“Now the Americans know what Israel is going through”
(paraphrase)
I heard someone say something like this on the news. What is this man implying? That we deserve to know what they are going through? This is their war, and we are doing nothing but support Israel. This bastard that said this is one of the reasons I feel sympathetic for the Palestinians.
I would venture to say he was not implying anything, but merely making the observation that this country now has something to compare the Israeli’s fears against.
Making an observation, provided it is factual, does not necessarily mean the speaker has an ulterior motive.
I’ve said it today on the boards, but it bears repeating:
My wife who is Israeli saw a similar report, and the speaker was an American Journalist in Israel. If that makes you support Palestine then you are a pretty fucked up individual. It’s a statement of fact. My mother-in-law said she wished she could take back every time she ever said, “If only the US knew what we are going through.”
And I would like to add a general fuck you in response to your ignorant stance. Afghanistan has nothing to do with Israel’s war, as Bin Laden does. Arabs can’t just be lumped in. If England fucked someone over, no one would be ignorant enough to say that the US was part of it.
Your just another one of the redneck fucks I’ve seen popping out of the woodwork as of late. I am starting to realize that redneck has nothing to do with the common man, it’s a bunch of stupid ignorant hicks, I don’t care if you are from New York, Chicago, LA etc… you’re still a fucking ignorant hick.
Just in case you couldn’t understand hte first time I’ll spell I’ll help you to understand the difference between our current conflict.
Israel:
Enemy of the day: Palestine
America:
Enemy of the day: Bin Laden
Now, let me point out the similarities between Palestine and Bin Laden. They are both Arab. They probably both use Russian made rifles. They kind of follow the same religion.
Now for the differences, Palestine is a country, Bin Laden is an individual.
Dictionary.com defines:
Individual
n.
A single human considered apart from a society or community: the rights of the individual.
A human regarded as a unique personality: always treated her clients as individuals.
A person distinguished from others by a special quality.
Country
coun·try (kntr)
n. pl. coun·tries
A nation or state.
The territory of a nation or state; land.
Also, since you were able to get online and post, I will concede that you know how to read so I will just illustrate the differences in the way they look typed on a page and won’t go into more detail in the differences between letters in the names:
Bin Laden
Palestine
See if you count the characters including the space in Bin Laden’s name you will see that they have the same number of characters, however that is where the similarities end. I know they both share some vowels and consonants but because they are in different places in the letter order they are used to symbolize a different word. In this case, we are speaking of names, if you refer to the beginning of this lesson you will begin to realize that one is symbolizing an individual with it’s word order and the other is symbolizing a country.
Now because this is a text only message board I will not be able to show you a map unfortunately, but if you go to http://www.google.com and type afghanistan map or palestine map or asia map you will realize that they are REALLY FUCKING FAR FROM ONE ANOTHER. For reference imagine being in LA and New York at the same time. This is kind of the comparative distance we are looking at here. Now imagine if there were about five or six countries between the two, some hostile and some not, and you will begin to understand that they are REALLY FUCKING FAR FROM ONE ANOTHER.
Now, if this lesson was not adequate for you, I must apologize because that is all the time we have for today. If you continue to have these kinds of thoughts I would recommend refraining from original thought for a while. You do not show an aptitude for it and might end up hurting yourself before you’ve had more training as you almost did today.
If you have a problem not attempting to think original thoughts I will give you a prescription for some marijuana. You should be able to aquire this easily and cheaply from your neighborhood drug dealer.
Erek
We sided with Israel to offset the power-balance in the Middle-East from absolutely favoring the Soviet bloc so we wouldn’t lose that oil.
We walked into that situation baring all our teeth in a big teethy grin, which is fully typical of our international policy:
Talk loud and wield a big stick.
Many quotes have already surfaced about this attack being in response to our Middle-East policy.
Personally, I do not think the US should have been involved. Nor do I think the Soviet Union should have been involved. But we were. Oh well. We were involved for oil. And that’s how we fucked things up.
Of course, the perception of Israel and Palestine/Arabs/Terrorists (three groups which are egregiously lumped together) varies from person to person, but the one piece that people don’t generally see is that our involvement there has not helped the situation at all.
We arm Israel against its Arab neighbors, we condemn them for using force to deal with terrorism, and so on. We even armed many of those arab neighbors too, at various times, depending who among our enemies they were scrapping with at said various times.
And this, of course, is why there are nations in the world where people are celebrating what happened on Tuesday.
I live in Manhattan, and have inhaled the remains of the WTC for the last few days with millions of others. I stood on a balcony facing south and watched the rubble burn, and I also watched as hundreds of people moved in mob/riot formation trying to enter uptown busses. I walked down the middle traffic lanes of Fifth Avenue, like hundreds of others, in lieu of any and all automobiles, staring south past Washington Square to a skyline where a gigantic black cloud had descended on the Financial District, and two very distinct and recognizable objects on the horizon were decidedly absent.
