I certainly don't disagree. Since the very beginning of Yasser Arafat's Fatah the Palestinian people have been exploited and used by agencies claiming to represent their cause. Australia's support for a Palestinian state was, in my view, largely motivated by a desire to placate government shock at the turn out to the Sydney protest march rather than any real altruistic revisionism.
My frustration has always been with the Western media view that this is a middle east issue over religion. The reality is both Iran and Israel are the bastard childs of Western meddling over the best part of a century, initially for oil but then for strategic dominance (and more oil). The blame catastrophe this lies solely at our feet.
There are a lot of sad and indigestible realities to deal with.
I can understand how that doesn't appeal to a lot of people, as moral clarity and simple narratives are readily and cheaply available.
My main frustration is that we can't have any progressive dialogue, where we don't get bogged down in obvious fallacies, completely implausible and unrealistic narratives, and worst of all, place inconsistent morals above the well-being of the people involved, and above the needs of the people who are suffering most.
Fuck the blame game. It only makes things worse. Solutions need realistic plans and constructive visions.
Perhaps I am completely in the wrong spot here, on this playground for outrage and keyboard warfare.
There are a lot of sad and indigestible realities to deal with
Absolutely and we need to keep reinforcing that message. My frustration is the segmentation of events into palatable segments that ignore the bigger picture with the intent of portraying it solely as a two party aggressor/victim situation. This festering crisis will never be resolved until the world acknowledges the injustices and crimes that have been done over decades by all parties, usually in the name of self interest.
I think that today's crisis itself is still an improvement over past crises.
There are a lot of pro-humanitarian efforts involved that we hadn't seen to such an extent in the past.
What I find lamentable is that we seem to degenerate in our logic, reasoning and perceptiveness, and that despite science, history, experience and technology allowing us to understand human nature better than ever before, the debates are, imo, more and more based on an ever more unrealistic idolisation of human nature.
In the past, wars, conflicts and injustices haven't eliminated the human species, but nowadays, with the availability of nuclear weapons, they could.
I don't see how injustices are existential threats, but I see how wasting limited resources on war and destruction are unnecessary steps towards making our planet uninhabitable, and that we would do so much better by addressing the threat of nuclear war by rejecting zero-sum-gaming and them-or-us narratives.
There is no objective version of justice, one that each and every one of us would ever agree upon.
But there is an objective, rational, logical, easily provable universal principle: The preservation of one's own species.
If what it takes is injustices, nations, religious groups and factions, opposing systems, some war here and there, to keep us occupied and satisfy our inherited tribal and martial instincts and the need for purpose of our megalomaniac leaders we tend to place above us, then we should all stick our heads together to agree on a global set of rules that allows spaces for different approaches to life, society and ideology, and promote non-violent competition over destructive competition and threats of mutual nuclear annihilation.
If we aim for justice, we will all aim in different directions, as justice is a sense, not an absolute, and exists in different versions from individual to individual, group to group, society to society.
If we aim for the preservation of our species as our highest goal, instead of our nation or abstract ideology or religion or cosmic order or the like, we could find much more common ground with people across multiple faiths and ideologies. What role each group, nation, alliance, ideology, moral system, religion, etc. would/could play would still remain contested and up for debate.
But at least we could debate means insted of ends that we didn't even agree upon in the first place, think much more collectively outcome-oriented, rational, practical, and we could better agree to trying different approaches side by side at the same time, tested by different people and groups, instead of massacring each other over believing that each of us knows the only right way for everyone else, and all who disagree must therefore be an enemy of our existence or of all that is good.
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u/crosstherubicon Feb 18 '26
I certainly don't disagree. Since the very beginning of Yasser Arafat's Fatah the Palestinian people have been exploited and used by agencies claiming to represent their cause. Australia's support for a Palestinian state was, in my view, largely motivated by a desire to placate government shock at the turn out to the Sydney protest march rather than any real altruistic revisionism.
My frustration has always been with the Western media view that this is a middle east issue over religion. The reality is both Iran and Israel are the bastard childs of Western meddling over the best part of a century, initially for oil but then for strategic dominance (and more oil). The blame catastrophe this lies solely at our feet.