Israel-Palestine Conundrum: Azly Rahman's Question

How far back in history should one claim that territory is theirs? On what basis is the claim: religious, ancestral, modern territorial? Who owns any place or space on earth, for that matter?

The answer to Azly Rahman's interesting question may be complex but if we are all believers in the Abrahamic faiths, the answer has its roots in the profound history of the people and the region:

Political dynamics: That historical region, described as the Southern Levant by archaeologists, was inhabited by settlers from various places (probably Egypt). When Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt, they were led by God to the region called Canaan and it was there that they conquered the inhabitants and settled there for 4,000 years (1,900 BCE).

Subsequently, they were conquered and ruled by Babylonians, the Romans (who hated them for resisting imperial rule and rejecting their pagan gods), etc until the Ottomans (not Arab Muslims) occupied it for 400 years. Then after the Ottomans joined the Germans (under the prompting of the Turkish war minister Enver Pasha) to fight the Allied powers in WW1 and subsequently lost, Britain took over the administration of Israel under a mandate granted by the United Nations.

Spiritual dynamics: Here is the biblical perspective; God has granted a promise to Abraham (given his deep relationship with God) that He will bless all his descendants. But there is one condition on granting the Jews a home in Israel. They have to believe in the one true God of Abraham and live righteously before Him, or else the land will be conquered by foreign powers (which was what happened).

The apotheosis of misguided faith: When Jesus Christ, a Jew (during 33 years of his life from 4 B.C. to 30 A.D.), declared he was the Son of God who came on earth as a man to bring salvation to mankind, the Jews (by and large) rejected, mocked and condemned him to death even though their Scriptures prophesized that such a messiah will arise in future to save them (some Jews are still waiting today for a political, messianic saviour).

The consequences of rejecting God and their destiny: After AD 70, the Jews were dispersed by the Romans and were without a homeland for 1,877 years. 

The most brutal and worst tragedy of the Jews was when the Roman emperor Hadrian, after a four-year war against the Jews (known as the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132AD-136), banished them and mocked their heritage by renaming the province of Judah as Syria Palaestina (after their ancient enemy the Grecian Philistines). The inhabitants of "Syria Palaestina" were diverse and included Jews, Christians and other ethnic groups. Only five centuries later in the 7th century did the Muslims appear in the region.

Thereafter, the Jews were an exiled people and after nearly two centuries of living in Europe and Russia, their persecution and oppression escalated (due to some kind of tribalistic hatred of God's chosen people) in the late 18th and the first half of of the 19th century. The 1903 Kishinev pogrom in Russia and the horrendous Holocaust (with six million Jews killed) gave momentum to the Zionist aspirations to seek a homeland and the United Nations decided to grant them statehood in 1947, along with a separate state for Palestine.

One day after the state of Israel was proclaimed by Ben Gurion on May 14th, 1948, five neighbouring Arab states launched the first Arab-Israel war, which ended with Israel taking over 77% of the UN-mandated Palestinian territory while Jordan and Egypt occupied the rest of Palestine.

In retrospect, from all legal, spiritual (Biblical and otherwise), Abrahamic and military perspectives, Israel is a sovereign nation that belongs to the Jews. (The territories of Gaza and the West Bank, which was granted self-autonomy, is being ring-fenced by Israel considering the ongoing national security threat of terrorist and missile attacks from the PLO and later the Hamas groups, whose goals are to eliminate Israel as a nation state).

Current political dynamics: The current political question of how to make a lasting peace with Palestine (pending the current Israel-Hamas war which started on October 7th 2023) is the focus of the Middle Eastern conundrum.

With Iran and Russia on the side of the Palestinians coupled with Western sympathies for the Palestinian cause (notwithstanding the noble goals of the 2-state solution), there is now a new battleground of geopolitics as well as public world opinion in play (often misinformed and disinformed by the press).

Biblically, the twice return of the Jews (the first was 70 years in Babylonian captivity and the second was over 2,000 years of exile) was prophesized many times in the Old Testament:

Isaiah 43:5-6 "Fear not, for I am with you; from the east I will bring back your offspring, from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north: Give them up!"

From a social perspective on why the Jews are so despised by not only certain religious groups but also by many secular quarters as well, I concur with the Christian view that there are demonic/primeval forces influencing people to hurt the God of Abraham by hurting His chosen race.

From a human rights perspective, there is nothing really special about the Jews that God should favour them above others (in fact, they were allowed to suffer tremendously, often more than other ethnic groups). 

But God will never break his promise to Abraham and He has an eye on the salvation of the Jews in the end-times.

(In my view, the current Israel-Hamas war will be resolved - either by force or otherwise - in just another episode in Israel's struggle for sovereignty, security and peaceful relations with her neighbors. The endgame and its implications for a WW3 is still decades ahead).

                                                    

                                                                                    

Differentiating Conspiracy Biases & The New Conformance Bias

There are two types of conspiracy biases, i.e. the tendency of the mind to think there is a hidden truth behind the official narrative. 

