Looks like Sir John is in the same company as President Carter 
All based on facts, of course!
I’m sure we can also disprove Theory of relativity because Einstein had a kinda silly hairstyle.
Ah…appeals to authority. Those usually go over pretty big around here and definitely give your arguments a lot of weight…
It’s ok man…I already figured out that you gots nuffin. I’m probably the only one around here that noticed though, since a lot of folks on this board just blindly go for appeals to authority. Like lemmings these 'dopers…
-XT
What’d be really nice is if there was a thread about Israel where you didn’t avoid posting any real arguments or facts (like claiming that you ‘just know’ when things are illegal under international law because people were sniped at in Yugoslavia) , while instead you merely accuse people of being Israeli propagandists, or whatever. It’s funny, of course, that now you’re championing Carter, who is about as well known an agenda-driven liar as any on the I-P subject. Carter’s previous book on the subject was so shot through with massive, deliberate, agenda-driven lies that even his supporters should blush while offering it even faint praise.
Of course the two assertions of Shlaim’s you’ve mentioned are various flavors of dumb. The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 was done by their announcing their independence. That’s it. No great injustice there. And if things had ended at that point, there would have been no war and a sovereign Palestinian state in the region for more than 60 years.
However, in response, the nascent Israeli state was invaded in a war which was deliberately provoked, in large part, due to the Palestinians’ own leadership. As a result of the war, numerous people fled the fighting and due to Arab use of fifth columnists, irregulars and the attempt at committing genocide against Jerusalem’s Jews, a defensive plan to empty and control strategically vital locations was implemented. That exacerbated the psychological warfare and unjust expulsions which did indeed occur but were the small minority cause of refugees. After the war, the Arab nations refused to repatriate their citizens or allow refugees out of the camps and to immigrate as citizens, Israel refused non-citizens the right to come back especially considering that their loyalty was unknown and the vast majority of them had not held privately owned land in any case, and the Palestinian leaders themselves did everything they could to keep their people in the refugee camps and to scuttle any possible peace. The UN even colluded with them, demanding, for instance, that Israel stop building homes for Palestinans and put them back into the refugee camps instead, while the PLO threatened to murder any Palestinian who left the camps. And, of course, it was Egypt and Jordan who stopped there from being an independent Palestinian state in 1948 in the first place.
But of course, to claim that all the injustice is due to Israel, and ignore contemporary, subsequent and parallel factors is fine, since facts just get in the way of a good agenda. No bias.
:rolleyes:
As for gangster unscrupulous blah blah blah? As should be obvious, if the Israeli leadership really was without scruples, they would have conducted the war in exactly the same manner and with exactly the same goals as the Arab armies. In short, there would be no Arabs left in Israel. And precious few Palestinians outside of it.
Of course not all conduct of the war was savory or just. But bombastic hyperbole like Shlaim’s crap really just does help point out what his agenda is, and what he’ll ‘forget’ in order to support it.
As long as I’m at it, the sympathy grabbing picture that starts out the article is not just a “policeman”, but he’d be a member of Hamas’ privately directed security forces.
Shlaim also goes on to sling a few more lies for good measure. I’ll just touch on a few of them. He lies and says that Israeli troops controlled “all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air.” Of course, as proven by Egypt allowing Palestinians to cross its border, Israel did no such thing. He lies and claims that “the Israeli propaganda machine” (No bias! No bias!) “purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists,”. Of course, he has no actual quotes because it’s made up. At no point did Israel say, imply, or hint at all Palestinians being terrorists. Never has an official Israeli statement described “the Palestinians”, in toto, as being terrorists.
He also lies by omission while claiming that Hamas “moderated” its position. What he ‘forgets’ to mention is that Hamas explicitly continued to reject Israel’s right to exist and well as all previous treaties between the PA and Israel. In short, they made clear that any ceasefire would merely be a time for them to re-arm before resuming attacks. But of course, as newcomer ironically makes clear, the facts would be devastating for his case. So Shlaim can’t mention them.
