You need to show some basis for that. These collaborators are probably just apolitical guys taking payoffs from the Israelis.
total hijack for which I apologize, but I really, really want to know:
december - did your wife join the SDMB ?? D & R
I’m not a big fan of using links from .org websites to get the truth about a matter. Or information about Palestine from a site called jewishjournal.com. Not to discredit december’s other links, but those are suspect, IMHO.
If Israel has actual evidence of Arafat’s complicity in terrorism, then they should arrest him and try him and present the evidence in a public forum.
The notion that it is unreasonable to negotiate “in the face of terrorism” is exactly what Britain held for years, prolonging the Northern Ireland situation by providing the IRA (and, indirectly, their Protestant opponents) ongoing material for recruitment drives.
Israel has maintained the same position for over 30 years of escalating violence. Britain and Spain finally turned from that policy, maintained negotiations despite periodic resurgences, and have seen violence begin to diminish.
For the sake of keeping this discussion somewhat on track, I’m not even going to address the morality of actively promoting a state for the man who thinks it acceptable to use terrorist activities “only” as a means to achieving a state.
And no, I’m not “assuming” anything. Plenty of evidence exists of Arafat’s complicity and involvement in terrorist activities against Israel. Forgetting even about his support for Hamas, Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are both part of his Fatah movement. To say he is not responsible for their actions is sort of like saying Bush is not responsible for the actions of the Justice Department. He might not personally plan or even individually authorize their actions, but his continued acceptance of terrorist groups within his own movement renders him culpable. Your point about power leading to the elimination of Hamas is incorrect and irrelevant; Hamas will still be a force in Palestinian politics, and even if it won’t, Arafat will still engage in anti-Israel terrorism, as most of his career has been based on opposition to the existence of Israel. In any case, you still haven’t proven that it’s a reasonable assumption that more power to Arafat will end terrorist activities, which is the inherent implication of the idea that Israel should totally ignore terrorism against it and keep going on with the “peace process”.
Actually, I agree 100%. Unfortunately, the UN and Arafat’s EU pals will never go for it. Israel would face massive diplomatic and economic sanctions for trying to put Arafat on trial.
On your IRA point, the IRA was never opposed to the existence of England. Oh, and it didn’t have the financial and moral backing of 10 other Irish states.
On the moderate issue, one example you might want to check out (I can’t testify to december’s “hundreds”, though given Arafat’s character it wouldn’t surprise me) is Zuhair Hamdan. I realize the source isn’t necessarily the least biased, but a quick search will reveal that the story presented is basically true.
“If you make a deal and the other side
does not live up to its commitments under the deal, you are yourself freed from adhering to the deal.”
If the Israeli government felt that the Palestinians were completely ignoring their obligations they should have walked out of Oslo. As long as they continued to work within the Oslo framework they had a responsibility to try to fulfil their obligations which they didn’t. Besides you have yet to show how the Palestinians were the larger culprits. All you have done is to assert that the list of violations I gave were a matter of “interpretation”
“See above. (Are you now asserting that settlements were banned under Oslo? I’d like to see a source for this).”
I am not sure what you are saying here. My first reply to December was to his statement along the lines of : the Israelis heroically tried for peace and the Palestinians rejected it. I believe both the NY Times article and the gush-shalom link refute that simplistic analysis.
As for settlements, I don’t know if they technically violate Oslo but they violate its spirit and were an act of bad faith in addition to being illegal under UN SC resolutions. They are an act of bad faith because they represent the Israeli government busily grabbing Palestinian land during an interim peace process designed on the principle of “land for peace”. Naturally this made the Palestinians suspicious of the peace process.
“Who are “most independent analysts” and how do you come by their opinion?”
Well leader writers for the NYTimes,Economist, WaPo etc. who are not known to have a particular axe to grind.
As for “practical matter” using your argument, you could just as well say that as a practical matter Palestinian terrorism was an established fact at the time of Oslo and that promising to stop it was a “great concession” on the part of the Palestinians. I think , rather , it makes sense to not blindly accept the status quo but inquire into its legitimacy before judging who is making the larger concessions. Neither promising to stop terrorism nor promising to withdraw were great concessions and neither side fulfilled those obligations properly.
