Folks, help me out on this. I’m looking at a [post=4824588]post[/post] in this very thread, with my name on it, that has the following quote:
What’s the deal? Am I lying through my teeth no matter what I say?
[quote=sevastapol]
screwy, aint it?
Why have any of the people in this thread pretended that the cold blooded and deliberate murder of civilians is justifiable? (Oh, I’m sorry, just Zionist civilians, not Americans, perish the thought)
Why have any of them claimed that the Jews have been the agressors?
Why have any of them claimed that the Palestinians just want peace when the PLO charter (cited by me) calls for GENOCIDE???
Why indeed…
Neither side is a complete stranger to that. Or is that too fanatical to assert?
So the only way to not be fanatical is to embrace neither side? That doesn’t seem to be the case with the OP.
Nice try, O. I was responding to your post (197):
Evidently, you took issue with the fact that Shayna was referring to Arab attacks of indigenous Jews in countries outside of what is now called Palestine/Israel; I was pointing out that there were relatively few Jews in this region during the timeframe (“over the span of centuries”). I mean, if you’re gonna attack Jews, you gotta go where the Jews are.
So, bottom line…you’re confused.
Oh, and by the way, during the British mandate from the end of WWI till the beginning of WWII, the number of Jews killed (not including those wounded, raped, looted, or the number of Synagogues, businesses and houses torched) numbers closer to a thousand.
oh and thanks bizzwire]! (and everybody else who has offered a kind word)
I tend to either somehow miss that sorta stuff or just smile bashfully. But yah, thanks.
To be honest… I’m not sure why there’s still discussion in this thread, except that a few people won’t just say
Anybody who deliberately targets civilians is scum. Palestinian terror groups deliberately target civilians. Thus, they are scum
They’re bending over backwards trying to justify, rationalize, excuse.
For them, for their twisted minds and dark little souls, I have only one question on their obvious bigotry:
What would your response be if they were targeting AMERICAN civilians? What about your family? Even if you think that Palestinians are oppressed and have the right to start a war, what gives them the right to target civilians? And finally… IF THE ISRAELIS DID THE EXACT SAME THING TO THE PALESTINIANS, EXACTLY HOW NUTS WOULD YOU BE GOING???
That means, I expect to see our revisionists state that since the Israelis feel (rightly or wrongly) that they’re being ‘oppressed’ by a campaign of terror, that they should round up all the Palestinian civilians and shoot them at point blank, mothers and children first.
So how about it? Gonna put your money where your mouth is?
I know you know how to read, Jack, so wherefore the confusion?
Civilians were not a target of suicide attacks until the mid-90s. The first wave of suicide bombings did not begin until the 1980s. Hezbollah was the real innovator here, and they employed suicide attacks to drive first France and then Israel out of Lebanon. They bombed embassies, military installations, IDF checkpoints, etc. This persisted for fifteen years. Hamas and Islamic Jihad, learning from the success of suicide bombing, started terminating Israeli civilians in the mid-90s in suicide attacks. This represented a sharp tactical change from the first wave of suicide bombings.
Regarding the froth, whatever. Go in peace.
Now, Olentzero.
With respect, these are terrible arguments. I will take each one in turn.
Palestinians are separated from the other groups due to their desperation.
This holds no water on two grounds. It is both tautological and empirically false.
You are inducing the mental state of the Palestinians from their actions, hence the tautology. You are arguing that the Palestinians are blowing themselves up on civilians because they are so desperate, while at the same time judging their desperation because they are launching suicide attacks on civilians.
I would not want to trivialize the suffering of any group by comparing it to any other, but I believe that it is easy to demonstrate that the Kurds have suffered far more than the Palestinians and over a much longer time and have not resorted to civilian suicide attacks. The PKK suicide campaign was directed against political figures and installations.
There is nothing about desperation that logically yields the targeting of civilians in suicide attacks.
The civilian suicide campaign began as a result of the Wye and Oslo accords
This is a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. There is nothing in your logic that can bring us from Wye and Oslo to suicide attacks on civilians. The same fallacious argument yields a myriad of possible conclusions. If, say, the Palestinians started immolating themselves like members of the Falun Gong, one could make the same basless argument that “the change occurred right after Wye and Oslo, when everyone was angry and depressed.” This argument does not explain why one tactic was chosen and not another, nor does it say anything about causation.
