Stop Starting Arguments - Start Stopping Suffering

[filkertom]

The Daily Kos has a whole lot of chatter on even unimportant stuff. When something really frickin' huge happens, like, say, Israel and Hamas having a little throwdown, it can be daunting just to keep up.

Truly, I have never taken a side in any conflict involving Israel, except the one that fervently hopes they will stop killing each other. And, given all the snarling on all sides right now, I really agree with this.

Comments

[lariss.livejournal.com]

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always seemed to me a bit like two bullies fighting each other on the playground: neither is right, both have a technical right to defend themselves...and they are NOT creatures of their own making.
The thing is, in this fight, children are being murdered. Innocent men and women are being murdered. Innocent dogs and cows and trees...
Yes. they need to stop. Yes, we need to help.
WE also need to have a much deeper and broader understanding of what really lies behind these conflicts and take a swipe at avoiding setting up similar situations in the future.
How?
Smarter people than I am will have to figure that one out.
Soon.

[jasperjones22.livejournal.com]

As with most things in my life, my view of this whole thing can be summed up in a song. Alleged Legends by The Streets. Ahh I wish people would stop killing based off a book

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

Neither of them will stop killing or trying to kill the other until both sides have been nuked to oblivion. NOBODY over there has any interest in stopping the fighting by a method OTHER than "kill EVERY man, woman and child on the other side". Except maybe those that are willing to accept 100% subjugation of the other side, or re-locating said 'others' to another (preferably far-away) country permanently.

So, like with all other unresolvable conflicts, I avoid dealing with it because there's literally NOTHING I (or anyone, actually) can do to stop the fighting. And it only makes me upset to think about it.

I'd rather help people who actually have a chance of wanting to change their circumstances. Otherwise I feel I'm just wasting my efforts.

I'm aware that this makes me a small person.

[lariss.livejournal.com]

There are LOTS of people living in both countries who DESPERATELY want to stop the conflict. There are student-exchange programs so Israeli and Palestinian children can get to know, and not hate, each other. There are religious movements to end the violence. There are secular activist communities trying the same thing. Artists, poets, teachers... In fact, I would argue that the majority of the people who live there want it to stop - and not necessarily only with the death or domination of the other side. The Two State Solution has quite a bit of support - if only they could figure out where to put that line.
The rest of the world does more than its share to make things WORSE, not better - especially certain religious movements, including the Christian groups who believe that the world will end when all the Jews go back to Israel and actually think that's a good thing, the Jewish Zionist movements, and the Muslim movements which see the Jews as the enemies of Islam.
So, I don't think it's unresolvable, and as for how we can help, I think we can help mostly by continuing to contribute money, resources, or our time to organizations which work for world peace or which attempt to protect the innocent citizens of these conflicts who can't run away.
And why am I so passionate about it? Because I see my little boy in every dead or mutilated child. I see my face on the face of every grieving mother, holding her dead baby. I see my father's face on the face of every older man sitting outside the rubble of the home he built and loved and tried to make a good place. Whether it is Darfur, or Congo, or Nicaragua, or the states of the old USSR, or Burma...here isn't there only by some pretty thin stretches of luck. I can't ignore it, no matter how futile it seems, because we are them.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

I have to use the ostrich defense about genocidal religions who think they and ONLY they have an exclusive on eternal salvation, or else I become too paranoid and scared to go on living.

If people really wanted it to stop, it would.

Obviously more people (or at least more people with power) want it to continue than want it to stop, so it will continue until one side or the other (or possibly both) becomes extinct, or the powers that be run out of the power and/or desire needed to keep fighting.

And there's not a damned thing ANYone can do to change that, short of the almighty "god" itself coming down and spelling out EXACTLY what needs to be done for eternal salvation to everyone in a way that even the stupidest person can understand.

But pardon me if I don't hold my breath while I wait for that real life 'Deus-ex-Machina'.

I think it's more likely that people will come to their senses and realize we're all humans and we all have to live here, so we should try to get along and make it as pleasant as possible for the sake of everyone on this entire planet, even if we're all varying degrees of different from each other.

And if that actually happens in my lifetime I'll eat my hat.

[lariss.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. it's that whole "people with power" thing. And I think that the fewer "people in power" there are in a country, and the greater the concentration of the power that they have, the more likely for this sort of thing to happen. These things rarely happen when "the people" have more than a token voice in how things go.
I'man atheist so I REALLY can't weigh in on religion without being incredibly biased against them all.
And I will join you in hat-eating. I really have no hope...it's more the attitude that it's hopeless, but I don't want to do nothing, just in case I'm wrong abotu that.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

I lost my faith in humanity 7 years, 3 months, 20 days ago.

That's also when I became an atheist, and decided I would take evacuation drills far more seriously than I did when I was in school.

I'd like to believe things aren't hopeless, but with the world as it is today, it almost seems too unlikely, unrealistic and far away to bother with hope anymore.

Part of me must still believe there's a chance though, because I did vote for Obama, who said he was all about giving people hope... of course, that same part of me is the reason I actually know what I'd do if I ever won the lottery, because it's convinced that I will win it some day.

Israel vs. Palestine

[moshez.livejournal.com]

One thing which seems to be missing is that as problematic as the Israel vs. Palestine conflict is, what is happening now is not really a part of it.

The Palestinian government and Israel, while not being in an active peace process, are actually on better terms than they have been in a long while. The open hostilities are with a renegade part of Palestine (Gaza) which does not accept the Palestinian government authority, and since the Palestinian government has little power in Gaza, the Hamas are left for Israel to deal with.

For anyone who thinks I'm talking out of my ass -- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090101.GAZA01/TPStory/International