That’s an unfortunate response. We took the Israeli side long before anyone started hijacking airplanes. Perhaps we shouldn’t have done that. Perhaps if we’d acted in a fair and honest manner in the Middle East, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.
Sorting out the Palestinian Question is the best long-term solution to ending this sort of terrorism.
SHODAN, I don’t usually post just to say “me too,” but my immediate reaction upon reading this thread was “Anyone who would celebrate at the occurrence of such a tragedy can go straight to hell, and take whatever cause they’re advocating with them.”
I think if anyone has gotten a raw deal, it’s the Palestinians, but this is hardly the sort of action that will get them any friends. The worst part is how this action of a few turns into an indictment of the many in the minds of people who have heard of these horrible crimes.
The majority of Palestinians are just ordinary people, just like the majority of Americans, who want no part of a war and only want to live their lives in peace. It’s not the Palestinians, or the Israelis, or the Americans that anyone has to worry about attacking them; it’s the few Palestinians, Israelis, or Americans who have both the desire and the ability (especially those in positions of leadership) to hurt innocent people merely because of their race, religion, and nationality.
Unfortunately, this is the condition always in human affairs. Those who thirst for more violence and evil in the world shit all over those of us who just want to live.
OLENTZERO, I don’t think SHODAN was limiting his comments to the two “sides” under discussion here. I certainly was not. I was saying (and I assume he was too), the “side” we are on is the side (or sides) rightfully condemning this.
I cannot express how much this sort of thinking pisses me off. Perhaps if the people advocating and carrying out such acts were not consciousless cowards underserving of the name “human being,” we wouldn’t be in this situation now.
And if anyone imagines this will do anything positive to assist in the Palestian “problem,” they are dreaming. Like it or not, and defend it or not (which I do not) the visceral reaction of many, many Americans at this moment in time is that the entire Arab world can go fuck itself – and that includes the Palestinians.
I appreciate that most right-thinking Palestinians were shocked and dismayed by this action, and well they might be. It cannot bring them anything good.
I am unaware of any method of “fairness” in ethical disputes between opposing parties. The only solution to truly ethical disputes involves taking sides.
As an example, abortion. It is a matter of ethics 100%. For those who think it is murder, murder was/is legalized. For those who think it is not murder, “A woman’s right to choose” would be made illegal which is just as ethically untenable. One side was chosen**.**
In a combat of ethics, I see no such thing as “compromise.” Compromising an ethic is abandoning it; if you abandon one ethic you support its detractors, again choosing sides.
Do you see this in a different light?
For a quarter-century, Israel attempted to keep the Palestinians as a subject people, without the right to vote or decide their destiny.
Concerning the above 2 paragraphs:
As for the Temple of Abraham attack, it was horriffic. And it’s the only Jewish terrorist attack I can think of, and it was many years ago. I’ll list 10 Palestinian attacks in the past few months alone if you require that. It’s the difference between one sick individual doing something wrong, and an entire society which promotes suicide bombs as an instant pass into heaven.
The main problem with the Israelis and Palestinians is that Palestinians don’t want to share the land. The PLO has frequently stated its intent of driving Israel into the sea. When Barak was in power, a genuine peace proposal – including the return of much of Jersualem – was on the table. That was the one true opportunity for Arafat to show he was serious about coexistance. He snubbed his nose at it, and let’s face it: he’ll never get an offer that generous again. Especially not from Sharon.
Had the violence not started, I’m certain there’d be a very tense but peaceful coexistance right now, much as there was when Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty. Now, 20 years later, they may not be allies, but there’s been no violence between the two countries either. That’s a perfectly acceptable situation. But the violence must stop first.
That’s all very well and good. But you have to do more than lip service.
What we saw were people dancing in the streets. We didn’t see millions, but we have seen nothing but anti-American sentiment from Palestein. If that is unfair, then you better get cracking on some kind of effort. Because here is what we didn’t see:
We didn’t see anyone criticiszing the dancers. We didn’t see anyone yelling for them to stop. We didn’t hear anyone saying to put the candy back. If 20 KKK members were to dance in the city streets after a black man was lynched in the US, there would be hell to pay.
