What I would like to know is, where did they get the idea that Israel does not have the right to exist?
Leaving aside the whole ‘Israel gave up Gaza to the Palestinian’s unilaterally’ thingy (and the fact that those dirty Israeli’s didn’t give them land AND a booming economy too, the dirty finks), I know of not instances of a prison or prisoners tossing rockets at the surrounding towns. Could you give some examples of prisons where the inmates regularly attack their neighbors?
Could you cite some examples of the nonviolent methods they used and which decades we are talking about? I’m coming up blank on this in all honesty.
-XT
- Well, they stopped short of emulating education, women’s liberation and democracy. And over those decades, the Palestinians may not have been violent (assumed for the sake of arugment) but unfortunately the surrounding Arab states were. I know it sucks when would-be conquerers march across your land and get repelled, but I’m not sure how this is specifically Israel’s fault.
Well, you stop attacking your neighbor for a while. International pressure shifts to your side, Israel falls under pressure to lift the various strangleholds, start up trade and tourism…
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Nobody is going to overthrow anybody. All that will happen is the Palestinian people aren’t going to vote for anybody they see as working with Israel against their interests.
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Yes. Ever since the occupation started Israel have ratcheted the severity of it up and down to suit their purposes, but the default position is always full-on unpleasantness.
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When the Israelis ethnically cleaned the Palestinians into 22% of historic Palestine in 1948 they took great care to prevent as many doctors, teachers, educated professionals as possible from remaining in the remaining ghettoes. The fact that from less than nothing the Palestinians created the education system and the rest of their current society after having their professional classes decimated is probably the biggest triumph of the Palestinians post-48.
I’d say Israel and the Palestinians are roughly equal regarding womens’ rights. They probably have equal amounts of religious nuts who treat their women equally badly. The rest of the populations are probably fairly equally tolerant.
And of course no democracy was possible under military occupation. It’s only since Oslo that Israel agreed to any form of organised national elections in the Palestinian territories.
The Palestinians had nothing to do with any Arab-Israeli wars, and their land is theoretically protected by international treaty, Israel legally has no basis to occupy it. Israel never come under any pressure at all. They dictate to the US what the US should do and the US does it, preventing any international action or sanctions against the longest-running illegal military occupation in history, repeated war crimes etc.
Israel moved out of Gaza but retained control of the only three entry/egress gates to Gaza. They controlled how much food, medicine etc. was allowed in, how many sick people allowed out to get treatment, etc. etc., basically massive denial of human rights. The kind of thing that if a prison staff did they’d be facing a riot.
And although Israel started their ongoing process of ethnic cleansing, intimidation of civilian populations, military occup[ation etc. in 1948 the first recorded terrorist incident was in 1970ish. Black September.
You mean when the Palestinian’s fled to the ever victorious Arab armies, leaving their homes and possessions in the expectation that Israel would be wiped from the map and after rejecting the UN division and after Israel was attacked by all it’s neighbors and fighting for it’s life? Is that what you are talking about? And you’d really need to define what you mean by ‘ethnic cleansing’, considering that there are many (peaceful) Palestinian’s (and Arabs) who live IN Israel, AS Israeli citizens.
Do you have a cite that the first terrorist incident (leaving aside all that invasion and war stuff, of course) didn’t happen until ‘1970ish’?
-XT
Ah, I clearly misunderstood “they’ll swiftly be replaced”. Anyway, aren’t the interests of the Palestinian people served by peace and trade?
Uh-huh. And is this purely random, completely disconnected from any actions the Palestinians take?
“Historic Palestine?” Anyway, I don’t know where you got this information. I’d like to read it myself, preferably from a non-Palestinian source.
Really. Female literacy rates the same? Voting rates? Treatment under the law? Rape accusations get investigated the same way? Abortion rights?
Yeah, and as far as I can tell, the elected government in the West Bank is doing a somewhat better job than that of Gaza.
Well, I’m prepared to grant or the sake of argument that their only involvement in the various wars was the bad luck of getting caught in the middle of them.
In that case, they should permanently solve the problems by just obliterating the Palestinians outright. Since they haven’t, I think I’ll assume it is not that case.
I’m not indulging in stereotypes. There is such a thing as a difference in the average beliefs of two different groups of people. To say that the Palestinians generally - or that Muslim Arabs generally - hold very conservative views on how people should live their lives is not to be guilty of arrogance or excessive confidence in one’s own clairvoyance.
