Certainly, although if you read my post (when you have more leasure), you will see that the part of my argument you quoted was directed at the Martyr’s Brigades issues. I don’t think anyone would argue that evidence indicating Martyr’s Brigades officials are saying that Arafat is in command, or that indicates that Arafat’s faction payed for such attacks, is “not pertinant to the thesis” - the “thesis” being that Arafat is responsible for those attacks.
On the Lebanon issue, I think you will find sufficient additional information concerning PLO activities in Lebanon to convince you that they did indeed commit terrorist attacks. I think most people would agree that randomly slaughtering people in order to inspire terror counts as “terrorism”.
Although I will grant you this - there are no precise figures as to how many died in these massacres. Just that many occurred. The “tens of thousands” estimate undoubtably includes both victims of terrorist murders and non-terrorist fatalities. However, the total of terrorist murders was clearly quite large, given that the victims of only one such massacre of the sixteen or so listed in the Senate testimony- at Damur - yeilded enough surviving sons of parents massacred to form an entire brigade, which committed the massacre of Palistinians at Sabra - according to Indict Sharon.
Given that fact, I have no hesitation in saying that the numbers of victims of Palistinian terrorism, for which Arafat is responsible, exceeds the number for which Bin Laden is responsible, given that the former number = (1)Israeli victims of terrorism before Arafat renounced it, (2)victims of the Martyr’s Brigades after Arafat renounced terrorism, and (3)victims of massacres of Christian civilians in Lebanon caused by the PLO.
The last number is probably the highest, and least known. The total number will probably never be known. In any event, it is difficult to seperate out terrorist victims from those casualties caused by warfare, on the one hand, and terrorist victims of the PLO and those of other groups not under Arafat’s control on the other.
But these difficulties do not obscure the fact that Arafat is directly responsible for thousands of deaths by massacre and terrorism.
Awhile back, we had a poster in the Pit who’d missed his pitting some months previously, just noticed it, and was now responding. The advisability of bringing the matter up at that point was debatable.
Noting and responding succinctly to a piece of self-serving tripe posted a couple of pages back in an active thread seemed justified to me. Your view on the statute of limitations may differ.
Maybe so. I just thought that, generally, such a notation ought to be directed at the tactics of someone participating in the current debate.
The risk of bringing it up in the middle of a factual debate, is that the debate will get sidetracked away from the current (relatively reasonable) track into a mutual bashing match, in which nothing of interest will be discussed or learned. There was some of that earlier, and it wasn’t much fun really.
Personally, I welcome those who challenge my views - even forcefully - so long as that challenge is based in argument and fact. The best revenge on those claiming, as the linked comment claims, that all those opposed to his or her viewpoint always use tactics of ad hominum, intimidation and distraction, is to prove them totally and utterly wrong by your own behaviour.
Not that this should prevent you or anyone else from pointing out prejudice - where it occurs. I fully agree that claiming your opponents use ad hominum arguments, when they do not, is really just a form of ad hominum itself. Ditto using such a claim to pull the sting from accusations of prejudice, when those accusations are accurate.
The best way to avoid this mess is to frankly say, “here is where I am coming from. This is what I base it on. Here are the facts, and this is why I believe them to be accurate”. In that way, your opponents will be forced to either: (1) accept what you have to say as accurate; (2) respond in kind with facts and arguments; or (3) reveal themselves to be hopelessly biased.
I haven’t got a problem with the last few pages, as far as Ad Homs go.