December,
Your list doesn’t substantiate “hundreds” killed let alone the notion that all those killed are “moderates”. Let’s chalk this down as another example of Israeli apologists indulging in fantastic claims exactly on par with the worst of the Palestinian apologists. Really, considering that Israel stands for Democracy, Free Speech and Truth, one would think y’all would do better. :rolleyes:
No, but “Dr. Dec” would be an appropriate name for her. Actually she’s too hard-working and serious to ever spend time on a message board like this one. And, she’s too unassuming to call herself “Dr,” except in an academic setting.
That was simply a quick search. My cites certainly showed that Palestinians have killed at least dozens of other Palestinians, for being moderates or “suspected collaborators.”
Back to the OP. Israel has arrested one or two or three Palestinians, who may or may not be moderates, depending on who you believe. Why are some liberals more concerned about these arrests than they are about the murder or execution of at least dozens by other Palestinians? 
I do not oppose the death penalty CP, but I suspect you and tomndebb and Sparc do. I’m sure we all oppose lynching. Yet the execution or lynching of at least dozens of Palestinians by other Palestinians for political reasons concerns you less than the arrest of 2 or 3 Palestinians by the Israelis. What’s going on here?
I suspect that part of the inconsistency is ignorance of Palestinian misdeeds. The problem may be that some of you do not routinely read conservative sources, while liberal sources may censor or downplay a certain amont of stuff that would make Palestinians look bad. E.g., the New York Times underplayed the Palestinians’ public celebrations at the “success” of the bombing at Hebrew University. (Second item here)
You are once again automatically assuming that someone accused of collaborating with Israel is a moderate. Why don’t you provide a list of such persons killed and their respective positions which make them moderates?
I usually oppose extra-judicial killings of any kind; however Israel has killed dozens, possibly hundreds of Palestinians in the so-called “targetted assasinations” without due process and yet you seem a good deal less agitated about that. So I think the double-standards are on your side not mine. And note that I haven’t expressed any opinion about the arrest of the Palestinian moderates. In any case the reason that the arrests drew attention is not that they are an especially heinous act in themselves , but that they are an important signal about the intentions of the Israeli government.
<<I think the double standards are on your side not mine>>
Yes, CP, I do favor Israel. Most Americans favor israel, because unlike the Palestinians, they share our values, such as
Equality of women Democracy Rule of law Religious freedom Sexual preference is not a crime Education Industrialization World literature Modern science modern health care freedom of speechcivilian rule
They share your values too.
So, why do you favor their enemies?
For the love of all that is good, december, how many times do you need to be told, here and in the Pit, that:
Disapproving of Israeli policy != favoring Arab states
Excuse me while I run off and commit sepku.
We are not. You are imposing your own biased view on words, here, that have nothing to do with my concern for (or actions in response to) Palestinian sins.
The discussion is why do we “support” (your incorrect word, not mine) Palestinians over Israel. The discussion is not “Who has done bad things in the region?”
When someone wanders in here and posts that Israel is evil and deserves to be overwhelmed by the Arabs (or driven into the sea or whatever), they are met with the same resistance that your genocidal musings have encountered. I recall several spirited exchanges with Sweet Willy and he was only challenging the specifics of the Israeli “Right of Return.”
The whole point that Sparc and Tamerlane and numerous others and I have made is that there is enough guilt to go around: now what practical solutions are there?
Your persistent response is to whine “But the other guys are ba-a-a-ad!” We don’t deny that. However, when you present horribly lop-sided claims, we respond against your claims. (Because if we do not, if we presented a perfectly balanced reply, you would simply take the pro-Sharon parts out of our presentations and say they outweight any pro-Palestinian points ands claim that Israel should just keep doing the same violence-promoting things it has been doing.) When the anti-ISraeli or anti-Jewish crowd posts, they are met with the same opposition that you meet. You simply ignore those posts (which are rather less frequent than your one-sided complaints) and charge everyone in the middle with being anti-Israel.
so ‘hundreds of moderates’ becomes ‘dozens of suspected collaborators’, of course assuming that was the motivation. Is this an official retraction of your unsubstantiated claim? Or at least an admission that it’s hyperbolic?
