If your assertion is correct, there should be more than five times as many threads about the Tamils than the Palestinians.
<vigorous applause for Sparc> There is nothing I can add to that post; you summed up my feelings on the matter perfectly.
Hi!
Before You read what I’m writing, please read the BBC news of today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_2059000/2059005.stm
If BBC is wrong, please let me know. (In the question that both sides kills civilians).
Quoting Edwino:
“Many of you IMHO are guilty of oversimplification. This is most decidedly not a cycle of violence. Much of the suicide bombing has little to do with Israeli occupation.”
Quoting Edwino:
“There have always been other options for the Palestinian people – you need nothing for civil disobedience – which have always been ignored because of Arafat’s history and his impotence to control popular momentum.”
How? If You read BBC-news, it will be quite obvious that the situation is only controlled by guns.
Quoting Edwino:
“Every major peace accord, every major peace conference, every major initiative for about the past 10 years has been accompanied by terror attacks on Israeli civilians.”
Personally I think they should attack the army instead. Killing civilians is a dirty business, even if I see illegal settlers as solidiers, but their children are innocent. And these will go back, when the army goes back (inside the UN-borders). And this is why the army does not go back.
All other explanations are crap.
Quoting Monty:
“On the other hand, there actually are good guys and bad guys in this issue: the good guys are the innocent civilians who’ve been murdered. The bad guys are the murderers”.
(I am not sure he means that both sides are bad, but I hope he will soon let me know).
Quoting rjung:
"The problem is that both sides are led by a bunch of poopy-heads, and a sizable chunk of the people they represent are also poopy-heads."
Yeah, this is the rub!
So some questions:
- What does Israel do in the West Bank?
- After decimating the indians in USA, some 100 years ago, some 50%(?), have the integration of these been successful? Or do You still have reservates? Are these guys peaceful and happy?
I am sure they are.
What to do at the west bank?
A little bit history. When the Finns were attacked by Stalin (occupying some land, wanting even more), the Finns were in great shortage of arms and without allies.
They invented the Molotov-coctail. (Molotov was the Soviet Foreign Minister at that time).
They also had snipers, shooting in first hand the Russian officers.
The regular army ambushed Russians and got more weapons and so on.
They did not kill civilians.
This last one was quite easy to keep, because they fought mainly in the woods. Finland had to make peace after fighting 110 days against a superior enemy.
And I am sure that if my father would have lived in Moscow at that time, he would have put a what-ever-bomb in Kremlin, even if he had died at the same time. If he had the means.
And he would not had a thought about how many civilians would have died.
And he would still be my hero.
So, when Stalin went on war, he got one. Right?
Or is it only legal to kill the enemy at the front? (I would probably give a shit about what my “Arafat” would say in this question).
And if there is no front?
So, if Your town would be occupied, what would You do? Lie down? Listen to some idiot saying that You should “intergrate” and do nothing?
Or to some other idiot (me) who says You should fight with all means You have?
I have never been at the west bank, but I think it is very hard for the Palestinian to fight, because the area is so small and there is so many civilians.
So, dear reader, if You are a patriot, would You defend Your country against any intruder?
I am, and I go against anyone that tries to occupy my country.
I would be happy if Israel would just put some bob-wire alonside it’s borders (those UN-borders) and watch their own country. Stalin should have also done that. (Kept himself inside Russia).
OK, I have to admit that Stalin was successful in his business, but we have had a peace now for 60 years, which is a good thing.
And we still owe our fathers that fought and made the peace, not occupation, possible.
I do not mean to hijack this tread, but it is so easy to be clever on land, when there is a storm at sea.
In my humble opinion; to tell that tere is no moral in bombing is bullshit.
But concentrate on the army, if You are solidiers not murderers.
So please answer: If Your neigbourhood would occupied, what would You do?
Leave it to the government, because You pay taxes?