So Palestien had better start doing something to show that they are genuinely shocked at this turn of events. Candle light vigils, quiet marches, anything. Yassar Arafat gave his regrets, but he scarcely seems to represent his people much. He also knew that the dancers would mean a blind eye could be turned to any Israli action in this matter. He had best condemn those dancers as well.
And if I hear that the shocked Palestinians are to afraid to show any remorse for fear of of the dancing Palestinians, then my sympathy level drops to zero…for you are truly represented by those radicals.
I had a large amount of sympathy for Palestine, I always felt it was screwed unfairly for idiotic decisions made by their fathers over 50 years ago. But that sympathy fades if you tell me the only way you can fight back is to commit and support acts of heavily funded super-terrorism.
I hope it was a good dance. It may have cost Palestine its only hope of a restraining hand on Isreal.
Tell the “good Palestinians” to get their asses out and show their shock. Otherwise it is just words.
Because they are DANCING IN THE STREETS CELEBRATING THE MASS MURDER OF AMERICAN CIVILIANS. Not the destruction of a “military target”. Not the defeat of American military forces in battle. They are laughing and cheering over the cold-blooded murder of possibly thousands of civilians, using hundreds of other civilians as bombs.
Yes, I am making a generalization. I am making the generalization that ALL of the people who are DANCING IN THE STREETS CELEBRATING THE MASS MURDER OF AMERICAN CIVILIANS are people who hate all Americans. I am making the generalization that ALL of the people who are DANCING IN THE STREETS CELEBRATING THE MASS MURDER OF AMERICAN CIVILIANS are self-evidently NOT capable of understanding that they shouldn’t hate all Americans for the actions of the U.S. government. I am not saying that all Palestinians are dancing in the streets, or that the ones who are dancing with joy are necessarily representative of Palestinians in general. But, you seem hellbent on justifying the actions of the people who are dancing with joy as being the expression of legitimate grievances.
Just to support this a tad, a friend of mine mentioned that she was talking about the dancing Palestinians with folks on another mailing list, and the footage and news only apeared in the US, BBC, and Australian media. The other news outlets apparently didn’t see enough celebrating folks to warrant any coverage.
And let’s be fair – if we had news today that Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, or Yassar Arafat had died, you could find lots of folks in the United States who’d be breaking out the champaign. Hell, they’d probably have to close down Miami for Castro alone – and that’d be just as tacky as any dancing Palestinians.
But they weren’t dancing because George Bush died (or George H.W. Bush died, or Norman Schwarzkopf died). They were dancing because hundreds if not thousands of ordinary people died. If something–anything–killed several thousand ordinary Cubans or Iraqis or Iranians, I wouldn’t be dancing in the streets, and I wouldn’t have any trouble saying any American who was dancing in the streets was a jerk and an idiot. I certainly wouldn’t start going on about the legitimate grievances the American people feel towards blah blah blah.
On NPR (I think it was NPR, anyway) yesterday they had a reporter interviewing some of the so-called ‘dancing Palestinians’. Asked why they were celebrating one woman responded with the usual ‘Great Satan’ rhetoric, then added,
“Now maybe they’ll start taking our problems seriously” (Or words to that effect).
I felt disgusted. Not so much at the hatefulness, but the sheer, apalling stupidity of such a response. Is this what they really think? That the world’s going to suddenly say, “What fools we’ve been! Let’s give money and weapons to the Palestinians because some terrorists mass-murdered thousands!”
Or is it a lie even they don’t believe, but say it because it sounds better than "I approve of mass murder '?
Now having said that, don’t flame me for hating Palestine or whatever. I have no doubt that the ‘street dancers’ probably represent the same proportionate number of Palestinians as do the number Americans that celebrate abortion clinic bombers represent America. In short, they’e religious jackasses. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the two.
