Article

2006-08-28 Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Hamas spokesman: Gaza is caught in a nightmare of anarchy and thuggery

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Fred 2006-08-28 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11138 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Hamas spokesman: Gaza is caught in a nightmare of anarchy and thuggery

Take a look in the mirror sometime.

... since Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip, the situation there has deteriorated on all levels.

Guess who was supplying the order?

Dismissing Israel's responsibility for the growing state of anarchy and lawlessness in the Gaza Strip, Hamad said it was time for the Palestinians to embark on a soul-searching process to see where they erred. "We're always afraid to talk about our mistakes," he added. "We're used to blaming our mistakes on others. What is the relationship between the chaos, anarchy, lawlessness, indiscriminate murders, theft of land, family rivalries, transgression on public lands and unorganized traffic and the occupation? We are still trapped by the mentality of conspiracy theories - one that has limited our capability to think."

Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle! Maye this guy is onto something.

He said about 500 Palestinians have been killed and 3,000 wounded since the Israeli pullout, in addition to the destruction of much of the infrastructure in the area. By comparison, he said, only three or four Israelis have been killed by the rockets fired from the Gaza Strip over the same period.

Any of this penetratin' that lil' ol' kefiya of yours?

"We have all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity,"

No truer words have ever been spoken by an Arab.

Posted by Zenster 2006-08-28 00:12|| 2006-08-28 00:12|| Front Page Top

#2 Nonsense. All Gaza needs is a little more da'wa; a little more deen.

Posted by Seafarious">Seafarious 2006-08-28 00:17|| 2006-08-28 00:17|| Front Page Top

#3 I predict he's dead within the month and not by Israel's hand.

Posted by 3dc 2006-08-28 00:22|| 2006-08-28 00:22|| Front Page Top

#4 You made your bed now lie in it.

Posted by djohn66 2006-08-28 00:58|| 2006-08-28 00:58|| Front Page Top

#5 "We have all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity,"

You have it long in your genes. Your cesspool of a society follows like a shadow wherever you go.

Posted by Duh! 2006-08-28 01:00|| 2006-08-28 01:00|| Front Page Top

#6 1400 years of selective breeding for stupidity and belligerent cowardice.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-08-28 08:48|| 2006-08-28 08:48|| Front Page Top

#7 He said about 500 Palestinians have been killed

I fail to see the problem...

Posted by badanov 2006-08-28 10:36|| http://www.freefirezone.org]">[http://www.freefirezone.org] 2006-08-28 10:36|| Front Page Top

#8 I fail to see the problem

The problem is too few zeros, badanov.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-08-28 10:46|| 2006-08-28 10:46|| Front Page Top

#9 You have it long in your genes.

disagree that it's genetic, but agree about the culture.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 10:59|| 2006-08-28 10:59|| Front Page Top

#10 lotp, can behavior be bred in dogs?

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-08-28 12:00|| 2006-08-28 12:00|| Front Page Top

#11 In dogs, *temperament* is about 75 % genetic. Behavior less so, although it is possible to concentrate some instincts through selective breeding, i.e. retrieving birds or herding sheep. The instincts only control the ease or difficulty of teaching the behavior, not the behavior itself. Even top bird dogs need training for a reliable and soft-mouthed retrieve; excellent border collies still need training to herd and not kill the sheep.

Humans, of course, have a neocortex which changes the inherited vs. learned balance significantly. We are generalists who often over-ride instinct and sensory inputs in order to achieve higher level reasoning which is beyond dogs.

Even beyond the dog of mine who figured out how to push the chair up to the fridge, move the door lever and dispense ice cubes to the rest of the pack. I'm not so sure, though, about the springer spaniel I knew who could open the fridge door, retrieve a beer and pop the top for his owner (true story).

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 12:20|| 2006-08-28 12:20|| Front Page Top

#12 When we shopped for an Australian shepherd, numerous people warned us to be sure to get one from a breeder who bred out the herding behavior or else our children would only be allowed to play in one corner of the yard. Having gotten one that was de-bred, I'd hate to see what the regular ones are like.