Another interesting link from the BBC: Another interesting link from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_2057000/2057919.stm
Rather more than a 100 years ago, actually, and I don’t know where you get the 50% figure–it could be higher or lower. Yes, we still have reservations, but 1) Indians are citizens of the US, meaning they have all the rights of US citizens as granted and guaranteed by the Constitution. This is not the case of the Palestinians, and 2) Indians are also considered sovereign nations. Understandably, this sometimes leads to conflicts, which is a topic for another thread, I think.
I’m confused: was your father an ethnic Russian, or some other ethnicity within the bounds of the then-Soviet Union?
My mother was from a small town in Pennsylvania. During WWII, she lived and worked in NYC. At one time, there was great concern, almost a panic, that the Germans would invade NYC. She responded to that by pointing out that, if they did invade, they wouldn’t make it past the Appalachians, as everybody in that area over the age of 13 had a deer rifle and knew how to use it. Like you, I would defend my homeland (and the area in question in this thread is the Palestinians’ homeland, like it or not) to the death–and I wouldn’t care who I had to kill to defend it.
Going back to the Indian analogy, Indians killed civilian settlers–men, women, and children–in defense of their homeland. I think this is basic human nature.
A short underline.
In reference to my earlier link to the NYT article about Arien Ahmed, the suicide bomber who changed her mind and in re to my latest post I’d like to quote Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, in order to show that there is an understanding within the moderate fractions of the Israeli administration that the violence feeds violence.
It is remarkable that the man who is accountable for the acts of the IDF understands the dynamics of violence while carrying them out and that portions of the public including certain members on this board refuse to admit the possibility that the hard line retaliations against the suicide bombers is rather harmful as a means to stop them.
Sparc
I remember those statistics you posted quite well, MEBuckner, and I don’t disagree with your conclusion that the exodus of Jews from surrounding Arab countries is directly tied in with the foundation of the state of Israel - both because Jews wanted to emigrate there and because the reaction against the aggressiveness and intransigence with which it was founded caused severe reactions.
There’s one fundamental difference between all those displacements and injustices you list and the Israeli/Palestine conflict:
The US hasn’t given an aggregate of $90 billion in economic and military aid to Japan or Germany or the Tamils in order to assure the continued existence of those countries. Nor have Japan or Germany or even Sri Lanka been almost entirely dependent on US foreign aid in order to continue to exist. In Germany’s and Japan’s cases, obviously I’d allow that they probably were for a few years after the Second World War, but that is not the case now. Israel, on the other hand, would suffer an almost total economic collapse were the US to withdraw all its foreign aid immediately.
In all the other cases you describe, the US taking responsibility for righting those injustices would mean an increase in direct intervention in another country’s affairs. As far as Israel is concerned, the US taking responsibility for righting the injustice would entail a decrease in direct intervention. As an anti-imperialist, it’s quite clear to me which solution is the more preferable.
As for your assertion that withdrawal of support for Israel would result in a bloodbath, I would remind you that there is a difference between the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed. Only one of them is motivated by irrational hatred of the other. The Palestinians have turned to the violence of suicide bombing because they are fighting against vicious Israeli repression. Stop the repression, allow the Palestinians to live over the whole of Israeli territory as full equals under laws enacted in common between Jews and Arabs - hell, even work out a mutually acceptable plan of reparations for property stolen! - and I find it more than likely that the Palestinians will stop their violence as well.
<< Suicide bombings are wrong, but they are seen by those who plan and perpetrate them as the last, desperate chance to draw attention to their pligh >>
Total bullshit.
Rape is not about sex and the frustrated, “last desparate chance” of the rapist to have a “meaningful relation.” Rape is about violence and power.
Similarly, the suicide bombers are NOT an expression of the “last, desparate chance to draw attention to their plight,” nor are they an expression of the frustration of blah blah blah. They are about violence – about trying to kill Jews, as many Jews as possible. A soldier, a five-year old girl, a grandmother, a two month old infant, it doesn’t matter, they are all Jews and the suicide bombers want to kill them. It is based on hatred, not on frustration. It is based on bigotry, not on “drawing attention to their plight.”
