["
Poor old Vimothy... being harassed by"... -- Are you harassing me? Am I really poor old vimothy? What are you going on about here?]
Anyway, lets first address the t-shirt issue. Your claim is that I am misrepresenting you. You said that they were worn to graduation ceremonies and thus had the approval of IDF command. Not true. Read
the original Haaretz article. Of course, this is pretty damn obvious, or should be. Soldiers wear uniforms. You said that these t-shirts, which are approved of by IDF command, are pretty close to operational procedure in any case. This pejorative, but so far, so what. But you are not simply posting this story to discuss the issues (which is why you're not interested in debating Zamir or Aviner):
there is no discussion here.
If I am wrong, just tell me what the true implications of the t-shirt story are.
The "two-state solution" rests on a disagreement about what a viable state is. Clearly, the Israelis were negotiating for something. Some are less committed than others. If we are not teenagers, we should be able to recognise this.
As for my own priors, you may well be right and I am indeed touched by your concern. And since you cannot be bothered to discuss my question about ethnic German forced migrations and prefer instead random non sequiturs (it all goes weird unless we're discussing Israel), let's try the following heuristic. Say its all Israel's fault, starting with the Nabka and continuing through every major event since then. What is the difference? An analogy. Russia has shelled villages indiscriminately in Chechnya. By doing so
they reduced insurgent violence. This is counterintuitive but true. Increased lethality and destructiveness is even negatively correlated with insurgent activity. Casualties (mainly civilian) are an order of magnitude larger in a similar timeframe. And yet, and yet, where are the calls to boycott Russia? Where are the documentaries? Where are the posts? There's simply no time unless it involves Israel, right. But more generally, why do think that this is the case? And why don't Israel, given their lack of restraint, given their military capability, do exactly the same thing?
Ultimately, it comes down to this:
"Don't demonise Israel."
"But they actually are demons!"
Strange that this should be so when in the case of Russia, Sri Lanka, the DRC, Sudan, and so on, we are all capable of being so much more rational. More than that, we are disinterested. I think that the issue of narrativisation is the key.
Alternatively, consider Northern Ireland. Who is right and who is wrong? Again, I know my priors. But there is little to gain from one-sided condemnations. Obviously, it's all the fault of the racist Brits and the racist Unionists (and, perhaps, the racist Catholics). But this argument is really secondary to the true goal, which is not even a united Ireland (in my view), but rather human rights for Catholics. Furthermore, this argument -- you started it -- no you did -- is actually a huge distraction.