I suspect one of the most fertile areas of research over the next few decades will be determining how these learned behaviors become hard wired. In all animals.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-08-28 12:38|| 2006-08-28 12:38|| Front Page Top

#13 Yes, the instincts can be quite strong. I know of a couple larger herding dogs who collect joggers. ;-) I was distinguishing between instinctual behaviors and the full behaviors of a working dog.

re: how learning occurs, lots has already been learned on that NS. Check out Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation for a summary of the results regarding how animals 'think', as of a couple years ago. I don't agree with some of her overly-broad statements about breeders, but she's up on the neuroscience of animal instinct and 'cognition'.

Re: how repeated behaviors coalesce into regular patterns, I do know of a couple research papers in cognitive / neuroscience I can refer you to if you want to dig into them. Heavy slogging.

In any case I wouldn't say that learned behaviors become "hard wired" - that's shades of 1930s Soviet science (Lyshenko). but certainly selective breeding can inhibit or exaggerate certain instincts.

The interaction of cultural environment with cognition is one that interests me a lot due to my research area. There are some neuroscientists who think they can explain how and why all concepts are formed by humans in response to the environment and then are heavily reinforced over time, becoming very hard or impossible to change in later years.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 13:02|| 2006-08-28 13:02|| Front Page Top

#14 So, are Arabs missing the neocortex ? Or is this proof of dogs in the gene pool of past Arabs ?
I know the jury is still out on various grazing animals in the old gene pool. How else would they come up with a political party like the baaaath ?
And ululating, I'm sure anyone with a neocortex can't ululate. More next week when we take a closer look at dung beatles.

Posted by wxjames 2006-08-28 13:07|| 2006-08-28 13:07|| Front Page Top

#15 The typical Arab culture certainly influences some very deeply embedded behaviors and feelings. Arabs aren't the only ones who sometimes set aside reason for emotional response, but their culture sure seems to promote it whereas ours (used to) reward detatchment and objectivity to a higher degree.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 13:12|| 2006-08-28 13:12|| Front Page Top

#16 While my sympathy meter might be at zero, my surprise meter is at ten. Hamad is a very honest man - or at least hes being honest at the moment.

Posted by Secret Master 2006-08-28 13:12|| 2006-08-28 13:12|| Front Page Top

#17 There are some neuroscientists who think they can explain how and why all concepts are formed by humans in response to the environment and then are heavily reinforced over time, becoming very hard or impossible to change in later years.

With in individuals, as opposed to populations?

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-08-28 13:25|| 2006-08-28 13:25|| Front Page Top

#18 Maybe he's just being honest with himself. He needs to beat himself senseless with a chain to purify his thoughts and return to the bosom of Islam.

Posted by wxjames 2006-08-28 13:26|| 2006-08-28 13:26|| Front Page Top

#19 Hamas spokesman: Gaza is caught in a nightmare of anarchy and thuggery.

FEMA trailers obviously needed.

Posted by Besoeker 2006-08-28 13:52|| 2006-08-28 13:52|| Front Page Top

#20 Cause, meet Effect.

Posted by mcsegeek1 2006-08-28 14:41|| 2006-08-28 14:41|| Front Page Top

#21 The book Before the Dawn is a good overview of the evolution of humankind for the last 50,000 years. The latest theories seem to support that human behavior has evolved a great during that time, as we evolved from spear throwing killer apes to neotenous and gracile town dwellers and farmers.

I've spent a lot of time wondering whether Islam's memes forces its "abds" (servants) into a certain pattern of sexual selection and genetic drift that reinforces and preserves tribalism. It certainly seems to have that effect wherever it takes root, from Morrocco to Indonesia.

In other words, Islam is a meme, propagated by a certain behavioral gene complex, that preserves that gene complex and maybe even helps select for that set of genes. No researcher would ever touch this thesis with a ten foot pole, but it's something to think about.

Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-28 14:57|| 2006-08-28 14:57|| Front Page Top

#22 I've spent a lot of time wondering whether Islam's memes forces its "abds" (servants) into a certain pattern of sexual selection and genetic drift that reinforces and preserves tribalism.

You might be onto something, 11A5S. Especially when you consider the extensive inbreeding that results from extremely long term apriori selection of first cousins as mates. This would tend to concentrate the gene pool. Much like in bee hives where all of the workers share the same genetic material as the queen and therefore have no need to reproduce or compete internally.

The highly coalesced Arab genetics could easily be construed as fostering a propensity for tribalism (i.e., defensive clannishness or hive mind). The enhancement of recessive charateristics that comes from extensive inbreeding could promote ~~mild~~ severe retardation (i.e., profound lack of good judgement and predisposition to suicide), obsessive disorders (e.g., worship of Islam and martyrdom), anti-social behavior (i.e., xenophobia and homicidal mania) and a host of other negative or unproductive traits (e.g., Arab mentality in general).

Posted by Zenster 2006-08-28 15:39|| 2006-08-28 15:39|| Front Page Top

#23 With in individuals, as opposed to populations? (from #17)

NS, yes. The author I have in mind is a neuroscientist who believes he has tied the cascades of neurotransmitters associated with processing sensory input to the formation of concepts, where 'concept' like memory consists of a persisting pattern of reinforcing neuron discharges.

His key assertion is that this process is intimately linked in a feedback loop with the limbic system. In other words, to form and use concepts requires feedback from the environment, including and especially feedback from the body language etc. of other people.

Over time, spoken language, and by extension memes and symbols in a culture, become the equivalent of a stored software program for such feedback. Repeated often enough, rituals, slogans etc. provide that feedback even in the absence of other people or in the face of contradictory evidence.

that at least is his thesis, and he has a lot of established evidence about the nervous system to back him up. Some parts of this are still speculative, however.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 16:10|| 2006-08-28 16:10|| Front Page Top

#24 You might be onto something, 11A5S. Especially when you consider the extensive inbreeding that results from extremely long term apriori selection of first cousins as mates. This would tend to concentrate the gene pool. Much like in bee hives where all of the workers share the same genetic material as the queen and therefore have no need to reproduce or compete internally.

Does this also explain ......... "soul food?"

Posted by Besoeker 2006-08-28 16:21|| 2006-08-28 16:21|| Front Page Top

#25 we COULD have an interesting discussion of Gazan politics, and discuss how CONTRARY to a wide range of lefty opinion, the economic sanctions on Gaza, together with Israeli sanctions, are having the desired effect, etc, etc.

But, no, weve got to go racialist. Look, sure, human behavior may be bred over 50 THOUSAND years. Islam has been a distinctive force for only 1300 years, a fraction of the time. And a very large percentage of muslims are descended from relatively recent mass conversions - Indonesia in the 1400s. Egypt was over half christian in the late middle ages. Central Asia, Turkey, northern Nigeria, etc.

And dogs, you know are VERY carefully bred under very controlled conditions. Nothing like that for humans, even under slavery.

This isnt even worth replying to in detail, and its a blot on a cite like this.

Stupidity in Palestinian politics is a result, IMHO, of the meme of arab nationalism, magnified by an extreme sense of victimhood, reinforced by propaganda from the Arab world, the muslim world, and from the West. Arab nationalism has managed to infect many Palestinian Christians, and the extreme politics of victimhood can impact ANY people, with ANY genes.

Take a Pal away from those damaging memes, and their genes will be just fine.

Posted by liberalhawk 2006-08-28 17:16|| 2006-08-28 17:16|| Front Page Top

#26 zenster - but the in breeding wouldnt change the distribution of genes in the population, it would only mean more of the recessive traits would come out in a heavily inbred population. So youd expect arabs living in urban areas, like Cairo, or Ramallah, to display far fewer of these traits than those in rural areas where 1st cousin marriage is more universal.