I don’t agree with this.
Good point. I think we’re at an impasse. This is how I remember it from following it over the years - I can’t prove it offhand.
I agree that we are getting a bit tangled up here as we venture far afield. The basic point is whether the Israelis can have reasonable confidence that concessions on their end will be met by peace from the Palestinians. Because the central problem from the Israeli end is that their concessions have the impact of strengthening the Arab ability to harm Israel and Israelis. So unless they can be reasonably sure that their concessions will not be used against them, it is not reasonable to expect them to make them.
I don’t think so - it is not reasonable to expect to get anything over and above what is spelled out in the agreement. (The issue may be a bit more complicated - I seem to recall that there is some issue involved over a policy of not creating new settlements but expanding old ones).
So you are asserting that you have surveyed the opinion of all such writers and most of them agree with you?
Well yes, if terrorism is so important to you, I guess your life will never be the same after you have to give it up…
Actually the New York Times is considered so biased against Israel that a local rabbi organized a boycott to get people to stop subscribing. The boycott was mentioned here.
Ok so lets see
New York Times
LA Times
Washington Post
CNN
BBC
The Guardian
The Independent ( I’m assuming this one. It does have Robert Fisk writing for it 
)
The Irish Times?
RTE?
London Times?
any other scurrilous rags out there that are bias to the ever misunderstood administration of Israel? BTW I bet there’s also a lot of stories about terrorists in them as well but that probably doesn’t matter does it. They printed stories that either reported somebody questioning Israel or they had the gall to do it themselves.
You’d think there was a free press or something.
December,
LIke Jimm said, opposing Israel’s policies doesn’t mean supporting its enemies.
To answer your main point, there is nothing democratic about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and while Israel has a right to fight terrorism there is nothing particularly democratic about its disproportianate and cruel methods in that fight . So there isn’t the least inconsistency in supporting democracy and opposing Israel’s specific policies.
As for the Times, the opinions of a few die-hard pro-Israeli malcontents isn’t of the slightest importance in evaluating its coverage and neither are the “findings” of two-bit propoganda outfits like CAMERA. Before they criticize the Times for its alleged lack of objectivity it would help if they learned the meaning of objectivity themselves.
Izzy,
“Because the central problem from the Israeli end is that their concessions have the impact of strengthening the Arab ability to harm Israel and Israelis”
This is debatable. Israel can always reverse any concessions; as for instance it is doing now with re-occupation. And you can equally well argue that if the Palestinians give up terrorism, Israel will respond by grabbing even more land through settlements.
“I don’t think so - it is not reasonable to expect to get anything over and above what is spelled out in the agreement”
First of all the settlements are illegal anyway under UNSC resolutions. Secondly you seem to be saying that the concept of “bad faith” or “spirit of the agreement” is meaningless and that if you follow of the letter of the agreement (which Israel didn’t anyway) you are fine. So you seem to have a problem with the concept of “bad faith” in itself.
“So you are asserting that you have surveyed the opinion of all such writers and most of them agree with you?”
I think it’s accurate to say that I have found that there is a consensus among such writers that the settlements are both illegitimate and counter-productive, yes.
Ouch!! Not so fast, please.
http://www.freeman.org/m_online/aug97/codevill.htm
“Since the purpose of Western governments’ - including Israel’s - support of the PA is precisely to encourage moderation and normal relations between Arabs and Jews, the PA’s killing of just the Arabs who deal most moderately and normally with Jews obviously defeats Western purposes. And yet Westerners seem ready enough to lend a hand to their own undoing. Unfortunately, this has been going on longer than most of us have been alive.”
“During the uprising in the late 1980s, some 800 “collaborators” were murdered, many of them simply Palestinians who had prospered under Israeli occupation.”
“After the 1993 Oslo accords gave him a statelet, Mr. Arafat quickly set about criminalizing “collaboration”–most famously with a law making the sale of land to Jews punishable by death. But those who get a trial are the lucky ones. Seven decades of “collaborator” killings have silenced or driven out many who would be open to coexistence with Israel.”
