Beagle, the objections to decembers posting style do not lie in his choice of topics (well, topic, really). Nor are they about december calling people doo doo heads, or worse.
It is quite possible to be an asshole by deliberately and continuously misrepresent, twist, and extrapolate the facts to suit your own agenda, only to later (much later) try and backpaddle your way out of it by tossing yet another dozen strawmen into the mix. Quite possible indeed, albeit not for very long on this board.
OK. I assume you’d like a response to these comments:
I never said everything was an “either-or” proposition. I certainly would criticize Israeli atrocities, such as individuals who went on rampages of killing random Palestinian people.
Yes, you can, but some other posters here seem to have difficulty doing so.
Yes, you can do this. It’s a hijack but I am a bit tired or hearing about Sharon’s past over and over as if it excuses every new atrocity on the other side.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0619-04.htm Sharon has not been accused of perpetrating this terrible atrocity, but rather of not doing enough to prevent it.
Good, I wouldn’t want you to do so.
However, there’s a difference between not giving Israel a free pass and making inaccurate accusations. I wish you would either support your accusation of “comparable” Israeli actions or withdraw it. Since Israel doesn’t even have a death penalty, you will not find an instance of the Israeli government execting one of their own citizens after torturing her son into providing false evidence against her.
Oh deary me.
These are the sorts of comments that vex everyone so, dec. Give me any examples at all of posters excusing atrocities, or of posters’ inability to “abhor Palestinian terror and still despise some Israeli actions”, and I’ll withdraw the accusation of straw-mannery.
Okay, perhaps I do need to calm down.
However, I really think that december is someone who needs to be dealt with in a blunt manner.
Coldfire I admit, I have no perspective on december’s overall posting habits compared to you. In fact, I avoided any Israel / Palestine topics for months while I decided what I even thought.
I should probably continue to avoid them. Anyway, I guess I wonder what in particular in this thread was so objectionable. I understand the concept of a strawman (throw up a weak argument, pin it on your opponent, knock it down) but this one seemed unfocused and based on actual news.
december You need to do a little more research on Sabra and Shatila if you think Sharon only did not do “enough to prevent it.” Oh, man is that a misinterpretation of Sharon’s involvement. He encouraged, predicted, and facilitated what happened.
OK, Coldfire, I’ll concede that december is a little fact impaired, but “fightning ignorance” requires an opponent. I know plenty of people who think like him, at least around these parts.
Big storm a comin’ - will check back later. december I would reconsider posting a whole bunch more of these one sided takes on Israel and directing them at the SDMB. Why not just depersonalize the topic completely and accept the fact you probably are not going to change minds? You know, “Al Aqsa tortures, what should U.S. policy be?,” or something.
Examples in this thread were the two posters who used the phrases, “bit of minutiae” and “petty little point,” to characterize the events reported in the OP. In another thread, a number of posters chose not to acknowledge their abhorance of certain viciously homophobic behavior by the Palestinian Authority.
Several posters have said Sharon is just as bad as Arafat. They don’t always exlain why they think he’s just as bad. If they did, I imagine the debate going as follows:
“Al Aksa, associated with Arafat, turures son and kills mother.”
"As Defence Minister, Sharon did not do enough to prevent a massacre in 1982"
“Palentinian terrorists bombed a Passover Seder, killing and maiming dozens.”
"As Defence Minister, Sharon did not do enough to prevent a massacre in 1982"
“Arafat has stolen over a billion dollars from money intended for the welfare of needy Palestinian people.”
"As Defence Minister, Sharon did not do enough to prevent a massacre in 1982"
“The Palestinian Authority has a policy of torturing gays.”
"As Defence Minister, Sharon did not do enough to prevent a massacre in 1982"
You get the idea.
True, true. But what do you do when that “opponent” a) refuses to play by the rules, and b) doesn’t appear to be learning, despite a tenure of nearly three and a half year?
Look at the post above. More of the same. He knows damn well that people who speak about a “little bit of minutiae” are not refering to the atrocity described in the OP. Similarly, he knows damn well there have been a lot more facts brought forth about Sharon than just his actions as Defense Ministerin 1982 (although perhaps not necessarily in this thread).
He just chooses to interpret as it suits him, and he chooses to conveniently forget or ignore that which doesn’t.
December, I have to hand it to you. That’s the most blatant use of a strawman argument I’ve ever seen.
From the Amnesty International site:
All under Sharon’s watch.
And, yes, the way you downplay Sharon’s complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacres is appalling. An Israeli commission found that Sharon facilitated the massacre of civilians in the camps and recommended that that he be excluded from future cabinets.
