eaturbrainz

I'm Israeli too, though new at it.

I confirm that we're not bloodthirsty. We do, though, have a certain arrogance: we believe we are entitled to live normal lives even when the Palestinians do not yet have a state.

I struck the word "arrogance" out, because whether you believe this is actually an act of arrogance is a strong indicator of your politics. You know you're pro-Arab when you think Israelis shouldn't get to live normal lives because Palestinians can't. You know you're pro-Jewish when you think Israelis should be able to get on with normal life whatever happens to the Palestinians.

Bork bork bork!

Which actions? I'm Israeli myself and I don't find all our actions justified. But then again, they're not all unjustifiable either. We're a very mixed bag of a country.

Notice how you never see anyone say "if I want to hire myself out to pick someone else's tomatoes, how are you going to stop me?"

For farming? Well, it's very rare, but it has happened (WWOOF, kibbutz volunteering, that sort of thing).

For other jobs? It happens often. Half of Slashdot could be induced without even a quiet request to state, "If I want to hire myself out to program someone else's computers, how are you going to stop me?"

The problem being that in order to support non-farmers doing something like computer programming or being a professor of anthropology, you need some kind of system for ensuring that people can get housing, food, etc without actually having to make it themselves, affording them the time to specialize. Thus, you need some kind of economy. Certainly not feudalism, capitalism, or neo-feudalism, but something. And that something will probably involve an analogue to wages: some liquidated transfer of value used to equip non-farmers with resources, probably for trade with others.

Additionally, why should the OWS crowd focus on attracting the white bourgeoisie liberals? They aren't the ones who suffer most under the capitalist conditions that OWS rails against.

Because Oppression Olympics are fucking stupid.

EDIT: Also, I would say OWS needs to focus on capturing the working class, including the white working class, far better than it has.