Zcom_simple

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

Maoz: The Israeli Nonpolicy of Peace in the Middle East

By Michael McGehee at Mar 13, 2009


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From Chapter 10, Never Missing an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity; The Israeli Nonpolicy of Peace in the Middle East of Zeev Maoz's book, Defending the Holy Land; A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security & Foreign Policy:

"Israel's decision makers [from 1949 through the present] were as reluctant and risk averse when it came to making peace as they were daring and trigger happy when it came to making war. Second, the official Israeli decision makers typically did not initiate peace overtures; most of the peace initiatives in the Arab-Israeli conflict came either from the Arab world, from the international community, or from grass-roots and informal channels. Third, when Israel was willing to take risks for peace, they usually paid off. The Arabs generally showed a remarkable tendency for compliance with their treaty obligations. In quite a few cases, it was Israel – rather than the Arabs – that violated formal and informal agreements."

Maoz also points out that when Israel took "risks for peace" those risks entailed little risks at all or after being shown the risks of not accepting peace.

For example, in 1971 Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat offered Israel peace. Israel rejected. In 1973 Egypt attacked Israel and showed it was militarily stronger than Israel thought. Israel then accepted peace.

Israel accepted peace from Jordan but there was no risk, no cost. Pretty much Jordan capitulated to Israel.

From 1953 to 1979 Israel accepted peace from Iran, but again it received more than it gave.

Israel's motives for peace or the denying of it has largely centered around its malignantly perceived self-interests, which Maoz attributes to the domination of the security establishment within Israeli politics.
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