Moreover, he deliberately provoked the latest intifada on September 28, 2000, when, accompanied by more than a thousand soldiers, he made a highly public visit to the
Muslim shrines atop the Temple Mount.
From A Concise History of the Middle East, Arthur Goldenschmidt Jr. (Westview Press, 2002, p. 403)
December, you need to read something other than Web sites that you already agree with.
in addition to the Goldschmidt book, which is an easy to read college level overview of the history of the Mideast, I recommend Anton La Guardia’s War Without End ,an even-handed account of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict that distributes blame all around.
Yes. We all get the idea of how disingenuous your argumentation is as well as the intellectual dishonesty of your presentation. You know, december, if I had a bunch of people react to my arguments as the people in this thread have, I’d take some time for a seriousevaluation of how I’m posting. Hopefully you will make that choice before it is made for you.
<<december You need to do a little more research on Sabra and Shatila if you think Sharon only did not do “enough to prevent it.” Oh, man is that a misinterpretation of Sharon’s involvement. He encouraged, predicted, and facilitated what happened.>>
If you’re right, I’d like to know that. That’s all the cite above accused of him of. Of course, that alone is a very serious accusation. He was in charge. “The buck stops here.”
The source I cited didn’t appear to be biased toward Sharon. If you have better information, could you please share it? I do not even know whether he was present at the time of the massacre. Is there evidence that he knew about it in advance? We all agree that he ought to have knonw about the possiblity and taken steps to prevent it from happening .
In all sincerity, I would make the same request of you, Coldfire.. What are these other negative facts about Sharon?
As to whether I misunderstood those two posters, what do you think they meant by “bit of minutiae” and “petty little point”?
Then why isn’t everyone screaming “F**k you!” at minty green for mentioning Israeli atrocities?
Since you are all so even-handed in condemning both sides when they transgress.
Obviously december has a history on this board, and a number of what can only be described as enemies here. Some of this is his fault. Some is not.
And for the record, let me state that (in my opinion)
the human rights record of the Palestinians is worse than that of the Israelis
Israel has a right to exist
Israel holds territory captured in wars that other countries started. They are under no moral obligation to return any of it.
Israel recently offered, in good faith, a settlement that would have given the PA 95+% of what they said they wanted. This offer was rejected by the PA, because they believed they can get more thru violence, and because it did not offer what a significant portion of the Palestinian population wants - the end of Israel.
This demonstration of a lack of good faith in negotiation is further evidenced by a increased wave of violence, including suicide bombings, and the atrocities in the OP. Thus
The IDF and the Palestinians are in no sense morally equivalent.
Neither side is as pure as God’s fingers. Obviously.
But I suspect, along with the increased attacks on Israeli civilians, the PA , to get what it wants, is relying on an image of themselves as the wronged parties, and the oppressed instead of the oppressors. And I also suspect that some of the desire to maximize attention to the alleged wrongs committed by Sharon and others, and to shout down those who even mention horrors such as that in the OP, is motivated by a fear of cracks appearing in the image of the PA as the sufferers of torture and death at the hands of the Big Bad Israelis.
As opposed to being the kind of monsters who would inflict such as the OP on their own people.
Regards,
Shodan
Fine, december. You win. Clearly, you wish to define “comparable” as "identical,"and I freely admit that I know of no identical event occurring perpetrated by Israelis.
I just don’t get it, man. I mean, I understand that a lot of people are jumping your shit here. Whether or not they’re justified is not my concern. But I’d hoped you might be interested in having a reasonable discussion with one of the few people here not attacking you. I’m trying to talk, and you seem only to be interested in pissing me off and scoring some mysterious points or something.
When my attempts at a mature discussion are rebuffed, there’s no point in my continuing.
You win. Be happy.
gobear – thank you for the suggested reading. In response to your posted points:
Amnesty International evaluates Israeli actions ignoring the fact that they are defending themselves against an intifada. In peacetime, the Israeli actions would be indefensible. Since AI doesnt’ address the impact of the war, their criticism is somewhat unrealistic. The D-Day invasion would also have been antrocity, if it were done for no reason during a time of peace.
You say, Sharon "deliberately provoked the latest intifada when…he made a highly public visit to the Muslim shrines atop the Temple Mount. First of all, I do not accept that he was deliberately intending to start an intifada. More likely, he was intending to reinforce the right of Israelis to visit that spot, since it’s also a Jewish holy place, and since visiting that spot was NOT prohibited by existing treaties. You ought not accuse Sharon of deliberately provoking a war without proof.
Also, The Sharon visit was NOT the cause of the intifada, according to various Palestinian leaders:
If you are right that Sharon was found to have “facilitated” (not “failed to prevent”) the horrendous Sabra and Shatila massacres, could you please supply a cite?