The nonviolent movement by the Palestinian Authority WAS successful. It came very close to achieving peace, until Arafat pulled out and started the current wave of violence.
The OP says, “Prove me wrong.” No one can do that, because it is wrong, and the suicide murderers have no excuse except a fanatical hatred of Jews.
You may argue that they have justification for their hatred of Jews. I say that’s bullshit too. There’s people who claim that their hatred of blacks (or Catholics or Protestants or Germans or…) is justified as well. Sorry, but hatred, racism and bigotry have no justification other than hatred, racism, and bigotry.
I think that’s a poor analogy, in that many people mistake rape for a sex crime when it is indeed a crime of violence, whereas suicide bombing cannot be mistaken for anything other than a crime of violence.
I would submit that the violence is nor directed towards Jews per se, but Israelis. The majority of Israelis are Jews, certainly, but not all of them are. If Israel was comprised of a majority of, say, Zoroastrians, and the Palestinians were still in the same situation, then the targets would still be Israelis, whether they were Jewish or not.
So, no, it’s not about bigotry. The situation is far more complex than that.
I can’t possibly disagree with this more. The Palestinians who are committing the bombings do not have the goals you propose here. Their goals are to destroy the Jews. Islamic Jihad doesn’t want to live among the Jews as equals–that’s the last thing they want. They want the state of Israel dismantled and the Jews driven off of the land. The average Palestinian off the street may want what you describe, but they are not the ones conducting the bombings. The bombings are conducted by the militant Jew hating groups, who recruit disenfranchised and angry Palestinians and convince them that the bombings are the best way to achieve their goals.
The groups that are behind the bombings are like groups like Operation Rescue or the Southern Baptist Convention here in the U.S. By having the loudest, most strident, most hate-filled voice, they have managed to convince the public that they are the mainstream–but they are not.
And as far as irrational hatred goes, well . . . Jewish rescue workers provide aid to Palestinians. They treat Palestinian wounded in their hospitals. When a member of the IDF performs an action that results in the deaths of Palestinian civilians, he is subjected to investigation and possible trial and punishment.
Palestinian militant groups allow suicide bombers to hide in ambulances operated under the aegis of the Red Crescent. They hunt down so-called “collaborators” and allow them to be subject to mob violence, including lynchings, shootings and posthumous humiliation and dismemberment. They target people least likely to be in a position to defend themselves, and make sure their bombs are packed with nails and shrapnel to harm the largest number of people possible. They teach their children things like this.
You tell me which group sounds like its operating out of irrational hatred.
More bullshit. How many homicide attacks have been launched by Palestinians against Israeli Arabs? And I don’t mean a homicide bomber in a market or bus stop where one Israeli Arab is killed amongst 20 Jews, or whatever number.
The terrorists have deliberately attacked Passover celebrations, bar-mitzvahs, Jewish religious schools, and Jewish settlements.
THEY ARE TRYING TO KILL JEWS, not “Israelis.”
So yes, it is about bigotry and hatred, and it is wrong.
Come, come now boys and girls, let’s have some sense in all of this. Squish has a point in as much as that the Israelis would have been Baptists it is possible that there would be a wave of anti-Baptism sweeping over the Arab world right now. pldennison and milroyj also have a point that the spite, hatred and violence at hand from some parts of the Arab world is phrased and executed in a way as to certainly make anti-Semitism a central part of it.
It’s all frightfully complicated by the history of our Semitic faiths and cultures, and it is terrifyingly easy for hate mongers to take out the smoldering cauldron of disgusting hatred of Jewry from the past and pour some more poison into the latest serving of that soup.
Let us remember that there are quite a few cases of rampant and filthy cases of anti-Muslimism in the Jewish camp as well, although I’ll be the first to agree that it doesn’t even come close to be on the same magnitude as anti-Semitism is on the opposite side.
