Lagayascienza]

A very thoughtful post, Chewybrain. It's why I so value broad-based education for all. It's the only way people can be equipped to think independently and well. Of course, it's hard to think well when you're hungry and afraid, even if you are well educated, and as you say, tycoons and megalomaniacs know how to use this to their own advantage. As for breaking the cycle, I guess, as you also say, we can only each do what we can to make people see reason. We can also vote in ways that might be more likely to create the social conditions that will make a good education possible for all. I think that most of humanity, with the right grounding in numeracy and literacy, is intellectually capable of successfully undertaking higher education. The fact that the opportunity is closed to them is a fundamental problem that humanity needs to work on. There always has and probably always will be inequality and exploitation. And the uneducated will always be the most unequal and exploited and, as such, they make for controllable laborers, pliable factory fodder and unquestioning canon fodder. We need to changer that.

[Sy Borg]

It would be easy to stop the bloodshed. Hamas just has to come out from under hospitals and schools and surrender. Hamas's role in all this tends to be hugely underplayed.

Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza, isn't it?

In a sense. Hamas were elected around 2006, after which elections stopped. The blood is on Hamas's hands more than On Israel's. It's extraordinary that people think that a nation will not retaliate if bombing and kidnapping results in 1,200 people being killed (sometimes tortured and raped as well) plus a couple of hundred kidnapped. So Israel is supposed to say, 'Yeah, fair enough. We deserved it. Please attack us more'. Madness.

If Israel is committing genocide, why is Bethlehem - the most holy Jewish site - part of Palestine? Imagine what Arabs would do if outsiders held Mecca?

If you want to see ethnic cleansing look at the figures for how many Jews lived in neighbouring countries and how many there are now. They were effectively wiped. But that's okay. Uyghurs being wiped out by Chinese ? No problem. Arabs being wiped out by other Arabs in Yemen? Fine. That's fne too. Israel defending itself against a hostile enemy? Wickedness!

[Sy Borg]

I have no truck with any of the loony religious nonsense of either side, or with any of the he-said, she-said, we-were-here-first, no-you-weren't, nonsense. To me, that is all irrelevant now. It's about ending the suffering, or, at least, about reducing it.

Why? Why not end the Uyghurs' suffering? Or the suffering in Ukraine, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, North Korea, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Chad, Mali or Niger?

The suffering doesn't stop. Consider Vietnamese and Filipino fishermen being bullied out of the water by what is effectively a Chinese invasion of their ocean resources. How are they to feed their families?

How about people suffering due to corruption and mismanagement? In South Africa and Haiti. Or the hyper inflation in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Lebanon, Turkey and Ethiopia, with people losing their life savings through no fault of their own. Some countries are in danger of sinking underwater.

Suffering is relentless in life and in history. Since the US lost its moral authority, and thus its hegemony, with its invasion of Iraq, the world's borders are no longer considered to be set and established. Everything is up for grabs, and there's going to be much more fighting yet. Apparently Venezuela is looking to invade Guyana.

Not sure if it's true, but I heard that there's more wars around the world than during WWII. Certainly there are many - and much bloodier than in Gaza. So I see no reason to single out Israel, especially given the implacable hostility of its geopolitical rivals, and the fact that Hamas treats its people much worse than Israel treats its people, including local Palestinians. No Palestinian expats would consider returning, even if this war didn't happen.

Ultimately, Israel is being singled out based on Marxist principles, that is, everyone is either oppressors or oppressed, and the former are assumed to be wicked and the latter are seen as righteous. It's tosh. There's no mention of how people, and nations, tend to bring misfortune on their own heads through corruption, a lack of self control, an inability to move on after misfortune, and bad decision-making.

[Lagayascienza]

You are right, Sy Borg. War has been an ongoing feature of human life. And that is likely to continue. It's as if we can't help it. I don't know what the answer is. Except to promote reason and rationality over nonsense. And to promote an understanding of the close kinship of all humans.

The only reason I'm talking about Gaza here, and not war in general or in other places, is that Gaza/Israel was the subject of the OP. I suspect that if someone started a thread on the plight of the Uyghurs, or the treatment of groups in any other country that was getting the same level of media attention as this conflict, that thread would look pretty much like this one. We'd have people taking sides rather than talking about what a just solution would look like. Indeed, if I had to choose between a fiend like Netanyahu and Hamas to take over Palestine, I would choose Netanyahu as the lesser of two awful evils.

