Tuesday, August 1, 2017

How the Culture of Haggling leads to Wars

A culture that's based on haggling says a great deal about itself. In the same way that haggling can be defined as talking too much and saying very little, the culture that underlies haggling can be defined as promising a great deal and accomplishing very little.

Most of the time this would be a blessing because when a culture of this kind accomplishes something, it is usually a negative achievement, if not a deadly one. This is what you take away from reading the article that came under the title: “The Next War in Gaza Is Brewing. Here's How to Stop It.” It was written by Nathan Thrall and Robert Blecher, and was published on July 31, 2017 in the New York Times.

The writers are warning that all the signs coming from the region point to the high probability that another war is about to erupt between Gaza and Israel. They describe the signs, and argue they represent a familiar pattern. It is one that often culminates in a war which resolves the issues that have led to the war. Here is how Thrall and Blecher highlight this point: “A new war –– leading, as in November 2012, to a new deal easing restrictions on Gaza –– was seen as the only way out”.

But why did it take a war to ease the restrictions that created the impossible Gaza conditions in the first place? The answer is that the interactions accompanying the Jewish style haggling as practiced by the Israelis are different from the interactions which are familiar to the rest of humanity. The differences are most pronounced in the way that the politico-diplomatic game is played locally and on the international stage.

To normal human beings, politics and/or diplomacy are defined as the art of the possible. To the Jews, politics and/or diplomacy stand as the art of the impossible. To normal people, the purpose of engaging in a process of give-and-take is to find common points, agree on them, and compromise on the rest. Unfortunately, this is not what happens when one of the parties or both are Jewish. What happens instead is that the core of the debate is skirted in favor of haggling endlessly about points that are irrelevant to the subject-matter.

Jewish style political haggling leads to polarization because the failure to talk about substance leads the hagglers to use nasty tools they carry in their bag of tricks. They play games whose intent is to make the self look good by making the opponent look bad. This intolerable state of affairs is usually attained through the use of tricks such as starting false rumors about the opponent, slandering him behind his back, lying about him, putting out fake news and dreadful misinformation … and so on.

When these games are played locally such as they are in America, the outcome is what we see happening in the congress of uselessness, except when it comes to serving the Jews and their causes, including Israel. When the games are played on the international stage, the outcome is what we see happening to America's standing in a world where big countries and smaller ones challenge what used to be a superpower that was loved, revered or feared but never ignored or dismissed as irrelevant … which is the case at this time.

And when the Jews are given a place of their own to make a go of it – such as the one they call Israel – they prove the validity of the centuries old view that they cannot govern themselves. In fact, they have had that place for seventy years already, and they could never transition to a normal way of life from the parasitic existence they have lived since their beginning. It is now certain that the only reason why Israel continues to exist is that so-called American Jews manage to maintain America in a continuous state of paralysis and disintegration.

These realities compel us to question if indeed Nathan Thrall and Robert Blecher have responded constructively to the claim they have in the title of the article: Here is how to stop the Gaza War.

The answer is that they did not. After nearly 1,300 words of irrelevant haggling, they came up with this recommendation: “The way to head off a catastrophic future is for the goods consumed by people in Gaza to be taxed by the government that serves them”.

The two writers want you to believe that taxation is at the root of the Palestine/Israel problem. They reached this conclusion without once entertaining the possibility that ending the occupation and letting the Palestinians live their lives in peace and dignity is the solution to what they call a looming catastrophic future.