The first type of conspiracy bias is one where we imagine a possible hidden agenda based on our fears, imagination and chatter. There isn't much evidence or pieces of proof to justify this type of bias. 

For example, there is a conspiracy belief that the Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did not really land on the moon in July 1969. So the conspiracy theory is that the whole 3 minute clip that 650 million people worldwide saw on live television was a staged fake with special effects. 

At present, this belief has hardly any corroborating proof, no documents nor whistle-blowers (except for one video released by wikileaks about an alleged filming of the landing in the Nevada desert). 

Whether these theories are true or not, these conspiracies have little to no impact on our individual lives and pose no threats to our liberty.

The second and more serious type of conspiracy bias is based on a rational assessment of separate facts pieced together, like a mosaic or jigsaw, that support a more cohesive picture of the true event than what is potrayed by the official narrative.

One common example is the 9/11 attack in 2001 and the view that it was an inside job done by the CIA. 

The objective for staging this red flag event is for the American military industrial complex (in association with certain corporations and foreign agencies) to invade so-called "enemy" nations (Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003) and control their energy resources/geopolitically strategic resources by installing puppet regimes. 

This theory hardly deserves to be called a theory but a credible perspective: it is now established there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Less widely known is that the collapse of Building 7, located next to the Twin Towers, could not be scientifically explained as it was not struck by any plane.

The New Conformance Bias

Given the human mind is susceptible to cognitive biases and conspiracy biases have become louder following the mysterious origins of the Covid-19 pandemic which has yet to be ascertained after nearly three years, we need to be aware of the opposite of conspiracy cognitive bias.

And that is conformance bias, which is the tendency to believe in the official narrative and the doubling of efforts in official government agencies to shape our perceptions to conform to what they wish us to believe. 

Conformance cognitive bias is most closely related to a combination of salience bias, availability bias and herd bias. 

Why do people fall victim to conformance bias? That deserves some in-depth research but the intuitive answer is that the official narrative triggers cognitive dissonance in our minds, which describes the discomfort when we experience two incompatible cognitions/narratives. As a result, it is very easy for us to choose the narrative that is the least disturbing or least puzzling.

How to Deal with Cognitive Dissonance

Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson, writes, in his book "12 Rules for Life," that "cognitive dissonance is a powerful motivator" as it can motivate people to change their beliefs or attitudes in order to reduce their discomfort. 

Most psychologists suggest that people be aware of their feelings of discomfort first before taking steps to move out of their comfort zone and preconceived ideas.

However, I suggest a more wholistic approach to dealing with cognitive dissonance given my less optimistic view of human nature.

If the inner voice of truth (i.e. our conscience) is not strong & clear enough, it will be drowned out by the voices of those who control the official narrative  (in media, academia, finance, business).  

Faced with the choice of either consciously seeking the truth ourselves or conforming to whatever information and storyline that is being fed to us, it is human nature to take the intellectually less demanding path (System I thinking in Daniel Kahneman's book: Thinking, Fast and Slow).

So apart from just being self-aware of our cognitive biases, we have to actively take a public stand to tell the truth and expose the lies and half-truths that are being promoted by mainstream media, corporations and the government.

A Post Pandemic Parable: The Boy Who Cried Wolf & The Crowd Who Played His Game

There is always something powerful about half-truths. 

A half truth is not only highly persuasive, it can also be morally corrosive as it brings out the lying tendency in our human nature.

The boy who cried wolf is the most accurate description of our gullible and dangerous participation in the fear-mongering chatter of the Covid-19 pandemic. Especially during 2020-2021. 

The wolf turned out to be an old fox

Fortunately, after a year of going through the saga of mostly non-fatal infections and controversial vaccines of different brands, the world woke up to the false narratives of lockdowns and vaccine mandates. 

Setting aside the mysterious origins of the Covid-19 pandemic (whether it was a bat transmission, accidental lab leak or a synthesized virus to create a global crisis), the biggest half- truth that many of us participated in was the lie that the Covid-19 virus was so fatal that it justified the lockdown of all social and economic activities for 2-3 years.

The hungry "wolf" turned out to be just an ageing fox whose dance of death has caused more mental & economic damage than physical harm. Just look at the push-back from those mass protests in Germany, France, Australia and Canada in 2021-2022.

For countries like China that had the strictest lockdowns, the lies about the danger of Covid-19 infections were finally exposed when the Chinese saw thousands of maskless spectators from all over the world cheering and having a great time at the World Cup games in November-December 2022.

Why was it a half-truth?

It was half-true because the virus was actually infectious (4 out 10 people were infected in most cases) and can actually worsen the health of people with pre-existing health issues or comorbidities. 

In an era of fact-checks and 10 second surfing per post, half-truths can be promoted to the detriment of our mental and physical health. 

At the individual and communal level, half-truths encourage the human tendency to lie in order to satisfy a psychological or economic need. (In behavioural science, this is known as cognitive biases of the brain).