[Pattern-chaser]

It would be easy to stop the bloodshed. Hamas just has to come out from under hospitals and schools and surrender. Hamas's role in all this tends to be hugely underplayed.

Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza, isn't it?

In a sense. Hamas were elected around 2006, after which elections stopped. The blood is on Hamas's hands more than On Israel's. It's extraordinary that people think that a nation will not retaliate if bombing and kidnapping results in 1,200 people being killed (sometimes tortured and raped as well) plus a couple of hundred kidnapped. So Israel is supposed to say, 'Yeah, fair enough. We deserved it. Please attack us more'. Madness.

If Israel is committing genocide, why is Bethlehem - the most holy Jewish site - part of Palestine? Imagine what Arabs would do if outsiders held Mecca?

If you want to see ethnic cleansing look at the figures for how many Jews lived in neighbouring countries and how many there are now. They were effectively wiped. But that's okay. Uyghurs being wiped out by Chinese ? No problem. Arabs being wiped out by other Arabs in Yemen? Fine. That's fne too. Israel defending itself against a hostile enemy? Wickedness!

I'm not sure, but I think perhaps that Bethlehem — the most holy Christian site — is part of Palestine because the Jews, Christians, and Moslems would all go to war with each other if any one of them possessed any of the most holy places within Palestine. Many Palestinians are Moslems, of course, but Palestine isn't a religious state, but a political one, so it is possible and practical to pretend they're religiously-neutral, for these purposes.

As for the rest of what you say, do you think that your one-sided approach can or could lead to a solution that is acceptable to decent people everywhere? [I.e. not a 'solution' where one side annihilates the other.] There is both truth and propaganda/bias in your words, but you don't seem to be seeking peace or co-existence. Have I misunderstood?

[Sy Borg]

It would be easy to stop the bloodshed. Hamas just has to come out from under hospitals and schools and surrender. Hamas's role in all this tends to be hugely underplayed.

Hamas is the democratically-elected government of Gaza, isn't it?

In a sense. Hamas were elected around 2006, after which elections stopped. The blood is on Hamas's hands more than On Israel's. It's extraordinary that people think that a nation will not retaliate if bombing and kidnapping results in 1,200 people being killed (sometimes tortured and raped as well) plus a couple of hundred kidnapped. So Israel is supposed to say, 'Yeah, fair enough. We deserved it. Please attack us more'. Madness.

If Israel is committing genocide, why is Bethlehem - the most holy Jewish site - part of Palestine? Imagine what Arabs would do if outsiders held Mecca?

If you want to see ethnic cleansing look at the figures for how many Jews lived in neighbouring countries and how many there are now. They were effectively wiped. But that's okay. Uyghurs being wiped out by Chinese ? No problem. Arabs being wiped out by other Arabs in Yemen? Fine. That's fne too. Israel defending itself against a hostile enemy? Wickedness!

I'm not sure, but I think perhaps that Bethlehem — the most holy Christian site — is part of Palestine because the Jews, Christians, and Moslems would all go to war with each other if any one of them possessed any of the most holy places within Palestine. Many Palestinians are Moslems, of course, but Palestine isn't a religious state, but a political one, so it is possible and practical to pretend they're religiously-neutral, for these purposes.

As for the rest of what you say, do you think that your one-sided approach can or could lead to a solution that is acceptable to decent people everywhere? [I.e. not a 'solution' where one side annihilates the other.] There is both truth and propaganda/bias in your words, but you don't seem to be seeking peace or co-existence. Have I misunderstood?

There is no bias or propaganda in my words. Zero. How can you just airily throw that claim out there when it's obvious that I have simply stated facts and spoken logic?

Hamas discarded democracy and they have tortured and killed many Palestinians themselves.

Hamas killed over 1200 Israelis with missiles and kidnapped hundreds of others. Teportedly there were gruesome tortures. But you expect Israel to just accept it, though no other nation in the world would accept such an attack. Why should Israel accept being attacked without retaliation?

Why are you so excited about stopping Israel but you care absolutely nothing about what Chinese and other Arabs are doing to Arabs - far, far worse than anything Israel has done?

I also correctly pointed out that Palestine holds Jewry's most sacred site, Bethlehem. If Jews were the terrible oppressors that people claim, they would have taken Bethlehem back long ago and cleansed the place of Arabs just as Arabs cleansed their nations of Jews. It seems that one side is more ruthless than the other - and it's not the media darlings that you are supporting.

This is not propaganda. It's the situation.