Yet my impression is that urban populations in Palestine display those negative traits, other than religiosity, at least as intensely if not more so than rural populations. And of course the association of rural living with religiosity is widespread in the Christian west as well.

Posted by liberalhawk 2006-08-28 17:21|| 2006-08-28 17:21|| Front Page Top

#27 lh, I agree - the genetic/racial slant on behavior in Gaza isn't productive.

One correction, though. While it is true that purebred dogs (at least in the circles I travel in) are bred with great care for the selection of traits desired, it is at least theoretically true that extended inbreeding of ANY population will change the distribution of genes over generations.

That's because genes aren't inherited individually, but via chromosomes which transmit (or eliminate) large numbers of genes at once.

But I'll go back to my earlier point: culture has a substantial effect on the behavior, thoughts and feelings of people. Given a strong enough element in a culture -- religious, political or whatever -- that effect can be very hard to step outside of, even when one wants to.

Most Palestinians are caught in a self-reinforcing cycle of hatred and violence. In one sense that is the result of their choices, or rather of the choices of their parents and others around them. But I know enough about how that works to also believe that changing that cycle will not happen easily or quickly.

see: Northern Ireland.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 18:36|| 2006-08-28 18:36|| Front Page Top

#28 Anybody have a suggestion for a picture of "the bacteria of stupidity". Could be priceless.

Posted by Mark Z 2006-08-28 18:39|| 2006-08-28 18:39|| Front Page Top

#29 Bullshit Liberalhawk. Read the book that I linked. The new theories predict that substantial genetic change can occur in a population in centuries due to sexual selection and genetic drift. If you don't understand what sexual selection and genetic drift are, then google them and find out. You obviously understand neither based upon your comments.

Science is science. It is an equal opportunity trampler of our preconceptions. 11,000 years ago, there was a sudden and substantial gracilization of the human race. It is well documented in the fossil record. Is that racist?

Pygmytization is another well know example of rapid phenotypical change. Is that "racist" or is it science? So is rapid change in skin pigmentation when populations immigrate into cooler or hotter regions. Lactose tolerance seems to have emerged independently in two geographically isolated populations (Bantus and Caucasians) within a thousand years of them starting to herd. In both cases, it spread rapidly throughout the population. Is it racist because the Asian peoples didn't develop and spread the same gene?

If in effect humans became "tame" 11,000 years ago and did so in the space of one two millenium, why can't other genes spread just as rapidly? And don't hide behind the racist shield. Let's debate.

Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-28 18:54|| 2006-08-28 18:54|| Front Page Top

#30 lopt: Is it not productive because it is the "taboo of taboos" in our society or because it is bad science?

Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-28 18:56|| 2006-08-28 18:56|| Front Page Top

#31 All this lawlessness, bulluing and thugery if arabic society was described in detail many, many years ago. Just read the novel by a Nobel winner, Egiptian, Naguib Mahfouz "Children of Gebelawi". It's like Ghazi Hamad was reading a paragraph from the book.

Posted by wonderer 2006-08-28 18:58|| 2006-08-28 18:58|| Front Page Top

#32 In this case, because it is bad science IMO. Or rather, a mis-application of some true science.

I deliberately mentioned a neuroscientist above who makes the strongest claims I've seen for the role of neurochemistry in how people think and feel. I find his argument unconvincing in several points, but even if I accepted it, it takes more than a couple generations for a genetic shift of the sort you're positing, ESPECIALLY as regards higher thinking functions that characterize humans.

Case in point. A Soviet scientist a couple decades ago wanted to see what it took to domesticate canids (wolves and related species). He started with wild foxes that had been trapped. His breeding criterion was very simple: he only bred the tamest foxes in each generation to each other. That meant a very severe population bottleneck and few individuals in each successive generation.