It is also extremely comforting to share with a group of people the same fear and anxiety (band wagon bias). As if sharing your fears make it less fearful. In fact, the opposite is usually the case: for weak-minded people, sharing a communal fear frequently (availability bias) makes it even more fearful.

(For example, one of our neighbors recently found a python curled up under his car engine bonnet. Imagine the communal fear if this shocking incident & photos of the snake was shared repeatedly among the house wives. The passive mind often plays tricks on our fight-or-flight instincts). 

In the case of governments, pharmaceutical companies and other big corporations, the pandemic and the policy responses have given them much greater control over their citizens' lives, their revenues and profits.

The next big lie?

If we dont call out the lie of the boy (i.e. the collusion of governments, big pharma, tech platforms and the WHO) today, we would not be able to deal with the next big lie tomorrow. 

But this time, it may be even more persuasive because quite a number of us, who have not woken up to the half-lie, will be primed to participate in the World Economic Forum's agenda of deception (also known as the Great Reset).

So be warned, my fellow world citizens. 

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

What to do about the deception

The posture of our minds and hearts determines our perspective. So if we are committed to living and staying in a life based on truth, there is no way we can compromise to live in half-truths and half-lies. The most powerful deceptions are the ones with some grain of truth in them. 

Like the traveler with one foot on the platform and the other on the train. Either he goes onto the train or stays where he stands. There is no two ways about it.

Thus, the three things we need to do to avoid falling into the narrative of half-truths and half-lies:

(1) Be aware of your own cognitive biases when reading news and the narratives that the media is conveying through their juxtaposition of actual facts and unsupported opinions.  

(2) Be quick and alert to call out those friends/social media writers who repeat half-truths and total falsehoods. 

Dont worry about causing offense when making your point. These people are either intellectually naive or their minds are so programmed that their consciences are immune to truth-checks (as opposed to the discredited fact checking engines).

(3) Take three steps ahead of the liars's next move. Once we are aware of the agenda of control by the deep state and their corporate and institutional supporters, then we can checkmate their next big deception by positioning ourselves ahead of their next move. 

Three steps ahead can be strategic or tactical.  For myself, as a Christian, it means (a) listening to God's prompting, (b) confirming what I discern with the voice of the anointed prophets and (c) watching the evolution of world events objectively to see whether the prophetic messages line up with them. 

The New Myth of Sisyphus: What The Young Generation of Workers Face Today

 What I have noticed in my decades of work-life as a team leader is that there are 3 self-limiting challenges facing today's young generation of professionals (between 20-40 years old):

(1) Intellectual courage: though not lacking in courage to aspire and fulfill their dreams, I notice the young people of today are not sufficiently intellectually courageous enough to take a contrarian stance from the herd mentality. This is especially valid in the area of politics and global issues (eg the ready acceptance of narratives like climate change, pandemic origins, the bad-guy versus good-guy reporting of the Russian-Ukraine war).

(2) Power of influence: they underestimate their ability to influence and impact their clients/audience/supply chain partners (posting in social media like Instagram and Tik Tok may have the opposite effect of spurring a focused, coherent world view in an era of diverse views and political correctness).

(3) Perspective: their passion/energy levels are admirable but they are not inquisitive enough to form a more relevant, more meaningful and more truthful perspective of the world they wish to influence constructively. (their typical response to this is that everyone's values are subjective. But before they come to that conclusion, have they done enough researching or is the response a matter of convenience?)

As a consequence of a much more dynamic and asymetrically changing world in the millennium, these three mental obstacles are being tested severely, and young professionals are pressured to make the right decisions fast. 

To some extent, I empathise with their dilemma because in my generation and my parents' generation, we had a more stable, more favourable economic and social environment for patient learning and gradual forming of a world perspective/value system from which we can work out our vocation in life.

Instead, today's generation has to contend with a corporatised, politically biased news media (controlled by big tech companies) and social media that promotes instant distractions and 24/7 entertainment. 

As for the intellectually inquisitive, the answers to modern history's most tragic events (WW2, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, genocide, wars, corruption, the meaning of evil) are clinically diluted into superficial terms (eg concepts packaged into "ism") that divert young minds from exploring further the truth of the matter. 

The "big issues" which the powerful governments and organisations have promoted are climate change, diversity and ESG as if moral and spiritual issues are not the root problem of human society.

The New Myth of Sisyphus

Among the parables I can think of, the most accurate one to describe the dilemma of today's young generation is the myth of Sisyphus.

At the end of the day, their barriers to the truth (deeper insights into human nature and the world) is self-inflicted. And this means young workers have to climb a steeper, more frustrating learning curve while at the same time pushing up the stone of world challenges (work-related) that pressurises them to give up critical thinking.

At the intellectual breaking point, they may finally submit their assigned decision-making process to Artificial Intelligence to solve their moral and professional dilemmas (eg ChatGPT, robots, blockchain, CBDCs). 

In other words, this means outsourcing value judgement decisions to powerful tools that are only programmed to analyse processes, not social and political outcomes of a complex world.