This is interesting, as I reflect on my own experience in Israel, during this so-called Intifada. In late December, 2000, I was in a shopping mall in Tel Aviv when a bus bomb went off. It was less than five minutes from where we were. I was one of the first in my group to learn about it, as I happened to be in an electronics store with a live news broadcast playing on one of their televisions.
Even in Israel, we had managed to believe that the terror we read about on the news was always somewhere else. After all, even in populated areas with low concentrations of Palestinians [prime targets], we did not see people living in fear. We saw plenty of soldiers, but I saw more cops out in New York during the last Puerto Rican Day Parade. It was always somewhere else for we Americans, even in Israel!
It became quite real when the bus driver told us we’d passed straight through that area on our way to the mall.
In the Middle East, there is a situation where Palestinian radicals will accept nothing but absolute right of return, and where Israel is not unwilling to use force to defend its right to exist…
Which is to say that violence will not end until one side gets its way, or one side is annihilated – because with the Palestinian side, the people coming to the table, to carry out diplomacy, to attempt at peace, are not necessarily always the same people whose fingers are on those buttons. I believe there are those on both sides who approach the situation with perfectly good faith, while there are others who simply ruin it. Neither side can really throw stones as far as I’m concerned, because the Middle East is one gigantic glass house.
And now that we’ve caused all that trouble there, it would seem the war has come to us.
We may have more money, a larger military, a greater intelligence network,… but this country’s rather large {Israel is about the size of New Jersey)
The Empire State Building, Penn Station, and both NY airports have been evacuated on bomb scares in the last two days. Where next? You could fill the pages of an unabridged dictionary with suitable targets for suicide attacks.
So… when I read articles like the one by Lance Morrow,
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,174641,00.html
I realize that is what I am scared of.
Up until this point, our involvement in the Middle East began with oil, and has continued on with supporting our ally, and has continued on with the fomenting of several prejudiced, incomplete views of Arabs, Palestinians, terrorists, to the point where righteous indignance doesn’t remain righteous for long.
And thus, we too can be dragged down into this war of hate. This is not to say that reprisals of the stiffest variety are not in order for the culprits and those who aided them, but that we must be careful to know what we are doing to who, how and why.
Perhaps this should be a wakeup call for us all, indicating how we ought to change our dealings with and perceptions of the “outside world” in the future.
- Abundibot
Pretty stupid of us to side with the country that has no oil.
That’s why we sided with the Shah of Iran, and why we sided with Iraq in its war against Iran under Khomenei.
Our support for Israel has numerous reasons, not least of which that it is the only reasonably democratic country in the region.
I’m sorry, I was speaking out of emotion and I was talking completely out of my ass…I realize that we Palestine and Bin Laden are completely unrelated, and I don’t know where I got that Palestine sympathy thing.
Oh yes, we caused all the trouble there. :rolleyes:
Come back when you know what the hell you’re talking about.
Idiot.
MSWAS
Speaking of dumbass -
Palestine IS NOT a country. That is one of their chief concerns.
Also, try learning a little about grammar before you shit all over other people’s intelligence.
I’ll also add that Osama bin Laden is no friend of the PLO or the idea of a secular Palestinian state and is of a very different sect of Islam than the one practiced by most Palestinians.
- Tamerlane
It is not recognized by the UN as a country no. It does have a leadership and it does have sovereign territory.
Yes, as, we, all, know, grammar, has, much, to; do. with intelligence. the Anal rete-ntive fact "retainers’ ,in high school! pointed that’ out to me, many times. Fortunately most? of them realized their, fallacy when they got out of High School.
Erek
Dude, I won’t pick on you for your grammar (mine sucks!), but I have a few questions:
-If Palestine is a country, where is their capital? What are their boundries?
-If the main enemy of the US is Bin Laden (NOT yet proven, mind you!); is it JUST him, or the countries that support him as well? If not the countries that support him, then why not?
Your thoughts?
MSWAS-
Fine, forget about grammar - I won’t ask where you did (or did not) go to school.
But when you attack someone with such arrogance (“let me spell it out for you”) and then patronize with such ignorance, I get a bit pissed.
Palestine IS NOT a country (see note above). Your definitions are idiotic - Is the Taliban a country? According to your stupid rant, they are.
Learn before you teach.
Alright I will concede that Palestine is not a country as sorts, but it is sovereign.
The Taliban are the leadership of a country called Afghanistan.
And no, it’s not yet proven that Bin Laden is the real enemy in this.
Erek
Gee thanks, you learnin’ me so much des days, teacha.
Abundibot, are you Kayla under a different name? Kayla told us many times of a bomb at a bus stop.
Most people who have been to Israel have been involved in bomb scares. Many people have been involved in bombings. I have been to Israel 7 times and I have seen probably 15 or so unattended pieces of luggage blown up by the little bomb squad robot.