He lies and claims that Israel broke the ceasefire, neglecting to mention that Israel’s November 4th raid was to stop an Hamas plan in progress which was designed to infiltrate Israel and kidnap IDF soldiers.
He lies and claims that Israel’s bombing was indiscriminate, when if that’d been true we’d have seen WWII level casualties. Even by the most anti-Israel estimates, the ratio was 1:2 militants to civilians. Others place it at 2:1 or even at a much smaller overall death toll than the 1200+ figure that’s been bandied about. No matter what the truth is, fighting a campaign in a densely packed urban area where Hamas used civilian shields and even tried to commandeer ambulances as troop carriers and having only 1 or 2 civilians killed for every militant is remarkable. Those who argue otherwise don’t understand war, at all, if they think Israel has some sort of Pixy Dust Bomb that can hit a densely packed urban environment and not lead to civilian casualties. The reality of the casualties shows that Israel was in fact quite discriminating in its strikes. (Cue: Ayieeee! Israel was discriminating against the Palestinians! Racism! Racism! Apartheid!)
Casualty counts are further confused by the fact that Hamas has a history of using children, and women, as combatants and/or suicide bombers and there were credible reports of children being used to deliver supplies and ammunition to Hamas positions during the fighting. Surely though, when Israeli unveils the PDB’s it’s no doubt been hiding in reserve, they will be able to selectively explode so that even teens who are carrying rockets to military positions are untouched by the blast. Pixy dust is some awesome stuff, and I for one support a full and immediate UN war crimes tribunal to find out why Israel was not forcing its enslaved pixies to produce weapons grade dust.
Ahem.
Shlaim goes on to lie and claim that restricting supplies is collective punishment and a violation of international law. When, in fact, the 4th GC makes clear that only things like food and medical supplies must be allowed into an occupied territory. And even then, there are a number of reasons that an occupying power can prevent their entry, including but not limited to forcing the occupied regime to absorb their cost itself.
I’d also note that we’ve been hearing for years now, how Gaza is ‘on the brink’ of a humanitarian crisis. It’s a little like the war in Iraq when we turned so many corners, it began to look something like a dodecahedron, or how, for years, we were told that Bush was 'just about to attack Iran!"
He also mentions the Arab League proposal and claims it was rejected because it contained “compromises”. Naturally, Shlaim doesn’t mention all the actual compromises Israel has negotiated and agreed on (Oslo, Wye, Camp David 2000, etc…) He also leaves out the fact that the so called “compromise” proposal would have left groups like Hamas with total freedom of movement and open borders, no guarantees of security, and merely a promise that somehow this would lead to peace down the road. It wasn’t a negotiated compromise, it was a demand that almost everything Hamas wanted would be given in to, and then peace would magically result.
Bah. That’s really as in-depth as I feel like getting with that piece of crap screed from Shlaim.
Ah well… as long as I’m at it, I’d like to touch on the curiously strange claim made that the Israeli occupation devastated Gaza’s economy. By Professor Efraim Karsh of King’s College, London (anti-Israel folks, feel free to ignore this out of hand. It’s reprinted on aish and was published in Commentary):
[
](http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/What_Occupation$.asp)
Thanks for the cite there Finn…that is definitely educational. I had read some of that before, but some of it was surprising.
-XT
No prob.
I should probably also add that I disagree with some of Karsh’s conclusions, such as Palestinians in the West Bank not being under occupation since Israeli military forces were at the borders of PA administrated territories rather than inside them. Although I do believe Karsh draws an important distinction between the type of occupation that saw Israel with troops inside PA territory and Israel controlling the social/governmental services, and not doing that.
Anyways, I’m sure there could be lots of debate on the peripheral issues of Karsh’s claims, but I just wanted to provide a cite for the economic reality.
I should probably also note that Shlaim and Karsh have gone at it in the past. Which is in keeping with Karsh’ work and scholarly ‘feud’ with the “New Historians.”
For what it’s worth, in the dustups between Shlaim and Karsh, I’ve generally found Karsh to be much more reliable.