Do any of you think that, if the situation in the West Bank were as peaceable as, say, the Midwest here in the US, any Palestinians would be dancing in the streets after the attack? Given the general reaction from other countries that may not be any more well-disposed towards the US, I seriously doubt it.
The Palestinians’ reaction is only understandable (and by this I do NOT mean that I condone it!) because the Palestinians see the US as supporting the situation as it stands between Israel and the Palestinians. It is not because of some generalized anti-American sentiment that is part of the ‘Palestinian’ outlook on life, and therefore I do not believe they were celebrating the deaths of thousands of Americans. (Was there dancing in the streets of the West Bank after Oklahoma City?)
Do I think it was stupid? Yes. We all do stupid shit when our emotions get the better of us, especially when we have a large amount of pent-up anger. Does it automatically invalidate everything the Palestinians as a group want for themselves and the land they’re being evicted from? No.
1972 Munich Olympics
The Entebbe hijacking 1979 Uganda
The Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon 1982
The US Embassy bombing in Beirut 1983
The Achille Lauro and the murder of Leon Klinghoffer 1985
The TWA hijacking in Lebanon 1985
The World Trade Center, 1993
The Khobar Towers bombing 1996
The US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi 1998
September 11, 2001
I have never seen any Palestinian disavowal of these acts, except for the last one.
Genocide? Genocide?! Under seven hundred Palestinians have died at Israeli hands in the past year. That’s less than the amount of people the U.S. military killed on a daily basis during Vietnam. Genocide? You don’t know what the word means. What’s going on in the Middle East is war, not genocide.
Beleve you me, if we allowed ourselves to commit genocide, you’d notice. The whole Palestinian problem would be over within a week.
But we don’t do those kind of things. We’re better than that.
I don’t give a crap about palestinian politics. Dancing/celebrating the demise of thousands of innocent people is just plain wrong, and cause for retaliation in my opinion. Not on EVERYONE in Palestine - we’re slick enough to nail just the party people. Then we’ll see what kinds of celebrations they throw.
To me its like this. If I’m in a bar and someone sucker-punches me in the back of the head, the first thing I do is turn around to see who did it. Now lets say I can’t see who hit me, but I see some little punk in the corner, dancing and pointing at me, laughing. Ima go beat his ass first, then resume my search.
Fuck the dancing palestinians, I don’t care HOW justified they feel.
The Lebanon ones were carried out by Lebanese Shiites, not Palestinians. Saudis did the Khobar Towers. Osama Bin Laden might have been behind the African embassy bombings, and he’s a Saudi too. All Arabs aren’t alike, just like Canadians and Australians aren’t alike.
Arafat’s faction has always disavowed attacks carried out outside Israel, against non-Israelis. And, I don’t remember the news from those times, but I find it hard to believe that Arafat, after shaking hands with Clinton and Rabin, would not have disavowed those 1990s attacks. Denouncing yesterday’s attacks was a matter of course for him, not something new. He certainly disavowed the assassination of the Israeli Prime Minister, because he went to the funeral.
I’m getting the feeling that a lot of the people posting to this thread don’t really know much about the Palestinians, or about Palestinian-Israeli politics, preferring instead to argue about their own emotions and perceptions. Well, I can’t argue with how you feel!!!
Arab citizens of Israel do not have the same rights as Jewish Israelis. They can vote, but they can’t join the Army. Any Jew in the world can immigrate to Israel and claim citizenship, but no Palestinian can return to his family’s pre-1948 home, or any home taken from him by Israelis.
Ya know why? Because Israel allows all Jews in as brothers. When the Palestinians left Israel, nobody would let them in. Not Jordan, not Syria, Lebanon – no one. Their fellow nations, brothers in Islam, realized it was better to have refugees than more citizens. Strengthened their internal hatred and looked great on TV.
Arabs are allowed to live in Israel. Until this situation started, there was no persecution. They are free to become citizens, to come and go as they please. EVEN IN TIMES OF WAR, Israel allows religious pilgrims from their battling countries come to visit their holy shrines.
How many Arab nations allow Jews to be free citizens there? To wander in their country in war time?
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?
Have you been there? The ENTIRE AREA is a desert. The Israelis have been actively adding trees and vegetation to the desert since day one. When they controled the Sinai, they began the processes of planting trees there, too. The Egyptians – after thousands of years – had never tried that.
And the Israelis offered a peace treaty. Offered land, offered part of Jerusalem, and were denied by Arafat who wanted MORE MORE MORE. That’s not quite the same as driving them into the desert, is it?
My point is that you will find people in any nation that are tasteless enough to gleefully celebrate the death of other human beings.
No disagreement here.
Well, that’s getting into the whole sticky mess between Israel, the Palestinians, and the US record of aid for the former and (seeming) indifference to the latter. And while I feel the Palestinians may have some legitimate complaints, that’s irrelevant to the point – any celebration of the death of any human being is tasteless, rude, and barbaric.
Excuse me, TCLouie, but I never said these acts were carried out by Palestinians. I said that they never disavowed them, as in, “We are shocked and appalled that this act against the US jeopardizes the peace effort.”
Perhaps you’ve entirely misunderstood. There is no fair or amoral action to take when two parties are in a combat over ethical concerns. Any single action taken-- including inaction-- works to the favor of one of the two parties. So tell me, is one side clearly right and the other clearly wrong?
I believe that we look to the Israelis as trusted friends and necessary allies. We’ve been involved in trying to stop the violence, as well-- or did you miss the last two years of politics?
