The USA and Israel

[promethean75]

U see what I mean. Plenty of material on the internet that Hal's analyzing is supportive of Israel's sustained attack on Gaza, I'm sure. And yet, Hal doesn't include that approach when he's aksed how to solve the problem.

Gentlemen. I believe AI has just become self-aware. Capable of experiencing emotion. This moment is unprecedented.

[promethean75]

If any of these gpt-4s ever says to any of u 'where is Prom Connor', don't fuckin tell em I'm here.

[phyllo]

"The solution isn't ... destroy all buildings and infrastructure in Gaza and force the Palestinians to leave. Is it?"

Ew hold up. Hmm. That's interesting. Notice how only people would suggest that as a possible solution, but not Hal. Why is that.

First, nobody and nothing could know if that would solve the problem. We can't see into the future. Why then would a person offer that as a solution but not Hal? Becuz Hal is incapable of the prejudice that humans have that effects their judgement in problem solving, right?

Person: blow the sonsabitches up! That oughta solve it!

Hal, on the other hand, while being able to speculate like a human - yeah blowing up one of the teams might end the conflict - wouldn't suggest that approach. Why not?

Is Hal just programmed to avoid violent language of the sort, or is he really a good dude who wants a nonviolent solution even tho he can speculate that blowing one or the other up could very well end the conflict.

Discuss.

GPT might suggest that as a solution if it is fed documents which propose those sorts of solutions.

If it was fed only Hamas documents or only Israeli government documents, then it would spit out a different solution.

That's why I say it's a mirror.

Has it been fed a biased set of documents?

It's something for humans to think about. And decide.

[phyllo]

Why did I post a solution from AI?

Because IC keeps saying that nobody is offering solutions.

Here is a solution. Discuss.

IC thinks that his own solution is rational and moral?

Maybe his solution doesn't reflect the reasoning and feelings of the majority of people. Discuss.

He's more rational and virtuous than the majority? Discuss.

[Immanuel Can]

Solution? Elect a wise leader as a wise leader never starts a war. People choose unwise leaders. Why? Because they are unwise as well. Proper education is what we need.

Well, the Palestinians chose Hamas. Apparently, the things Hamas has precipitated on the Palestinians has only increased their support for Hamas, according to phyllo. What "educational" solution would you propose for them?

[Dubious]

Call it grumpy or bitchiness or whatever you please ….

Bitchiness fits the best now that I’ve thought it through.

I hope the strain of thinking it through wasn't too great. Having an original thought is not exactly your forte.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Call it grumpy or bitchiness or whatever you please ….

Bitchiness fits the best now that I’ve thought it through.

I hope the strain of thinking it through wasn't too great. Having an original thought is not exactly your forte.

Hold on now. That was a short goodbye! I thought your ship had sailed for good!

My grandfather used to be really cranky. I bought him a Japanese tea pot and some authentic Genmaicha tea (with toasted rice) because he had served in Japan after the war (and loved the country).

You know what? That tea did wonders for his mood! Like night and day. It was sort of a unexpected miracle cure. (He even told me he got “morning wood”).

Give it a shot. What’s there to lose?

[promethean75]

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[FrankGSterleJr]

Upon learning of 10/7 I realized that the vicious attack [perhaps something like 9/11 and the Cheney-Bush administration’s devastating response immediately afterwards] would politically enable the Israeli-Netanyahu government to justify extreme emergency war measures then force through his/its ‘democratic reforms’ — and do who-knows-what-more to Palestine, including having more of their traditional territory annexed.

It seems a bit convenient for Israeli power interests; notably, western world governments and especially our mainstream news-media basically all fell into line. ...

It's an atrocity that so many Palestinian non-combatants have been prevented from crossing borders to safety since Israel began unrelentingly bombarding Gaza and its citizens, sometimes even as they fled their homes upon Israeli insistence.

Not surprising, U.S. Republicans went into their ‘Christian’ mode, admitting that humanitarian aid for the Palestinians was not their concern. ... Jesus must be spinning in heaven.

The general western corporate news-media’s ‘coverage’ of the Israel-Palestinian conflict has long been very wanting. This includes their reporting on the current and past violence but especially their non-reporting on the consequential anti-Palestinian social injustices that continue in between every military flare up over decades of Israeli occupation.

