Hi Kent
Thanks for your correctives
| I am not saying that the
| Palestinians are engaging in "more evil" acts than the Israelis.
I think I did misunderstand you slightly, though it was more the "but" I was
after... because it can become a turning point rather than a modifier
we need, if I make myself clear with this analogy, a parallel processing -
not for speed but get around the either / or trap of that and similar buts -
the random killing of Israelis is unacceptable, the random killing of
Palestinians is unacceptable... neither takes precedence...
yet there is a priority to be determined almost forensically if one asks How
did this start? as part of How might this end?
We need a complex statement of the situation to understand it
I find the widespread contention that leads to plagues on both houses
inadequate and unjust. Specific details of individual exchanges aside, I
think the general situation quite explicable if one abandons serial
description
Cholera was a poor analogy. I was thinking of illness. I was thinking of
illness because madness had been suggested; and madness is an illness. That
particular analogy occurred both because it is so easily avoidable and
because water is going to be such an issue even without Sharon's plans for
increasing immigration
I am not sure that there is an element of choice if one is mad. As with
"evil", the word "mad" is terribly vague
Where there is choice, one is misled to assume that we all have the same
values and the choices which face the likes of *us may look diferent in
Gaza... I wouldn't, though, push relativism very far. What to me is sanity
could not encompass the murder of children... to pick only on one element in
your objection
& I could happily support your position in my argument with our govts and
their complacent deployment of nukes
Cholera remains a poor analogy and it wld have been better to leave it as
illness
I remain worried about your use of "evil" though I am sure that we would
have little difficulty drawing up joint list of things we oppose; but what
is evil in a world without God or Satan, and that is my mental world
I am against any decision
to target civilians, no matter what
| the cause, and whether from 50,000 feet above, in a tank, through
| purposeful disease and hunger, or with a body turned into a bomb.
whether it's evil or not
& in that spirit I am deeply opposed to the policies of almost every govt in
the world
I am more inclined to suspend judgement on the palestinians collectively
because of the utter injustice of what has happened to them
when I heard they or some among them were trying to import weapons, I feared
for the future, but I make no moral condemnation. It seems an obvious thing
to do
but, more, it is that I won't voice my judgement... often, that silence is
all I can do. I try not to say anything wch could be harvested to feed the
special pleading of the Israeli state as I try to pass over Israeli products
I have already brought down apartheid and pinochet by such actions...
L
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