Quote from: J. J. Phillips on April 13, 2015, 05:13:30 PM

Quote from: jaysabi on April 13, 2015, 03:37:02 PM

Someone made a point earlier about the US "controlling the UN" or something along those lines, and you dismissed it. Perhaps controlling is too harsh a word, but influencing is not, and the US has been instrumental in influencing a lack of UN-recognition for Palestine as a state, even as a majority of the nations on this planet have recognized it.

Yes, I think when I said "the only power the US has at the UN..." it was oversimplifying, especially in light of the examples you bring up. Your word "influence" seems appropriate. I'll propose two statements that I suspect most people will agree are true. (If I'm wrong, feel free to chime in.)

(USIUN) The US has more influence on the UN than most other countries.

(USUNI) The US sometimes uses its influence at the UN to help Israel.

People are free to think these are good or bad things, of course, I'm just saying it might be two points we at least agree are true.

There was the embryo of a discussion a few pages ago about whether or not Palestine was a "country" when under British rule after WW1. Some people here think it was, and I think it wasn't. I said it wasn't because it was never under autonomous self-rule. Arguably it's more under autonomous self-rule now than it has ever been. I'm not sure of a criteria that counts the Palestine under British rule as a country, but doesn't, for example, count Kurdistan as a country.

Fun questions to play with your definition of "country": Was the Confederate States of America a country in the early 1860s? Is it now an occupied country? It depends on who you ask, of course, and I'm sure it can start some fights if asked in the right (wrong?) saloons.

I haven't counted the countries that recognize a Palestinian state, but I expect you're right that it is a majority (both in terms of number of countries and counted by population). It's not surprising. A huge part of the world is Muslim and they have their own motivations. (The Muslim world also has the numerical advantage in places like the UN since they have many different distinct states.) Among the rest of the world there is either a history of Jew-hatred, antipathy towards the US, or both.

Frankly, I suspect if we could have a worldwide referendum with the simple question: "Should the Jews be exterminated?" It would probably pass. That doesn't make me more comfortable with the idea.

I'm curious how people think the situation would change if a Palestinian state were to be recognized by the UN. Do they think rockets would stop being fired into Israel? Do they think Israel would stop responding? Israel responds to Syria (or its proxies in southern Lebanon) when they attack Israel. Would Israel let weapons flow freely into Gaza? It doesn't seem like it would change much.

I've heard rumours that Obama might recognize a Palestinian state before leaving office. If so, maybe we'll find out if anything would change.

Yes, I agree with both the statements you open with.

The semantics discussion about what constitutes a country is interesting to me (logically), but largely meaningless. The same way the US declared independence, so too did the Confederate States. The only difference is whether the newly declared independents won their revolutionary war. If the Confederate States had won, they would have been an independent nation. Before they were defeated, I would argue they were as well, though what does this really matter? The US teaches they never were, that the Union was preserved. But they had their own government and all the functioning of a de facto state, and had declared their independence from another country. They just lost their war. Interestingly, Texas did the same thing: declared independence from Mexico, and the US government diplomatically recognized it as an independent nation for the purpose of sending military aid. That was the US entrance into the Mexican-American war. Texans are proud of the fact that they were the only state to be their own country, but functionally, how much of a nation were they ever really? It was a diplomatic ploy to go to war with Mexico for more land; in my book entirely "technical" and yet their declaration of independence is regarded as legitimately creating a new nation, whereas the Confederate States' declaration is not. Has to do with who won the following wars. On that note, Palestinians have declared independence, but there was no war fought to enforce the declaration, and no war by Israel to deny it. So these other comparisons don't translate exactly. It's an interesting semantic gray area, but ultimately, what does it matter? The bottom line to me is that Palestinian representation in the UN presents political problems for Israel, and that's why Palestine isn't formally recognized by the UN, despite functioning as a state anyway and being recognized by a majority of the world (not merely Muslim nations, either, btw):

I do want to vehemently disagree with the prospect of a global referendum for the extermination of anybody passing. I see a very large disconnect in the amount of Jew Hatred I believe exists in the world and the amount you seem to represent as existing in the world. I don't believe the majority of any population would support the systematic murder of innocents. There is a lot of hatred in the world, no doubt. But people are, on balance, more good than bad. And there are more good people than bad as well.