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/pa/isrpa1101-04.htm#P504_81339
“During the first Intifada, before the PA was established, hundreds of alleged collaborators were lynched, tortured or killed, at times with the implied support of the PLO. Street killings of alleged collaborators continue in the current Intifada (see below) but so far in much fewer numbers. During this Intifada, the PA has arrested hundreds of suspected collaborators, tortured many to extract confessions, put some on trial, and televised confessions.”
“The term “collaborator” has several broad and sometimes ill-defined meanings…”
There are, however, other meanings of collaborator that were more relevant to the period of the Israeli occupation through 1994. The “intermediary” (al-wasit) helped Palestinians do the complex paper work and security checks the Israelis required before granting most services. The “armed collaborator” (al-‛amil al-musallah) accompanied Israeli Special Forces to identify the houses of wanted activists. Palestinians have also spoken about the “economic collaborators” who tried to promote Israeli products on the Palestinian market, often acting as representatives of Israeli companies, and the “political collaborators” who officially or informally represented Israeli interests, sometimes taking on positions of authority in local administrations.
In the tensions of the current conflict almost anyone fitting these descriptions is at risk of being denounced or killed by unknown attackers or arrested by security forces, even for activities committed many years ago during the Israeli occupation."
From “A History of Israel” by Howard M. Sachar;
Neither did the intifada leave the seven hundred thousand Arab citizens of Israel unaffected. As early as December 21, 1987, a solidarity “Day of Peace” became the occasion for a vast public outpouring…By the end of 1987, however, fully a third of the 2,700 attacks carried out by Palestinian activists were perpetrated against fellow Arabs.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1932362.stm
“The Palestinian intifada leader Marwan Barghouti will be put on trial in Israel for the “murder of hundreds of Israelis,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said.”
“He will be brought before an Israeli court for the murder of hundreds of Israelis, babies, children, women,” Mr Sharon said on army radio."
Somehow, if I can accept Collounsbury and tomndebbs characterization of Barghouti as a moderate when he has been legally charged with hundreds of murders (meaning that the Israelis are, in theory, planning to present their evidence in a public trial), then I can also accept that many of the hundreds of palestinians who were killed without benefit of charges, trial or defense were primarily chosen because of their moderate politics.
But, just to turn the tables a little, please show me any evidence that any of these victims was, in fact, a collaborator.
Are you seriously arguing this? Of course Israel can “always reverse any concessions”. The US can always invade Canada. But as a practical matter, for diplomatic reasons it is extremely difficult to take back the kind of concessions that Israel made. Even what they’ve done until now has been at enormous cost. (Which is besides for the fact that a lot of the damage has already been done - the terrorist arms build-up has been made possible, in large part, by the Israeli loss of control over those areas. Similarly, if they were to once again completely pull out there is reason to fear that the same will once again occur). By contrast, most or all of the Palestinian concessions are relatively easy to retract.
UNSC resolutions are not so meaningful when it comes to Israel - the entire agency seems to be biased against the country. Sometimes the US bails them out - sometimes it does not. I believe there is some question about the “legal” status of the WB/G due to the fact that Jordan renounced it’s claims to it and it was never an independent country. But I don’t think this is especially relevant anyway, as mentioned (meaning the “practical” issue).
I think bad faith is meaningful when there is something understood by both sides of an agreement. Generally it arises in cases where standard procedures and practices are in place, that the parties rely on in coming to the agreement. In this case, I don’t think this happened - the basis that you give for it being bad faith (i.e. the “illegal status” and the fact that the general principle of the agreements was land for peace) were likely not understood by both sides at the time of the agreement as a specific bar to anything not spelled out in the agreement. (In general, it seems that every comma in these agreements is being fought over tooth and nail - I don’t think an expansive reading of the terms under a “good faith” principle makes any sense in such circumstances).
That’s not what we’re talking about - you were asserting that they felt the Palestinians had made the greater concessions. (Hey, I’ll tell you that the settlements were a huge mistake - no argument about that).
UNSC resolutions are not “laws.”