The problem is that in Palestine those f*ckers seem to be calling the shots.
Frankly, I don’t think there would celebration over the death of anyone’s leader in the US. If Israel went nuts today and conquered everything it could we wouldn’t be celebrating anything, and surely not in the streets.
If Hussien organized a coup against his own government through freedom-fighters and promptly committed suicide on world television after making a declaration of apology to all the people he oppressed, I don’t think we’d be handing out candy or shooting fireworks.
Pol Pot was a pretty hated individual. I think the most that came out of the “free world” was a sigh of relief and a little news coverage.
Well unless those celebrating have special knowledge about some direct harm caused to Palestinians (and Arabs in general) by ALL the occupants of the WTC and hijacked aircraft, then I think it’s fair to assume that they (the dancers) do not make that distiction. No?
On NPR (I think it was NPR, anyway) yesterday they had a reporter interviewing some of the so-called ‘dancing Palestinians’. Asked why they were celebrating one woman responded with the usual ‘Great Satan’ rhetoric, then added,
“Now maybe they’ll start taking our problems seriously” (Or words to that effect).
I felt disgusted. Not so much at the hatefulness, but the sheer, apalling stupidity of such a response. Is this what they really think? That the world’s going to suddenly say, “What fools we’ve been! Let’s give money and weapons to the Palestinians because some terrorists mass-murdered thousands!”
Or is it a lie even they don’t believe, but say it because it sounds better than "I approve of mass murder '?
Now having said that, don’t flame me for hating Palestine or whatever. I have no doubt that the ‘street dancers’ probably represent the same proportionate number of Palestinians as do the number Americans that celebrate abortion clinic bombers represent America. In short, they’e religious jackasses. I don’t see a whole lot of difference between the two.
The problem is that in Palestine those f*ckers seem to be calling the shots.
Yes, I do. It is unfair, unethical, and just plain wrong for the United States to send financial aid to a state that is actively engaged in genocide against another people. We shouldn’t be suprised if these sort of acts continue if we insist on maintaining such an immoral policy.
We’ve abandoned our ethics by providing support to the Israelis which is independent of their behavior. American policy must be one that supports the peacemakers of both sides, not the warmakers of one side.
Our unswerving support of the warmakers on the Israeli side has the unintended effect of providing support to the warmakers arrayed against them- and this brings their emnity upon us.
Absolutely. The violence must stop first. But that must include an end to the violence against Palestinians.
You say that the Palestinians don’t want to share land, that they want to drive the Israelis into the sea- How is this different from the Israelis who don’t want to share land and are actively working as we speak to drive the Palestinians into the desert?
We need to stop looking at this conflict from only the Israeli side!
Mr. M.: “We didn’t see anyone criticiszing the dancers.”
Mr. Miskatonic, with all due respect, do you suppose that such criticism wasn’t available anywhere within the world’s Palestinian population? You have heard from Testy that Palestinians working with him in Saudi Arabia were deeply embarassed by the “dancing” footage. What do you think you might be feeling on this issue now had you seen the infamous dancers with a voice-over saying something like “While some members of the Palestinian community were dancing in the streets, others…” <switch to film of somber-looking Palestinians> “expressed shock and dismay.” What if you had seen Testy’s colleagues describing their embarassment as many times as you have seen the dancers?
We all have to rely on the news media for information, but we must always remember that what we see on the news isn’t a stream of omniscient and unmediated “reality.” It is a carefully edited, processed, packaged product. At least be aware of that.
I do not say that the situation of the Palestinian people isn’t complicated, contentious, and likely to produce heated debate. I do not say that Israel is always wrong and the Palestinians are always right. But what I do say is that few people living in the United States know very much at all about the Palestinian people. And what they do know most are sound-bites and images that, by and large, have been chosen precisely because they confirm what Americans already believe they know about the Palestinians.