If you have any further thoughts, I would love to hear them. I am also interested in hearing what your ideas of permitted and prohibited classes of terrorism.
I understand your sympathy for the Palestinian cause, Olentzero. For my part, I find Israeli policy to be frustrating and maddening. However, I am getting the feeling that despite your best intentions, you are talking out of both sides of your mouth. There is a strong tension between your sympathy for the cause and your sympathy for their tactics. This is why I am trying to tease out from you some kind of consistent rubric of acceptable terrorism. I suspect that if you were to make your own logic and beliefs more explicit, you might learn some interesting things.
Olentzero wrote the following:
But he also wrote:
So the question is make up your fucking mind. Either Israeli citizens deserve to die or they don’t. But in the meantime don’t act all surprised when people begin to think you have no problem with a pregnant woman and her children being murdered.
Shayna wrote:
Are you listening, ** Olentzero ** ? Because, protestations aside, what Shayna wrote is what you look like you’re doing.
Ok then, my weak attempt at killing this thread has failed miserably 
…so:
Let’s assume the PA is the de facto representative of the Pals and Hamas is the only other major power-broker in the disputed territories…
Let’s assume that the PA abides by the PLO charter written in 1968 and amended sometime thereafter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel…
Let’s assume that the Hamas manifesto still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel…
I then posit that any useful peace discussions between the Arabs and Israel is total and utter bullshit and useless gumflapping. Sounds to me like Hamas and the PA have declared war on Israel and deserve as good as they give. This will be another long protracted war of attrition. Israel will continue hitting military targets which include militia leaders and gunmen, and the Pals will continue to target civilians. Sounds damn simple to me.
again, with respect Maeglin
“Civilians were not a target of suicide attacks until the mid-90s.”
Unless the cite-dates which were given are wrong, then how do you explain…
Feb 20, 1969 PFLP bomb attacks on a Jerusalem supermarket
Sept 5, 1972 Black September movement massacres Israeli Olympic team in Munich, triggering a systematic manhunt by Israelis for the assassins. hostage in Qiryat Shmona, Israel, to demand the release of prisoners. IDF storms the building, but terrorists kill 19. Israeli reprisal raids on Southern Lebanon condemned by UN Security Council in SCR347 on April 24.
May 15, 1974 Ma’alot Massacre - PLO (PDFLP) gunmen took over a school in the northern Israeli village of Ma’alot, demand release of prisoners, killing 25 and wounding many others.
or for that matter, their stated aims at genocide and war-against-civilians…
May, 1964 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) founded with the aim of destroying Israel. The Palestinian National Charter (1968) officially called for liquidation of Israel.
(I mean no disrespect, but I just can’t see how those don’t qualify as terrorist actions…)
These were not suicide bombings.
These were not suicide bombings.
These were not suicide bombings.
Is it all clear not?
So am I to understand that your point is a quibble and that there were indeed terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, just not suicide attacks?
OK, bizzwire, you came in somewhere 'round the middle of that conversation, so let me reconstruct it from the beginning for you.
[post=4824322]Shayna[/post]: The Palestinians have been historically opressing and murdering Jews for centuries <snip>
[post=4824556]Olentzero[/post]: Chronologies, please! Cities! Dates! Numbers dead! Fucking bloodspatter patterns, if you got 'em. Back this claim up!
[post=4824848]lavenderlemon[/post]: As the term Palestinian wasn’t coined until the 1960’s, there is no way there could have been “Palestinian” acts of terror against Jews until then.
[post=4824948]Olentzero[/post]: Fine. Whatever. I just want to see proof that the indigenous Muslim population of the territory known as Palestine, today comprising the territory of the state of Israel, engaged in massacres of the Jewish population of that same territory over the span of centuries, as Shayna attests.
So I think it’s rather clear that Shayna made an unambiguous assertion and she hasn’t provided much proof beyond the two incidents in her quote.
