August 19, 2006
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israel and the media
I’ve been trying to avoid getting into online discussions for a very long time. I really hate the experience. I think it’s a worthwhile thing to do but it always makes me feel terrible. I get far too caught up in it.
But the other day I ended up getting caught up into an online discussion on Israel. Why? I certainly don’t think it’s more important than a myriad of other discussions I’d rather be having. I really think the whole thing is a little over covered.
The problem is it was a forum I often read about something totally different and these people are generally very coherent and rational about that other topic. The problem was that in reading this thread I noticed that nobody was saying anything. I mean sure a lot of posts were being made but nobody was saying one damn thing. It was rather terrible. The argument consistented of the equivalent of “you suck”, “no *you* suck”, etc.
I’d actually been pretty frustrated about this earlier too. You see it was driving me nuts in general that the news in covering this situation was only giving one narrow perspective. The amount of time given to the Arab perspective was laughable. They’d give an occasional interview to a representative of Lebanon or Hezbollah but the only question they seemed to care about what the answer to the question of whether the person they were speaking to “recognizes Israel’s right to exist”. Sure, they’d also say things like “80% of Lebanese citizens support Hezbollah” but for all the explanation they gave you’d think this was a population of insane reasonless drones. I don’t believe your average person formulates strong opinions without reason. Often people lack the context to formulate ideas that are based on all of the facts, but by and large people have a pretty good morality radar and can pick up injustice pretty easily.
So I, who knew next to nothing about the middle east, did some research and found, surprise surpise another side of the story. There are numerous facts that provide context for the aggression on both sides and make explicable the considerable outrage expressed by many at Israel’s actions. It wouldn’t be hard to bring these things to light on the news but nobody’s doing it and for no good reason that I can see. So I posted some of this stuff on the forum and of course the responses were like “you suck” to which others replied “no *you* suck.”. Sigh. I don’t think anyone even read what I wrote. But then, I’m rather wordy so I guess I should expect that.
All this just goes to reenforce my belief that people won’t really be free until we have a world where all people have immediate free access to translated versions of all of the world’s media content. How can we understand one another if we don’t have any experience of one another? There should be no television show I can’t get on my TV, no website that can’t come up from my google search. And then we need filters. Non-biased filters. E.g. filters that show the highest grossing, most discussed, most viewed, and most recent media content accross all genres and all national backgrounds. And we can have biased critics who filter content too, just so long as anyone and everyone has equal right to be such a critic.
Comments (4)
“““““
I see that you enjoy discussing politics.
What do you think about the United Nations
sending Peace Keepers to Lebanon ?
“““`
Nephyo, You don’t suck. On the contrary.
You rock like dragon riding a hurricane!
With regards to the Unite Nations Peace Keepers -
As a general rule, I’m always in favor of building up the signficance of the United Nations. I think it is very important for nations to put their trust and faith in a neutral umbrella organization that can resolve international disputes and hold leaders of countries to high standards. That organization doesn’t have to be the United Nations and to be sure the current United Nations does not quite fit the bill, but the United Nations is what we have right now so we’d better make use of it.
Nations that have power need to make use of the United Nations in a way that builds its legitimacy. They need to start abiding by the decisions made by the United Nations even when it is not in their individual nation’s best interests. This is important in order to create a system where rule of law governs the interactions between nation states rather than the “who has the biggest guns” theory.
For that reason primarily I am in favor of the United Nations being involved since it means that they must now be a significant factor that must be considered should any side try to break the peace. That means the opportunities for negotiations will be higher as most people are not going to be willing to enter into a war that will of necessity draw many European nations into it.
The other major advantage to having a diverse peace keeping group is that it encourages inter-social interactions. I’m not fond of this idea of just European nations being involved. There a number of other Eastern nations that have volunteered troops and I think they should be able to contribute. I think it will be important to get groups from diverse backgrounds working together toward a common goal. I think it will be a good thing to have the people of Lebanon working along side people from many different nations to build up and secure Lebanon.
However, there are problems and questions raised by this development as well. For one thing I’m not fond of the nature of the cease fire agreement signed. It is fairly weak. It’s not very clear and it doesn’t really put any responsibility on Israel for its actions. Also it doesn’t make it clear to what extent the United Nations group has the authority to interact offensively against Hesbollah. In other words I think the situation is very shaky with a lot in the air. I haven’t looked too closely at these things in the last few days so it is possible that the international community has reached a firmer resolution and the mandate of the security forces will be quite strong.
Still, I think there are big problems with this “solution”. It doesn’t spell out any long term plans for peaceful relations between the two nations. That’s the scariest part because there’s a big question of how long we will actually need to keep UN troops in the area. One year, Five years, A hundred years? Who knows. And if nothing is ever resolved during the course of that time, that just means that the chances of war breaking out between Israel and Lebanon will still be high after the peace keepers leave. But the uncertainty here is largely because people don’t know what is going to happen and don’t want to plan too far ahead. That’s wise since if Lebanon ends up turning into an Islamic state controlled by Hezbollah that makes the situation very different then if it ends up being lead by a secular government. Also the situation will be different depending on how strongly Israel holds its leadership accountable for their actions during the lebanon war. If many of these leaders find their political careers effectively over that makes a big difference in terms of how the UN will need to react to Israel as opposed to if they stay in power. The UN has to be able to adapt freely to any of these occurrences.
There are two philosophical points that distub me about the precedent being set by the United Nations deployment that are unrelated to my opinion of whether it is a good thing. The first is that I am disturbed by the concept of the United Nations serving as a buffer between two warring sides. I don’t like the idea that this sets a precedent of having the UN taking over the role of border security for a nation perfectly capable of securing its own borders. I wonder how long the UN will play the role of defending Israel’s borders for them?
The other is even more general. It has to do with the history of invading forces. As a general rule, the people of states don’t like occupiers no matter how well intentioned. The longer occupiers stay on a people’s lands the more likely violence will break out between the occupiers and the occupied. The UN troops may seem like the best idea right now, but it isn’t clear what the long term implication of their presence will be. The good thing is that they are more ‘neutral’ in the eyes of the region than any other force would be. Hopefully they will be careful not to overstay their welcome and they will work to contribute meaningfully to both the security and recovery of Lebanon.
No real problem is solved just by throwing more troops into the mix. The same is true for the UN Peace Keepers. They have the potential to help keep a lid on a volatile situation temporarily but in the long term they aren’t going to be enough to really change anything. Hopefull they will buy the people of all the nations involved time to work towards encouraging their leadership to build truly peaceful relations between all countries involved. It’s ultimately going to be important for the individuals of these countries to hold their leaderships strongly accountable should *any* breach in the cease fire occur. It’s the only way they are going to be able to protect their ability to live their lives in peace.
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