Your comment supports my point that the US news media tends to focus more on the violence of one side. Just offhand, I can think of the car-bombing of the West Bank mayors, the assassination of the prime minister and the plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque, all planned or carried out by Jewish extremists. There are also plenty of small-scale, low-intensity terrorist acts and unwarranted killings carried out by armed settlers and occupation troops. These don’t appear in the US media, but they do sometimes get covered by the Israeli media, since many Israelis do have a conscience.
Ironically, some of the most extreme views and some of the worst problems originate with US-born settlers. Baruch Goldstein was an American, and he was applauded at his funeral by other American-born settlers.
Also, Goldstein carried out his massacre in 1994, which does not yet qualify as “many years ago”.
Remember the settler girl who was shot while on a day hike in the West Bank a few years ago? It turned out the bullet came from one of her armed bodyguards, who had already shot several Palestinians to death in the confrontation. Later the settler extremists still tried to blame the girl’s death on the Palestinians, claiming that the bodyguard’s weapon was jostled by a rock thrown by the mother of one of the slain Palestinians. They seemed totally unaware that this explanation did not make them look very good.
Some of those settlers are very scary people who seem to display no moral compass whatsoever. I didn’t see the footage of them dancing to the news of Arab deaths, but I bet some of them did that. The war would end tomorrow if someone would make them pack up their settlements and leave, by arresting them if necessary.
I think you’re stereotyping Palestinian society. Unless you can show me an opinion poll, I do not believe most Palestinians promote suicide bombing or believe that such is the key to heaven.
Actually, the first Bush administration recognized the PLO after the goal of destroying Israel was retracted. There never would have been a peace process if the PLO had continued to advocate driving Israeli into the sea. Contrast that with the Kach Party deputies who have the very definite and publicly-acknowledged goal of deporting all the Palestinians from the land where their families have lived for hundreds of years.
And, even if the PLO still had the secret goal of utterly destroying Israel, how moral is it to punish the entire population for that? More sick collective punishment.
rjung-- the people you named are political/military leaders. Not civilians. Big difference.
I used to have a freind in army intelligence who would show me some transcripts from various middle east TV broadcasts and translated arab and jewish newspapers. This was during a “calm” period. I basically learned all I needed to know about the Middle East.
The Israeli media and political leaders say to their own people pretty much what they say to us.
The Palestinian leaders who come on nightline and act reaosnable turn around and spew hate to their own people, referring to jews as racially inferior and deserving of death. I remember one high PLO guy saying something to the effect that killing a jew should be a rite of passage for young arab men. The tone was the same in publications from several arab countries.
I think some of these things are online, if someone wants to look. I do think the Palestinians have suffered “historic wrongs.” But after reading that hate, I’ve found it real hard to see both sides anymore.
I do not believe that the Arakisim (Is that right> I know
Arakis is Arabic for dancer, but not sure of plural suffix)
represent all Palestinians. However, they were celebrating an attack on a civilian target and the death of unarmed, noncombatants. Yes during the Gulf War, video from some missiles was aired hourly. But those missiles were landing on things like tanks and arms depots. Celebrating the death of any human being isn’t great, but a soldier on a battlefield is a legitimate target and knows that he may ne killed. The WTC is not a military base. It is an office building and tourist attraction. The Arakisim were celebrating an attack that killed children.
On another issue, the conflict in the Middle East dates back to roughly the beginning of recorded history. It is impossible to establish who had the land first. The US has tried to bring about a peace, but it’s hard to end a few millenia of war in 50 years or so.
This year alone Palestinian suicide-bombers have detonated killed people in- a disco, a Sbarro's, and a beach. Their families then call them martyr's. I find the targetting of civilians unforgivable. Israel has attempted, with some success, the precision sniping of known terrorist leaders. Israel has destroyed Palestinian police buildings known to be used as terrorist training centers. Yes, some civilians have been injured or killed. I do not approve of this, but these deaths are either accidental or due to the deliberate positioning of Palestinian children by their elders. The deaths in the WTC and on the planes were intentional killings of civilians. There is a bast difference between attacking a military target and killing soldiers and the destruction of office buildings and civilians.