Maeglin, I’m not arguing from the abstract here. The desperation stems from Israeli activities such as that wall, and the blatant attempts at legitimizing their military dominance through the Oslo and Wye accords. I am basing my assertion of their desperation on something other than their recourse to suicide bombings. There is no tautology there. Those actions were going to provoke a fightback on the part of the Palestinians no matter what; unfortunately that fightback has taken the form of targeting Israeli civilians in suicide bombings rather than the other forms of terrorism you indicated in your post about the PKK and the LTTE.
lavenderlemon, I’ve emphasized before that understanding why these attacks are occuring is not the same thing as accepting them or condoning them. Nor is it passing judgement on the victims. You cannot equate “I understand the causes of the Palestinian fightback” with “Their victims deserved to die.”
And the only way anyone could possibly think I blame the Jews as a whole for the Palestinian mess is if Israel were all of world Jewry. Which it isn’t. There are Jews who chose not to emigrate to that area, and they are no more responsible for the situation there than I am for Sweden’s neutrality in World War II (which allowed the Nazi army an advantage against the Norwegians) because my great-grandfather emigrated from Västergötland in 1892.
ahhh… allow me to retract my previous post ,I was wrong and mis-read you.
Yes, suicide bombings are fairly new…
but terrorism against Israeli civilians is not.
sorry for the mix-up
No problem, bro. I didn’t mean to be a jerk., but I thought that my prose was so tortured that I just wasn’t communicating. That and the fact that it is 800 degrees in here are not good for my mood. 
Terrorism against civilians is definitely not new, no disagreement there. The real innovation is the consistent strategic campaign of suicide bombings. There were a few suicide attacks before the Hezbollah campaign in the early 80s, but they just didn’t get a whole lot of traction. But in the 90s, when Hamas and Islamic Jihad started blowing themselves up in marketplaces, that got the world’s attention and it brought Israel to the table.
Excuse me Maeg, but I was reading statements of yours like
And I guess it seemed logical to assume you were speaking about, well, terrorism against civilians. You want to confine the discussion to suicide bombings, speak more precisely.
I know you’re preening yourself on the delusion that you and you alone have introduced a thoughtful element into this thread, but try to be less of a pissant about it.
You’re welcome.
First I said
Then I said
then you say
So, in other words, you’re dead wrong.
Then I say
You ignore it and I ask again
and you respond with (before your answer)
Nawwwwww. I didn’t ‘really’ ask it. I didn’t even really ask it TWICE.
Let’s break this down, shall we?
You are, again, claiming that since there is a ‘land grab’ in progress then civilians become valid targets…
And yet. You claim that the nationality of people doesn’t have anything to do with it.
So I put the question to you a third time: If the Israelis thought, rightly or wrongly, that they had grievances against the Palestinians and no real way to solve them, would THEY be justified in the deliberate murder of Palestinian civilians?
If the Israelis felt threatened, with or without cause, that their property (in this case, busses, discos, cafes, their very lives) was at risk… then they’d be allowed, under your logic, for the defense of their property, to purposefully murder Palestinian women and children…
Again, if this isn’t the logical result, why are you bigoted?
I suppose my other half dozen posts in which I was quite specific weren’t clear enough for you.
Jack, I know it must be hard for you to accept the fact that you just cannot be me. If you don’t think this thread is big enough for two pissants, you know where the door is.
[QUOTE=Olentzero]
lavenderlemon, I’ve emphasized before that understanding why these attacks are occuring is not the same thing as accepting them or condoning them. Nor is it passing judgement on the victims. You cannot equate “I understand the causes of the Palestinian fightback” with “Their victims deserved to die.”
[QUOTE]
You still don’t get it. You’re asking us to understand why this woman was murdered. You’ve implied it was because the Palestinians were driven to it because they had no other choice. That is a false and offensive layer of meaning that has nothing to do with the OP. We know why the woman and her children were murdered.
She was murdered not because of any “despair” on the part of Palestinians. She was murdered because an Islamic fundamentalist organization called Islamic Jihad does not want any Jews living in the Arab world. Her murder and the murder of her children had nothing to do with the plight of the Palestinians. Her killing was not about furthering the cause of peace or justice in the region on either side.
It was murder, pure and simple and deserves no more “understanding” than one would give to Timothy McVeigh or your ordinary hit and run driver.
But one needs to understand what drove Timothy McVeigh to such desperation.