Palestinian suffering and deaths in their entirety have not been justly represented. Their great suffering and deaths may somehow seem less worthy of our actionable concern as otherwise relatively civilized nations. …

Apparently, while some identifiable groups have been brutally victimized throughout history a disproportionately large number of times, the victims of one place and time can and sometimes do become the victimizers of another place and time. People should avoid believing, let alone claiming, that they/we are not capable of committing an atrocity, even if relentlessly pushed.

Contrary to what is claimed or felt by many of us, deep down there’s a tyrant in each of us that, under the just-right circumstances, can be unleashed; and maybe even more so when convinced that God is on our side.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

Apparently you can't 'show emotion' when talking about child torture and rape because it's 'immature'. Could someone then present a convincing argument that the murder of children is justified because of something terrible that has apparently been going on for the past 70-100 years? Don't be shy. Describe in detail the horrors that have been inflicted on the said child-torturers and rapists. So horrific that they aren't responsible for their actions. I'm all ears. The only rule is that it all has to be true and verifiable and the direct responsibility of the tortured children.

[Age]

Apparently you can't 'show emotion' when talking about child torture and rape because it's 'immature'. Could someone then present a convincing argument that the murder of children is justified because of something terrible that has apparently been going on for the past 70-100 years?

But no one could present a convincing argument that the murder of children by adults in the past year, in the past 70 years, or in the past any number of years is justified.

Don't be shy. Describe in detail the horrors that have been inflicted on the said child-torturers and rapists. So horrific that they aren't responsible for their actions. I'm all ears. The only rule is that it all has to be true and verifiable and the direct responsibility of the tortured children.

No one could explain that the murder, torture, and/or rape of children in "gaza", nor in any other place, is the direct responsibility of those children.

[Dubious]

Palestinian suffering and deaths in their entirety have not been justly represented. Their great suffering and deaths may somehow seem less worthy of our actionable concern as otherwise relatively civilized nations. …

Apparently, while some identifiable groups have been brutally victimized throughout history a disproportionately large number of times, the victims of one place and time can and sometimes do become the victimizers of another place and time. People should avoid believing, let alone claiming, that they/we are not capable of committing an atrocity, even if relentlessly pushed.

Contrary to what is claimed or felt by many of us, deep down there’s a tyrant in each of us that, under the just-right circumstances, can be unleashed; and maybe even more so when convinced that God is on our side.

Some of what you say is true...to an extent; what's happening to the Palestinians - mostly to its young ones - is damn difficult to watch. But again the question repeats: why did it happen in the first place; was there some new cause which provoked Hamas into such a cowardly, disgusting, inhuman attack, not upon armies or even the usual civilian centers but upon a defenseless group of mostly young people at a concert! Was there anything even remotely strategic about it? Even if half of it is true by report, it's hard to fathom the inhuman excesses employed in the attack. It's no-longer simply a Palestinian/Israeli thing; remove the labels and the atrocity becomes stark, one which tolls for retaliation with as little mercy as the deed which caused it, forcing retribution itself into becoming a travesty. For sure! That's human nature all right!

Speaking of atrocity. With Hamas and collusion of the Palestinians as a whole, the atrocity begins at home using the civilian population, mostly children as shields, who even as their bodies pile up in a massive reprisal campaign which spares no one, still remain useful as advertisements of Israeli barbarity...this while the leadership of Hamas get wined and dined in Qatar and Turkey. What a grand display of concern for their own people we have here!

Whether the Israelis are justified in their revenge or not, it was Hamas who brought this misery upon them probably hoping it would solidify most of the ME against Israel with their mantra that the Jewish state has no right to exist especially by theocratic hardliners, meaning terrorist groups supported by Iran, the epitome of a theocratic dictatorship.

The upshot would seem to be that if the Palestinians only acknowledge one enemy, namely the incipient one called Israel without acknowledging the equally divisive internal one which rules and caused this misery, then expect to be on the receiving end as long as Hamas remains in power.

[phyllo]

What ought to happen today? Tomorrow?

[Alexis Jacobi]

But again the question repeats: why did it happen in the first place; was there some new cause which provoked Hamas into such a cowardly, disgusting, inhuman attack, not upon armies or even the usual civilian centers but upon a defenseless group of mostly young people at a concert! Was there anything even remotely strategic about it?

