At what point in the slide to authoritarianism should that stop? Where is the line?
Yes, I enjoy "both sides" coverage when it's done in earnest. What passes for that today is two people representing the extremes of either spectrum looking for gotcha moments as an "owning" moment. We haven't seen a good "both sides" in decades
I don't see how one honestly argues in favor of an authoritarian government
This is exactly why us Israelis recoil at the anti-Israel demonstrations after October 7th. How the social media platforms were leveraged to promote the bully was a wake up call that we hadn't seen since 1938.
It's not like the death tolls reset on that day.
Israel can have the moral high ground when they stop killing huge amounts of people. Calling them out isn't blood libel. Stop making that argument.
We don't have the moral high ground because we protect our civilians and thus have lower death tolls. We have the moral high ground because we are constantly on the defense from an enemy whose culture is conflict based and violent and vows our destruction.
The West Bank is a part of the state of Israel that was occupied by Jordanian forces from 1948 to 1967. It was then captured by Israel and many Israelis, many of whom lived there before it was occupied by Jordan, moved (back) there.
The West Bank was settled by both Arabs and Jews before 1948 - for literally thousands of years Jews had lived there. In 1856 many more Jews and Arabs began moving there due to changes in Ottoman law meant to encourage settlement of the area (the Ottomans needed tax revenue). It should be noted that Jerusalem was Jewish majority even before the Ottoman land laws changed in 1856. In 1936 there was a large Arab slaughtering of Jews in Hebron, so many Jews were evacuated from Hebron. In 1948 the Arabs rejected the UN partition plan, and started a war. Israel won that war, and thus became the sole successor state of Mandatory Palestine. Jordan occupied part of that successor state (the West Bank). In 1952 (I may have the year wrong) the Arab league declared that no Arab assistance would be provided to those displaced in the war, because only the suffering of those displaced will cause the destruction of the Zionist Entity. In 1964 the Soviets advised a group to represent the Arabs of the West Bank, the Gaza strip, and those displaced in 1948, and that group adopted the name Palestinians to refer to the populations it represents. Israel conquered the Jordanian-occupied territory in 1967 after Jordan attacked Israel, two months later the Arab League adopted it's policy of No Peace, No Negotiation, No Recognition of Israel. In 1995 the West Bank was divided into separate areas. Predominantly Arab areas were given autonomy for self rule, under the Palestinian Authority (mostly PLO) with the intention of all parties to see the establishment of an Arab state called Palestine after final borders and other issues are agreed. Predominantly Jewish areas have Israeli rule redeclared in three year cycles, pending final border agreements. Every single final border solution has been rejected by the Arab side, who have also employed extreme violence both in rhetoric and in actions.
Where in all this are the Jews who live in the West Bank a reason to "lose all faith" that Israel has good intentions. Israel's first intention is to secure the safety of her citizens, just like any other nation. Israel has committed to, and taken reasonable steps to, establish a separate state for those who demand Arab rule.
GP is Israeli, so of course he thinks of Israel.
I understand that we have been villainized by the armies of propaganda funded by oil money. But any interested party could look at the facts of history and realize who is the real bully here.
What's your excuse for thinking of Israel? Maybe try and clear out some brain space by not seeing the whole world through your lens of antisemitism. Israel is a tiny country surrounded by neighbors who want to see it vanish. It's the bully? SMH.
It looks like they know how to grow an audience at the expense of discourse, because those adherent to the popular-online side will heavily attack all publications that discuss the other side. Recognising this, it is hard to seriously consider their impartiality in other fields. It's very much the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
-Michael Crichton
Any specific examples? I took a quick browse but didn't find anything that fit what you're talking about, and what you're saying is a bit vague (maybe because I'm not from the US). Could you link a specific article and then tell us what exactly is wrong?
And when I look at the issues being discussed, I do not see something so clear as rainy or sunny. I see one side of contentious issues - issues with good arguements for both sides.
Alice says it's raining. Bob says it's sunny. It's raining. The news says that it's raining. Is it bias? Should the news say that it might be raining or sunny?
Or is the sunny argument recognising that murdering protesters instead of detaining them is not good policy?
A perfect example is toilets - I don't care at all how well a toilet flushes golfballs, because I never flush golfballs.