zlacker

>>xbar+(OP)
My views on the situation aside, the clearest I saw anyone communicate the issues from a global angle was the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin

Translated here: https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1718201487132885246

Viewed from the angle of the West, I think the message it needs to avoid isolating itself from the world is very unusual for Western media and important.

Quote:

"Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers."

And

"This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle."

>>locall+7v1
> The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle

How many wars have the US and Japan fought after WWII?

Or France and Germany after WWII?

How many wars have the US Government and Native Americans fought after 1900?

Sometimes a clear, overwhelming victory ends cycles of violence.

>>RcouF1+xx1
That's exactly the point, at least how I'm reading it. Between the US and Japan peace and diplomacy was allowed to rule instead of constant violent retaliation. With France and Germany the same - the two countries have, in a pretty meaningful way, simply merged into a single country along with a lot of the rest of Europe.

When it comes to the US Government and Native Americans it's a far less good example - there have been militarized Native resistance groups at times since the 1900s and there has been open violence (see, for instance, Leonard Peltier and AIM)... in a large way America succeeded with erasing native peoples from their lands - and ditto with Canada - to the point where the groups are too fragmented to form any serious claims at independence. I also think Nixon (yes that Nixon) helped cool things off pretty seriously by, essentially, starting reparation programs to help reinject economic health into reservations - while those have had very underwhelming success at fully solving the problem America has been trying to uplift instead of suppress those communities.

All this stuff is really, really complicated - what defines a culture and a nation is extremely nebulous and subject to heavy revision as time passes. But we're all people and we need to be able to talk about peace even if we have deep historical wounds.

>>munk-a+rD1
> That's exactly the point, at least how I'm reading it. Between the US and Japan peace and diplomacy was allowed to rule instead of constant violent retaliation.

What diplomacy? The US destroyed Japan's military, bombed Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki (the latter two with nuclear weapons), killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The Japanese surrendered unconditionally.

Then the US occupied Japan while directing the construction of a new Japanese government.

I don't see any diplomacy there.

>>slibhb+UN1
The diplomacy consists of the fact the Japanese were allowed to rebuild their own country. They weren’t forcibly relocated to Hokkaido to make room for US settlers.

>>Aeolun+zZ1
And the diplomacy also consisted of the fact that in revenge for their defeat the Japanese didn't launch a long campaign of violent resistance. The cycle of violence continues as long as people seek revenge and at some point somebody has to be the kinder soul and concede or compromise on the horrors of the past. It's an action that requires participation from both sides but will always place stronger demands on one of them.

This is why I have hope in the middle east - Hamas are fueled by revenge and (IMO) the current Israeli government is also driven by revenge... but the majority of people on both sides have had enough. On the Palestinian side the populace has been denied an election for decades and on the Israeli side there is strong opposition to Netanyahu but terror remains a strong motivator.

>>munk-a+u42
Japan was not allowed to have a military for decades after the US occupation ended in 1952. The constitution of Japan, written during US occupation, explicitly makes war illegal! Japan still depends on the US for defense and hosts US military bases.

If Japan isn't an example of brutal war solving problems then nothing is.

> The majority of people on both sides have had enough. On the Palestinian side the populace has been denied an election for decades and on the Israeli side there is strong opposition to Netanyahu but terror remains a strong motivator.

Complete nonsense. The majority of Palestinians support Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and prefer escalation. There hasn't been an election in the West Bank since 2021. Do you know why? Everyone knows Hamas would win! So Abbas, the moderate, indefinitely postponed elections.