This is where your response really goes south:
Like so many apologists for the Palestinians and other Muslim groups, you’re willing to treat the moral flaws of Western cultures as being roughly as bad as those of conservative Muslims cultures.
Sorry, but when we point the finger at them for treating women like shit, they cannot point their finger at any element of our culture worthy of the same level of condemnation. If you honestly believe that it is as bad for us to watch porn or listen to rap music as it is for them to force women to where chadors or to cut out their daughter’s clitorises, you are not a supporter of women’s rights or increases in the status of women.
Yes it does!!!:p:p:p Especially since you had previously denied knowing of the existence of any such person. First deny the truth, then deny the truth is important…that’s an old tactic.
Aren’t most restive populations perceived to be incompetent at managing their own affairs, until they actually get the chance? The Palestinians have built universities, hospitals and municipal governments from the ground up whenever they’ve been given the chance and left in peace. Also, are you saying that Palestine before Zionist colonization was in a state of anarchy? I don’t think the Ottoman soldiers and officials were the only ones bringing order to the region.
Your wish is my command. For the record, I have seen plenty of distraught Palestinian parents in the mainstream media, mourning instead of celebrating their child’s decision to become a suicide bomber. But since you demanded a cite, here is a Chicago Tribune article, reprinted on this website, that clearly shows the mixed feelings and reactions of a Palestinian community when one of their own throws his/her life away.
And to be fair, I did once see one news report about a smiling mother who appeared in her child’s “martyrdom” video. Since, unlike you, I don’t argue in sweeping generalizations and stereotypes, I do not doubt that that happens. But the totality of news sources available to us clearly indicate that Palestinians are much like Israelis and Americans: they have all kinds of different opinions.
If your brother went into a rage and publicly demanded that all Ay-rabs be killed, and got on television saying that, would that be a good clue to your opinions, or those of your family? Of course not! And would you still love your brother despite his vicious views? Probably.
Methinks you need to expand the scope of your reading a little more, if you totally missed the diversity of Palestinian opinion. (Quote from the linked article: At one point, only 49% of Palestinians approved of the tactic of suicide bombing. That may be too high, but it is still a minority.
I said it before in this thread, and I’ll say it again: stereotypes are a dead end. Because stereotypes can always be exposed as ignorant.
Factual Answer:
Arabic-speaking women generally do not wear anything so restrictive or impractical as chadors, or burqas. Those are worn by non-Arab women in two South Asian countries. Arabic-speaking women, including Palestinian women, cover their hair with a simple scarf.
Clitoral mutilation is practiced in Africa, by both Muslim and non-Muslim Africans. (Not all, of course.) Yes, the practice is known in Egypt, among Muslim Arabic-speaking Egyptians.
Stop counting your apples and oranges together. Learn something about the subject. 
Opinionated Answer:
How can you possibly refer to social pressure for hijab (the covering of female hair) as an atrocity??? A few decades ago, it was common for Western women as well to cover their heads with shawls and scarves, depending on the weather. Highly religious Jewish women also cover their heads. Sorry, but I cannot see how a scarf can be condemned in cultural terms.
We in the West exert a different type of social pressure on our women. For example, it can be difficult for a young woman to buy a top that covers her navel, depending on the stores and money she has access to. It is very difficult for any woman (in California, at least) to buy a long dress. At Halloween, slutty costumes have taken over the costume stores – for both women and young girls! You want to tell me that social approval of a head-covering is so terrible compared to that???
Are you telling me that in America women don’t get treated like shit??? How about the extremely high rate of forcible rape? In the 70’s, that figure was already one of every three women in Los Angeles County. I bet that figure is way, way lower in Palestine. How about abandonment of women and babies, resulting in legions of single mothers and fatherless children? Not so much in Palestine. How about human trafficking and sex slavery? Maybe in Europe, the Americas, and East Asia, but not in Palestine. And that’s just women…In Palestine, do people shut their grandparents up in rest homes to die rather than taking care of them? No.
Domestic violence and abuse…well, yes, that probably occurs in Palestine too. More than us? Debatable. (We might not have enough data yet.) And the practice of “honor killings” is truly disgusting. They have their honor killings, we have our rapists.
Most offensive to me is your conclusion that my defending Arabs and Muslims against stereotypes makes me an enemy of women’s rights. Your clairvoyance has not improved at all, I’m afraid.
Right, they generally just wear something that covers their heads. And if they don’t, they’re considered whores who have dissented from their religion.
Female genital mutilation is not practiced just in Africa. It is practiced, at least to a certain extent, in various parts of the Middle East.