It took 5 generations to produce foxes that resembled domesticated dogs to some degree in their behavior, which is essentially that of a wolf cub. Dogs are permanently juvenile wolves. These foxes weren't fully domesticated, but they showed enough signs of neoteny to be of interest.

This took 5 generations in a) a very small population which got inbred very quickly and b) excluding any other breeding matches and c) in a species which lacks the neocortical parts of the brain that give humans language, art and other complex behaviors and whose function is much more tied to experience, and much less hard-wired, than the other brain functions.

Trying to scale that up to draw conclusions about the Palestinians in Gaza is a stretch too far, IMO.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 19:31|| 2006-08-28 19:31|| Front Page Top

#33 lotp, consider the difference between societies build on reciprocal cooperation and societies build on kin selection.

Posted by gromgoru 2006-08-28 19:43|| 2006-08-28 19:43|| Front Page Top

#34 Yes, the latter does restrict the gene pool to a fair degree.

But it is significantly over-simplifying things to jump from there to the suggestion that a couple generations of Palestinians breeding among themselves with little outside infusion of new genes -- even positing it was that controlled, which I doubt -- would account for the violence in Gaza.

Much more significant, IMO, is the cultural influence and the way in which the cultural meme-pool has become inbred.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 20:08|| 2006-08-28 20:08|| Front Page Top

#35 I vote for cultural. Human cultural evolution is Lamarkian rather than Darwinian -- that is that successful memes are taught directly and exclusively to the rest of the population, rather than being differentially inherited by offspring and spreading by statistical osmosis -- hence much more quickly takes over the population. The very fact that the Palestinians changed from a passive subsistance economy with a few active fedayeen attacking the Jews back in the 1890s-1940s to population almost universally mobilized in the resistance in three generations is impossible if one posits genetic drift -- even in a small population practicing close-relative in-breeding extensively enough that there is a significantly higher than normal level of visible birth defects.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-28 20:38|| 2006-08-28 20:38|| Front Page Top

#36 I would agree that culture probablyu has more to do with it, but how long have the Palestinians been tribal? More than a "couple" of generations. At five per century, we could be talking as many as 70 just since Big Mo. That's starting to be a large number.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-08-28 20:40|| 2006-08-28 20:40|| Front Page Top

#37 However, for most of those generations the population among which kin-marriage occurred was much less restricted then among Palestinians in Gaza today.

IIRC (and I might not) the Arab tribes who were more settled (i.e. those who weren't primarily herdsmen) considered 'cousin' to include 'close relative of someone who married into the immediate family'. I know older Palestinians whose immediate relatives live in and married among Egyptians, Jordanians and Lebanese and I don't get the sense that they were in any way unusual.

Another example: Arafat was born in Cairo and only distantly related to the Jerusalem family on whose basis he claimed to be palestinian by birth.

Posted by lotp 2006-08-28 20:47|| 2006-08-28 20:47|| Front Page Top

#38 I saw a television special about lotp's foxes some time ago. One unexpected result of breeding for tameness was that the beautiful species coat colouring was lost to random mottling and spots, like mixed-breed domesticated dogs. I'd understood that one of the objectives of the breeding program was to create a tamed-fox fur industry, in order to more easily produce fur coats.

Most of the Palestinians arrived there well past 1890, when Mark Twain wandered through on a round- the-world cruise, and wrote how very empty the Holy Land was. I believe that Yasser Arafat's Fatah/PLO defined as Palestinian anyone was setteld there at least three years before Israel achieved statehood. So we're talking only three generations to go from passive serfs to the current dog's breakfast they've made of themselves. Four generations if you want to include the current school children, and take into account early marriages, rather than the standard measurement of thirty years per generation.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-28 20:55|| 2006-08-28 20:55|| Front Page Top

#39 The Gaza Strip Palestinians were and still are tied to Egypt by kin ties. I think Yasser Arafat was a nephew of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem so loved by Hitler. The West Bank Palestinians have kin ties in Jordan. And they do not intermarry, or even socialize, for the most part, as I understand it. Hence the complaints of the Fatah men exiled after the Bethleham church siege to Gaza -- they couldn't get jobs or wives because nobody would have anything to do with them.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-28 21:00|| 2006-08-28 21:00|| Front Page Top

