[madaxe_again]

I wonder what an similar survey of the genetics of Palestinians living under occupation for five decades would show - and whether the epigenetic effect not only makes people more "fit" for dealing with trauma, but perhaps desensitised when it comes to inflicting trauma on others.

[tormeh]

As bad as the Israeli occupation is, it's not even in the same order of magnitude in terms of per-human suffering.

[leaveyou]

How did you measure the suffering ? If you just guesstimate the magnitude of the suffering I try a guesstimation too: In my opinion 4.5 years of intense suffering are in the same order of magnitude with 45 years of not so intense suffering. Unless some suffering is way more important than other suffering. I don't know.

[Retric]

Depends on scale, 3x or 100x both fail the 4.5 to 45 test.

PS: The reality is it's mostly propaganda right now, if things where as bad as generally portrayed you would see a lot of immigration. (ex: syrian refugees)

[sanderjd]

What evidence are you basing your reality on? Have you been there? Is there some on-the-ground reporting you trust that presents that view? Or are you only extrapolating from the relative lack of refugees? If so, there are lots of potential confounding variables, the most obvious being the relative tightness of borders in different areas.

[omonra]

You might also count the % or # of non-combatant population that was intentionally killed.

I also think that if palestinians were really suffering, they would agree to the terms offered to them. Repeatedly. The fact that they keep refusing to live in peace shows that things aren't all that bad.

Here is one fact - they are one of the most obese people on the planet: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=238_1406451164.

[jrochkind1]

> The fact that they keep refusing to live in peace shows that things aren't all that bad.

I think history shows it doesn't work like that. You can't oppress people into "wanting to live in peace", quite the reverse.

[omonra]

Not really. That's called losing a war. In most cases, when a war is lost, one side agrees to the terms they would probably deem unfavorable before the war had started. That's why we say they 'lost' the war.

[jrochkind1]

I think there are few if any post-WWII wars that works like your idealized model of war. Most of them have been very assymetric from the start, such that one state's population hardly has it's 'conditions' touched at all while another's way of life is completely destroyed -- but that doesn't mean the more powerful actor always 'wins'.

For instance, did the US 'lose' the Vietnam war, because the Vietnamese somehow made conditions in the U.S so horrible that the U.S. had to "agree to terms they would deem unfavorable before the war"? It just doesn't make sense to even try to frame it that way.

How about the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan, did one side 'win' because they made life so miserable for the other side that they were willing to accept conditions they would have seen as 'unfavorable' at the beginning? The question doesn't even make sense, it's got nothing to do with what happened. And indeed, it could be argued that the worse U.S. forces made the lives of Iraqis, the more resistance to U.S. forces there was, it got the U.S. no closer to 'victory' to immiserate Iraqis.

Let alone wars against 'internal enemies', which if you insist on framing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a war, it clearly is. Did hostilities between the UK government and the IRA cease because one side made the other so miserable they had to agree to terms they would have considered 'unfavorable' before? Again, it doesn't even make sense to frame it that way. If anything, the reverse, the Irish were no longer nearly as discriminated against or as subject to military occupation as they had been earlier in the conflict, and this in fact was pertinent in cessation of hostilities.

[oldmanjay]

oh, I didn't realize they tend to fat. I guess they've earned whatever terms Israel wants them to accept.

[omonra]

No, they lost a war. That's the reason someone accepts terms they don't like.

Them being fat just shows that there's clearly enough food to get fat off of.

[tome]

That snide comment seems unnecessary.