It can be criticized on the grounds that it is part of a moralistic attempt to cover women up. You know, don’t be too sexy or you’re a whore. Don’t have sex before marriage. That sort of idea.
It’s not social approval of head covering that is at issue here. Head-covering is a socially conservative requirement. It is moralistic. There is nothing moralistic about the pressure young girls face to be sexy.
It’s so nice of you to accuse me of unrigorous thinking while making statements like “I bet that figure is way, way lower in Palestine”.
Of course women are sometimes treated like shit in America. Women are sometimes treated like shit in all parts of the world. But generally speaking, in America, women are not viewed as the personal property of their husbands or wives. It’s not very common for rape to be viewed as a woman’s fault.
So they have a moralistic tradition of killing women, and this tradition is not considered unbelievably evil by the surrounding society at large. We have individual rapists, who sexually assault women and are viewed as evil shitstreaks by everybody.
You haven’t done anything to work against my perception that you equate the generally mild sexism of American culture with the extreme, systematic, and religious sexism of large swaths of the Muslim world.
It’s a good thing they don’t have male genital mutilation in the Middle East! 
Quite. Everyone in the States should be concerned about how Israel conducts its business. For some unfathomable reason, we have heavily invested ourselves in that country, diplomatically and financially, over the last 60 years, and, wonder of wonders, that gets interpreted as supporting the Israeli agenda. Because of that link, Israel’s misdeeds causes problems for us back at home.
There’s a reason that people take to the streets chanting “Death to America!” and not “Death to Canada!”, and while this isn’t the only issue that causes that, it’s certainly a big one. It doesn’t how much you chide the iggernt towelheads for being misguided, when people are willing to die to attack you, it’s not just their problem anymore, it becomes your problem as well. The Palestinian issue is a threat to US national security, and it behooves us to see it dealt with in a way that doesn’t involve 100 more years of bloodshed.
It is rather inaccurate to refer to Rachel Corrie as an example of a peaceful protester who was met with lethal force. The IDF was trying to destroy a tunnel that Hamas was attempting to transport weapons thru, and she rather badly misjudged the driver’s ability to see her and the bulldozer’s ability to stop on a dime, and she was killed by the debris. The PA may call it martyrdom; many others call it ‘Nature weeding out the stupid’.
Regards,
Shodan
Now why would you leave out Hurndall ?
Maybe because he was shot by an Israeli sniper?
I can understand your annoyance at having to fund all kinds of foreign countries. No country on Earth – including Israel – should be dependent on funds from any another country. Israel should say thanks, but no thanks we can manage ourselves. And I’m also more than a little annoyed at having to fund the Palestinians in Gaza and the Westbank (and having to fund all kinds of other shitholes). And especially when you are running a world record deficit, you have no business sending money overseas. So I guess your annoyance at having to fund other nations is a strong as when the case is money to Egypt (which receive just a little less that Israel despite being a dictatorship that treat minorities like shit), Pakistan, India, Lebanon, the Palestinians, Jordan, Indonesia, Georgia, etc. etc. The US foreign aid to Israel is just a little more than a tenth of all your foreign aid. For all your money to Egypt, they hate your more each years. At least the Israelis don’t hate you for your generous contributions.
The circumstances of the two deaths were rather different. Therefore it is somewhat less inaccurate to describe Hurndall’s death as the result of a peaceful protest. On the other hand, the ISM movement is not as committed to peaceful protest as has been suggested (cite). Also, from the ISM Mission Statement -
And, of course, the IDF soldier who shot Horndall was convicted and sent to prison. No doubt you can come up with several instances where Hamas sent its operatives to prison for targetting civilians (cite, cite, cite, etc.)
Regards,
Shodan
I’ve been trying to stay out of this thread, but your statement is factually wrong, on a whole bunch of levels. Black September was action against the Palestinians by the government of Jordan. King Hussein, upset that Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel was causing Israeli military retaliation into his country, and afraid that Arafat was planning a coup against him that would have ended with a Palestinian takeover of Jordan, attacked PLO training camps and bases in Jordan, which led ultimately to the PLO and other Palestinian terrorist groups fleeing Jordan for Lebanon.
But here’s a Wikipedia list, not complete, of Palestinian feyadeen acts against Israeli civilians prior to 1967:
Here is a picture of a two ugly ISM activists, British and Danish (the idiot with the pink scarf), while on a visit to Gaza.
The blog of Kim Møller, who set it up to counter what he saw as pro-Muslim, pro-immigration bias in the media.