#40 So the Palestinians are just Egyptians who went for a visit to Canaan and decided to stay? No true independent ethnicity beyond three generations? I ask seriously.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-08-28 21:15|| 2006-08-28 21:15|| Front Page Top

#41 Jordanian on the West Bank side, Nimble Spemble. And there are probably some with ties to Lebanon and Syria as well, because when the Jews settled they created economic opportunites (paying jobs and arable land in what had been swamp and desert) where there had been none before. Some few of the Palestinians had been there before, and certainly the survival rate of their babies went up significantly once they started taking advantage of the modern medicine provided by the Jews, but until the establishment of Israel in 1948 it was the Jews that were called "Palestinians", and the others insisted they were simply local members of the Arab nation until the PLO/Fatah was establish in the mid-1960s. At least that's my understanding.

Posted by trailing wife 2006-08-28 21:25|| 2006-08-28 21:25|| Front Page Top

#42 If any group has a legitimate claim to Palestine based on pre-1948 occupancy, it's the bedouin. Bedouin serve in the Israeli Army and are happy to kill Palestinians. I wonder why?

Posted by phil_b 2006-08-28 21:39|| 2006-08-28 21:39|| Front Page Top

#43 You reap what you sow.

Posted by 3dc 2006-08-28 21:41|| 2006-08-28 21:41|| Front Page Top

#44 Does boinking your forehead on the ground 5 times a day count as a pre-conditioner to genetic modification?

Posted by Phineter Thraviger1073 2006-08-28 22:56|| 2006-08-28 22:56|| Front Page Top

#45 lotp: 1. You are distorting my argument. I am not talking about Gaza. I was talking about Islam as a vehicle for sexual selection. I made that quite clear in my first post. 2. Breeding for domestication may require the modification of dozens of gene complexes. Typically predators are much harder to domesticate than herd animals, since herd animals are already half domesticated already due to their lack of territoritality and social structure. You completely fail to address sexual selection in your counter argument. Tribalism, may only require two phenotypical traits: an increased suspicion of the others, what one might call paranoia; and an increased ability for individuals to simultaneously navigate a tribal and a physical reality, what some call split personality. Paranoia is treated by our current pharmacopia of "get a bigger hammer" psychotropic drugs. That shows that it may be related to a one or more receptor sites or neurotransmitters. Thus it may be determined by just a few genes. Split personality seems to be more complex and probably is the result of a more complex interaction of genes. This will be tougher to address.

Sexual selection is how selfish genes try to propagate themselves and exclude other genes. I am not talking about selfish genes in the sociobiological sense here. Selfish in this context means in a competition of genes in a species.

I am very disapointed in you and LH. While people here go on and on about genocidal solutions militant Islam, I am proposing a path to a pharmacological solution. Do you think that might be a little more humane than nuking half a billion people?

If you all would read and think instead of rushing to judgement and accusing me of racism, maybe we could hve an honest debate. Well I guess I am now the site racist. Boo.

Posted by 11A5S 2006-08-28 23:57|| 2006-08-28 23:57|| Front Page Top

23:57 11A5S
23:55 Zenster
23:50 JosephMendiola
23:46 Seafarious
23:42 Chuck
23:41 Shush Sholuth7794
23:39 Shush Sholuth7794
23:31 Barbara Skolaut
23:26 Barbara Skolaut
23:24 DMFD
23:23 Swamp Blondie
23:13 mhw
23:11 Swamp Blondie
23:05 JosephMendiola
22:59 JosephMendiola
22:57 Barbara Skolaut
22:56 Phineter Thraviger1073
22:56 Pappy
22:54 Frank G
22:52 Frank G
22:45 JosephMendiola
22:40 JosephMendiola
22:38 Fred
22:37 Phil