Year: 2022

Those ‘Global Experts’ on ‘Conflict Resolution’…

How to Be Happier Without Really Trying

emotional-efficacy

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The meeting was supposed to be boring.

In 2019 a bunch of academics and think tank policy folks were gathered for what should have been an uneventful conference of long-winded PowerPoint and bad coffee. Sadly, it would not stay that dull and predictable…

The presenter finishes his talk. A colleague comments that, due to how close the presenter was to the issues he was describing, there would be a lot of extra scrutiny and challenges ahead.

And the presenter… totally flips out. He felt this was insulting. Now he’s yelling. Demanding an apology.

But now the colleague is offended. He was just making a point and now he feels attacked. So he refuses to apologize.

The presenter starts packing up his things in a huff, ready to leave the conference. The other attendees try to calm the two down but are utterly ineffective. The two men both storm out, shouting the whole way.

Now it isn’t too surprising that something like this could happen at a conference…

But this was a meeting of global experts on conflict resolution.

UN envoys and high-level peace treaty specialists. As Columbia University professor Peter Coleman recounts:

One beautiful bit of irony is that an hour earlier one of the participants had presented an excellent paper on the power of identity issues causing stalemates in Middle East conflicts—and here we all were in the midst of one unfolding, and we were helpless. It was amazing. All of our inspired attempts at resolution fell flat.

Ahem.

Continue reading…

From Barking Up The Wrong Tree, here.

Gantz, State ‘Defense Minister’, Comes Clean About Defense…

Excerpted from Matzav.com:

In the closed portion of a Blue and White Party faction meeting, Defense Minister Benny Gantz read out a WhatsApp message that had gone viral across the country, containing threats by anonymous, ostensibly Arab elements to take control of the country. According to Gantz, the authors of the message were correct, and the future Jewish state could ultimately lie “between Gedera and Chadera.”

The message reads: “Keep cursing; you have no chance against Allah. Slowly but surely we are taking bites out of your state. What will you do? This is Palestinian territory in actuality, and the moment one tractor comes—we will use the left-wing organizations such as ‘Peace Now’ and ‘B’Tselem,’ who will go to the country’s true ruler (the High Court of Justice) to issue an injunction. We will send children and teenagers to throw stones and barricade themselves in until you scatter away like mice.

“The Galilee, with the grace of Allah, will also be ours soon. We are buying one dunam [0.2 acres] from the [Israel Land Authority] for 50,000 shekels [$14,677] while the Jew buys [one dunam] for 1,150,000 shekels [$337,577]. Already today we are 85% of the Galilee population and are quickly seizing control, building homes in every corner without permits. Who’s going to do anything about it? The Jews who live in the Galilee all flee to the center of the country because they suffer from harassment, violence on the roads, protection [rackets], shootings, theft and robbery.

“The government tells you the Galilee and Negev are Jewish; I tell you that in reality, this is Palestinian territory. Any new business in the Negev is paying us a protection tax, every neighborhood that is built won’t be built without paying protection.”

After reading out the message, Gantz said that whoever the author or authors were, the message was not wrong.

“This isn’t far from the reality,” Gantz said at the meeting. “I believe that in a few more years we’ll be in a situation where the Jewish state will be between Gedera and Hadera. We are a few years away from this,” he added.