Ask HN: Good, objective resources on Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27363606

by steve_g • 5 years ago

1 2 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Last night I was arguing with my kids about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I realized I didn't know what I was talking about.

What are some good, reasonably objective resources to understand the history of the conflict and what's going on now?

Surely it's not a clear case of good vs evil, but does either side have the moral high ground? Who did what to whom? How did we get here?

Note: I'll take biased resources as long as the biases are disclosed and I've got a mix of sources.

Thanks.

op03• 5 years ago

My answer would be don't waste your time and energy.

We have 6 inch chimp brains. Some types of problems require 7 inch chimp brains or 2000 inch chimp brains or 7 million inch chimp brains.

The only thing you have to understand when you take 2 chimps and throw them into a room with such type of complex problems is blundering ensues.

The focus of all chimps is then drawn to the blundering, whose fault it is, who said what, who did what, who can be blamed, who needs to change etc etc etc but all that just takes focus away from the fact that the problem itself is too complex for a chimp.

This is the Theory of Bounded Rationality (which won a Nobel Prize for explaining why the world couldnt prevent world war 2 after experiencing the devastation of world war 1).

Not everything can be understood. Misunderstanding on the other hand is directly proportional to the complexity of the problem. And it doesn't get more complex that the Israel-Palestine issue.

The chimps will continue to blunder.

The Theory of Bounded Rationality recommends teaching kids that are facing complex problems to ditch them and instead work on simple ones.

joelbluminator• 5 years ago

After researching the topic as a hobby for maybe a decade I think there are no good guys or bad guys, you will find plenty of material to demonize both sides, both sides did some pretty shitty things, and while Israel may seem much stronger than the Palestinians, when you zoom out and realize Israel is in conflict with much of the muslim world and losing support from the West its not that strong at all. It faces challenges few countries need to deal with and its very questionable if the zionist country can keep going many decades into the future. I like Benny Morris books the most; 1948 and One State Two States. Almost no one is objective on anything but I think Morris does a good job.

Ask HN: Good, objective resources on Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

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