“Atrocity,” singular. Learn to count, Shodan.
Besides, if I was constantly spamming the boards with new threads about the same fucking subjects (anti-Palestinian news bias, the Israeli atrocity of the day, etc., etc., ad infinitum) . . . and if my OPs were almost uniformly misrepresentations of the news stories or editorials that provided the purported excuse for the OP . . . and if I labeled people as bigots and supporters of totalitarianism when they said that the Palestinians weren’t necessarily as pure as the driven snow . . . and if I kept on doing all that even after being warned about it by the moderators . . . and if I still refused to acknowledge that anything was amiss even after being warned about it in this very thread . . . then people would indeed be screaming “F**k you!” at minty green. So piss off, Shodan.
BTW, as my minimal participation in Israel-Palestine threads has probably made quite clear, I support Israel much more than the Palestinians, who have generally behaved much more barbarically than the Israelis.
I gave up on december long time ago as many of you might have noticed but I’ll make an exception this time.
It is possible to defend the right side for the wrong reasons or with the wrong methods and that is what december is doing.
Anyone who has read my posts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict knows what side I think is more in the right and which side in the wrong. Nobody can accuse me of being pro-Palestinian on the whole.
But december is an embarrassment to me and I would never want him to be on my side of an argument because he distorts and manipulates in such ways that he loses whatever he had on his side to begin with. The end does not justify the means and you cannot defend the right side with the wrong methods. Lying and distorting does not help your side, on the contrary, it hurts your credibility.
I have definitely seen much more pro-Palestinian posts since december has been around and it may be some people feel a need to balance his skewed posts and that people like me just decide to stay away from sheer embarrassment to be associated with such a jerk.
IMHO december has gone way beyond the “don’t be a jerk” point and I would vote for banning him but, in the meanwhile, to those who get hot under the collar I would recommend just not taking the bait. It works for me and just maybe, if we all ignore him he’ll just go away.
If you’re comparing the destruction of people’s homes merely because they are related to terror suspects to the Normandy Invasion, then you have passed the point of all rational discussion. Maybe you might to compare the IDF actions to the destruction of Lidice.
I’m walking away now, have a fun meltdown.
<<Besides, if I was constantly spamming the boards with new threads about the same fucking subjects (anti-Palestinian news bias, the Israeli atrocity of the day, etc., etc., ad infinitum)>>
minty, I start a lot of threads (Duh!) I have started threads about:
– Where to vacation in Alaska
– John Ashcroft & wiretap authority
– Reporting of gay affiliations on the Society Pages
– International treaties
– Alleged smearing of Dr. Hatfill by the FBI.
– the NAACP
– Alleged inaccurate reporting by columnist Paul Krugman
– Mismanagement of a mental health facility in the former Yugoslavia
– An allegedly anti-Semitic remark by a Texas Democrat
– Hubris by a Congressional candidate
– Various Constitutional issues (about which I have learned a lot from you)
– The Axiom of Choice and Zorn’s Lemma
– The Yosemite National Park master plan
– etc.
If you go back a few years, you’ll find that my most passionate thread concerned a Bayseian explanation for the Exchange Paradox (the two-wallet problem).
The reason it appears that the Palestinian threads are dominant is that the Straight Dope panel has a high level of interest. You yourself chided me on this thread for not have even made a post other than the OP. That was about 12 hours after posting the OP. There were already enough responses to go to a second page.
I believe the next-to-last paragraph in Shodan’s post above may explain why this topic is of such high interest.
“High interest”? Please. 90% of the posts in this thread have been about you, not anything to do with the issues related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Trainwrecks attract onlookers, and you’ve become a 64-car derailment.
It’s too bad, too. I mean, politics aside, you used to be a fairly normal poster, albeit with a strong interest in conservative political causes. But over the last year or so, you’ve steadily turned into, well, an irrational nutcase. I’m certainly no psychologist, december, but it sounds to me like you need a long, relaxing vacation. Go find a tropical beach somewhere, far away from any English-language newspapers or television, and take a break. What you’ve been doing is beneficial for neither the SDMB nor yourself.
<<“High interest”? Please. 90% of the posts in this thread have been about you, not anything to do with the issues related to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Trainwrecks attract onlookers, and you’ve become a 64-car derailment. …
minty – you have a point. Still, it was this thread about Palestinian misdeeds that became a train wreck, not the one about Yosemite or the Axiom of Choice or the mental health facility. Aside from my, uh, popularity (if that’s the right word), this topic is of interest to other posters.
I like your thought about a long tropical vacation. With retirement imminent, that’s actually a possibility.