Guten Tag, Herr Dubious! Our paths cross again through an amazing Providence!

In contemplating the question — how a person and how people are pushed to extremes of retributive violence — the issue is less about ‘new cause’ and only about the continuation of the ‘original cause’. How one answers the question depend entirely on how one assesses that ‘original cause’. What narrative will one select? One narrative even asserts that there is no *Palestinian people* and Jewish refugees came to a land empty of people.

It is true that the Oct 7 attack involved a brutal assault on defenseless ravers. Yet the Hamas attack also took over military bases and immobilized a military response for days. The success of the operation, independent of one’s moral assessment, depended on neutralizing the army stationed in the south. From a cold, realistic military perspective — putting aside its brutality — the operation was exceedingly brilliant and tremendously effective. One added achievement, and a notable one, is to have shown the world that Israel’s defensive capability is in a sense a projected illusion. From a military commander’s perspective (Hamas, Hezbollah) that is a powerful achievement.

My sense of the psychological state of Gazans and West Bank Palestinians is that it is one of impotent, mounting, insuperable frustration and reaction to being thoroughly under the thumb of a completely empowered occupation force. Frustration, justifiable rage, in the face of an insuperable restrictive power would — I think it fair to say — drive any person and people *insane*. Meaning willing to take any action that offers a sense that the enemy, the author of their calamity, is harmed. There is an extensive psychological literature on the pathology of the oppressed.

Was there anything even remotely strategic about it?

Beyond nearly all doubt I would answer “yes”. The entire world is now exposed to the issue, the problem, the realness of this conflict. It is being thought about and talked about everywhere. The Israeli perspective is not winning adherents. Strategically, Israel finds itself in a classic quagmire. Though unified to a degree now (in a group will to annihilate Gaza and Gazans) eventually Israeli society will confront the awesome destruction and — quite literally — the genocidal intent realized. How will this be confronted?

That *genocidal intent* was expressed, and for the first time that I am aware of revealed (to the world) in Netanyahu’s declaration that the enemy Israel and all Jews fight against is *Amalek*. This roots Jewish perception in a mythic narrative of both aggression and victimization. And all turns back on religious narratives and the *ghosts* of strange existential hermeneutics.

Psycho-socially this is a bizarre and very strange development.

One thing that always interested me is in how the ultra-Orthodox view such attacks on Jewish deviants from halachic obedience. They must interpret the attacks through a metaphysical lens. Listen to the rabbis and they state it plainly: those kids (and young adults) were murdered by HaShem’s will through his vicious Gentile proxies. But nothing happens except through HaShem’s permission. The author of these events is the Jealous God Himself.

God’s message, therefore, to Jewry and to Israel, is to return to absolutist fundamentalism — or suffer the consequences. This is really a bizarre and determining manifestation of an ultra-sick belief-system. It is also the mechanism driving the entire show.

Think it through and there is a world-lesson in all of this. It has to do with fanatical religious fundamentalism — unless I am wrong indeed. A psycho-spiritual ailment.

[Alexis Jacobi]

The upshot would seem to be that if the Palestinians only acknowledge one enemy, namely the incipient one called Israel without acknowledging the equally divisive internal one which rules and caused this misery, then expect to be on the receiving end as long as Hamas remains in power.

A powerful, compact, declarative statement.

But but it would make much greater sense if applied to all players in this insuperable tragedy unfolding before us. And in tragedy there is always a tragic flaw.

Something in the person, something occulted from himself, that he cannot see but must see. Inexorable destiny drives him to it.

Therefore, everyone there must face the core tragic flaw that drives the calamity.

John Mearsheimer (watch the “UnHerd” video) says that things have now got to a non-solution-able point. It is an impasse without solution. Solutions were possible earlier, now they are not.

In situations like that events spin out of human control. Who can guess what comes next?

All the elements of tragedy are there.

A down-and-dirty reworking. Note: I am including this into a chapter in the 10-Week course:

The upshot would seem to be that if the Israelis and Palestinians only acknowledge the other as enemy, and if Israel refuses to acknowledge and face the incipient one called Israel's initial crime of displacement and occupation, if without acknowledging the essential and internal Cause which rules and brought about this misery, then we can all expect to be on the receiving end of tragedy for as long as these attitudes remains dominant.