Actually expressing things sweepingly like in ‘all the Muslims want is to kill all the Jews’ is IMHO passive aggressive bigotry and an example what I would frame as a mild but nasty expression of anti-Musimism. You all know that it isn’t true that all Muslims want the destruction of all Jews, at least I hope you all know that.
Sparc
Not to the people doing the dying.
Any “solution” to the Middle East problem which involved dismantling Israel is a utopian fantasy of the same sort which we saw over and over again in the 20th Century, to such disastrous effect. It involves the same willful ignoring of actual human realities–that there are now two distinct peoples living in Israel and Palestine, however they may have gotten there–and the same quest for some alleged perfect justice, with the same callous indifference to the suffering of real human beings.
If the United States did withdraw all aid and support from Israel, will the Israeli Defense Forces simply melt away? Will Israeli tanks and warplanes and missiles vanish? Will Israel’s nuclear bombs magically evaporate? It’s not just Jews who would suffer and die Israel were destroyed.
Who said anything of the sort? “All the Muslims want is to kill all the Jews”? Nobody on this thread said that. Who even mentioned “Muslims”? The point was that homicide bombers want to kill Jews, as does Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Asqa-something or other brigade.
Of course, the fact that 52% of the Palestinian people agree with those murderers is, well, bigoted and hateful. Rose-colored glasses only work for so long, after all.
Hang on there a moment milroyj! First of all a cite was furnished that did not imply any of the organizations you mentioned, but Arabs in general. Second of all my example was not a quote, but exactly that; an example. Substitute Muslim for Palestinian, Anabaptist, Swede or whatever you like. I shan’t say that anyone said it out loud and precisely in here, but we’ve been skating so close to it on so many occasions lately that I think it deserves notice.
For crying out loud, must I debate the same sweeping semi-truths over and over again just because some people obviously don’t bother to read the thread given that they already know ‘the truth’, or is it so that despite any refuting replies my previous post with cites re Palestinian popular support and opinion was utter crock?
Since repetition seems to be the name of the game for this jolly session; I’ll play along and service the lethargic and/or technically challenged by quoting what I said only a few posts back, that way no one has to bother with the murdering effort of clicking and searching:
If anyone wants the goddamned cite; click your scroll button and go look for it yourself.
Sparc
Uh huh Sparky
The majority of Palestinians want to eliminate the Jews from Israel. They don’t want to live peacefully, or have two separate countries, or ask them to leave. They want to kill them.
The fact that you are an apparent apoligist for such is truly awful.
Well, I’m certainly seeing a lot of bigotry and hatred in this thread, not to mention a willful lack of empathy and understanding. But then, it’s easier to simply hate than it is to try to look at things from another point of view, isn’t it.
Since you didn’t bother to actually read my post, I’ll restate it: If Israel was a ‘Zoroastrian state’ and that ‘Zoroastrian state’ was as oppressive to the Palestinians as Israel is and has been, then the suicide bombers would be still be trying to kill Israelis, only those Israelis would now be Zoroastrians…same goes if you substituted ‘Zoroastrian’ for Baptist, Roman Catholic, Hindu, Shinto, whatever.
Get it now?
OK, here you are speaking for a people of whom you are clearly not one, and for whom you have nothing but hatred. That invalidates your point–which is in error, anyway.
Palestinians want what you and I want: their own country, their own home, and basic civil rights.
(My bold). It would not be “sad” - it would be geographical genocide. For either side to totally take over the other. It would be a holocaust if an entire people - the Israelis or the Palestinians - effectively lost their nationhood and their right to exist as a people.
Your’e so full of it your eyes are brown! Talk about willfull ignorance. Oppression? As if that’s an excuse? Rewind to 1850, when slavery existed in the U.S. The slaves were truly oppressed, yet they did not resort to terrorism. Why do the Palestinians?
Ok Squishy, where have I expressed hatred towards Palestinians, or anyone else, in any thread, anywhere? I trust you will retract that statement, forthwith.