-->This is a little bit of a tangent, but I think it's relevant and important. People have a natural instinct to avoid killing other people. There are outliers (clinically, psychopaths), but we are naturally born with the instinct not to kill other people, as is almost every species on the planet born with a natural instinct not to kill its own kind. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a soldier and a psychologist, published a book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (http://www.amazon.com/On-Killing-Psychological-Learning-Society/dp/0316040932). It's a fascinating read. It details the history of firing rates in various US wars dating back to the Civil War. What the military has found is that the firing rate (the rate at which soldiers would fire at enemy soldiers) was surprisingly low. I think it was 25% in the Civil War. Many soldiers would intentionally fire over the heads of the enemy so it would look like they were doing something, but also so they wouldn't have to kill anybody. This was supported by commonly finding rifles that were loaded with 16 or more bullets on the battlefields post-battle. Remember, this was a time when 99% of the time was spent loading the single-shot rifle, and 1% firing. So men would continuously go through the motions of loading the rifle and never fire them to look like they were participating. (Conscientious objectors wasn't a thing back then, people who refused the draft were shot for cowardice.) When one side would retreat, they would just abandon the overloaded rifles, which were couldn't be fired anyway. It was far too common an occurrence to be the case that a couple of soldiers were confused in the heat of battle and overloaded their rifle. The most logical conclusion was it was a deliberate stalling tactic to avoid killing anyone.

-->When the military identified the low firing rate as a problem, it sought correct the behavior to make more effective soldiers, but despite changes to training, the firing rates did not improve as late as WWI, where it was still estimated to be around 25% of soldiers attempting to hit any enemy soldiers. After WWI, the army's tactics started incorporating psychological study and tactics to desensitize soldiers to killing. And that's largely what military training is about to this day, overcoming the natural instinct not to kill through desensitivity training. By WWII, firing rates were up to 50%, and by Vietnam I think it was 90%. Grossman's point though is that in Vietnam, you start to see collateral damage of desensitized soldiers (My Lai Massacre, etc.) and today, there are societal costs of desensitizing soldiers to killing. Soldiers rejoin society, and this has ripple effects for the society at large and he provides data to support the claim that domestic violence rises as soldiers come home. Further problematic, many of the desensitivity techniques the military uses are inadvertently replicated by the news, or Hollywood, or video games, and these have further effects. (The book is really fascinating, I highly recommend it.)

All of that is a lot of background for my main point: people are generally good, and will not condone murder and killing, but over very long periods of time and under very harsh living circumstances, people become desensitized to it and to violence. If you think about the people with political power in Palestine, preaching to the abject poor that the only way to bring about change is through violence and to defend yourself from the aggressors who have taken your land, smashed your houses, killed your neighbors, and these are the things you personally witness all the time... I do not find it surprising that the message of violence resonates so strongly where sensitivity to killing has been so diminished.

That's not at all to justify it. If these people had any interest in using the poor as anything other than an instrument to protect their own political power, they would teach peace, but I think you have to look at the political aspect to derive the motivation. The leaders of the PLO for so long have sought to maintain their positions of power as much establish a Palestinian state, and in order to remain in power, you have to have popular support, and the easiest way to have it there is to marshal the hatred and victim-hood that so many people feel.

And I think the same is true on the Israeli side. There are enough fundamentalists (the policy "hawks") on that side politicians have to appease to stay in power that peace is never a serious consideration. Look how Netanyahu pandered to them before the last election when he said there would never be a two-state solution with him in power, and then he backed off that statement once he won reelection. That's just an indication that on both sides there is popular support not to have peace, and the politicians pander to this for their own gain instead of leading. It has to start at the top, and the leaders have to stop the violence, and ostracize people who call for violence. I think much credit could be established by Palestinians if they establish a proper police and court system and start going after people who fire rockets into Israel like a proper damn crime, but just the notion of how ridiculous that sounds tells you how far away we are from peace. How desensitized this area of the world is to violence.

I've written a lot more than I thought I was gonna, but just my last note: no way Obama recognizes Palestine. It would doom the next democrat running for President, and that's the only consideration that ultimately matters because fucking politics.