Hey, violence occurs because those with the guns don’t listen to the peacemakers. Apart from that, what action do you think is a fair action? I see no action which is simultaneously fair and proactive. I see no proactive action that can be taken which does not serve the interests of one of the two parties involved. I see no reason why we shouldn’t help our allies in a time of conflict. I see no indication that there is genocide occuring, your post notwithstanding. You may choose to interpret the UN’s definition that way, but the UN didn’t. Frankly, I’ll side with them on an understanding of the semantics behind their own definitions.
Unswerving support for warmaking? Are we living in parallel universes? We would like to see a peaceful solution to this process. We will aid our allies. This is an ethical choice in a combat of ethics… there are no other choices available other than ethical choices. Since the perception is not one of looking to Israel as a criminal or wayward state outright, we will support them as necessary. The end goal is a peaceful resolution.
Given the US history of meddling, when we disagree with the people we’ve given aide to we don’t just keep aiding them anyway. Check your data on South American puppet dictators or the Vietnam conflict. Or Cuba. Or the Iran/Contra dealie with Ollie North versus the current alliances in existence.
If it becomes clear that Israel has a platform of racism and/or genocide-- something I find totally unlikely-- we will certainly step up to that. Given that Israel wants our continued support they’d be stupid to deliberately displease us. Given that we want Israel’s friendship we’d be strupid to side with anyone else.
The Palestinians did not “leave” Israel, many of them were driven out against their will. Unlike a Jewish immigrant to Israel, the Palestinians never had any desire to leave or be “taken in” by another country. They have always considered that they are in their own country. There is a big difference.
Also, around 25% of all Palestinians are Christians. There is no strife between Muslim and Christian Palestinians, and in that respect, they do respect each other as brothers. The war is more about oppression, homelessness and economic marginalization than it is about religion. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are sister faiths.
Ethnic and racial discrimination, in immigration or anything else, are an undemocratic practice. Israel is no more democratic than an Arab state.
sigh
Oh, please.
Israel is no more a desert than Los Angeles. Both areas are considered to have Mediterranean climates. Not to denigrate the accomplishments of the kibbutzim and drip-irrigation, but there has always been cultivation and orchards in Israel/Palestine. Many of the Palestinian families who had their fruit trees chopped down by Israeli troops had been cultivating those trees for generations.
I find these pro-Palestinian arguments tiresome. Face facts, most of you pro-Palestine people are pretty much anti-America types of various stripes. Maybe you’re anti-ZOG militia types, maybe you’re anti-Capitalism, maybe you’re pro-Muslim, maybe you just like the idea of violence. But, I’m willing to give the posters here the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re just motivated by humanitarian feelings and a desire for justice.
Doesn’t really matter, since US support for Palestine became a dead issue yesterday. Israel is now our best ally in the world. You all might as well shut up for the next couple of years. Israeli policy is going to take an even harder line, and the US public is going to applaud. It doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong. Right and wrong are irrelevant. The Israelis are our friends and allies, while the Palestinians are the friends and allies of the WTC bombers. We will never help the Palestinians now.
The people celebrating in the street were dancing at their own funeral. Just watch the footage of Yasser Arafat condemning the bombing, looking like he’d been kicked in the stomach. Because he knew that the last nail had been driven in the coffin of the Palestinian cause. Rightly or wrongly, that is irrelevant. Don’t talk to me about how the Palestinians don’t deserve this. They may or may not (I have my own opinion, but my opinion is irrelevant). Whether they deserve it or not, they are finished.
You do know the difference between Destroy and Defeat, don’t you? Even the most radical Israelis only want to deport the Palestinians outside Israeli borders.
The rest of us just want to prevent them from being able to harm us. If that involves killing some of them and giving the rest a hard time, then so be it, hmm? Why should we be nice to people who want to destroy our country? You know where nice guys finish. And before you say “prove that they want to destroy Israel”, I’ll say to you - prove that they don’t.
We have to look after our own.
Olentzero:
Sure. Sabra and Shatila were carried out by a Christian Arab lynch mob, who acted without Israeli knowledge. Some Army and Defense Dept. officials were guilty of negligence, perhaps, but not more than that.
Deir Yassin, I’ll grant you, was wrong. For those not familiar with the story, Dir Yassin was an Arab village on the road to Jerusalem. During the earlier phases of the war, fierce fighting took place between Palestinian and Jewish militia forces in the area, with both sides trying to seize control of the acess road to Israel’s future capital. Dir Yassin was a crucial staging point for Arab reinforcements, so the Jewish command sent a force of some 70 men to conquer and subdue the village. They entered the village at night, met resistance and started firing in a less-than-discriminate manner. At dawn they realized that they’d killed a number of civilians along with the armed militants.
Now, the number of civilians killed has never been determined - estimates run between 20 and 200 - but it’s well known that both sides “blew up” the numbers, the Jews in order to demoralize, the Arabs in order to fire up spirits. Needless to say,the Jewish estimates were correct - the hugh Arab exodus out of the country started soon after the attack.
It was the sort of atrocity that happens often in wartime, and I can’t think of a single campaign ever in history which has managed to avoid its like. Most Israelis see it as a blight on their history; several Israeli Prime Ministers have issued formal apologies.
Dir Yassin stands out in Israeli history as an exception, not as the rule.
erislover, do not selectively edit my posts. I said that the Israelis are engaged in acts of Genocide against the Palestinian people, and that’s exactly what I meant. Not “acts of warfare.” Genocide.
Torture is not an act of war. Nor is expelling civilians from their homes, refusing to allow them to return. Nor is the murder of civilians. Israel has been shown to have done all these things. All these things have been defined as aspects of genocide in other conflicts around the world.
The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is not one over ethical concerns, as you put it. It’s over land. And we took the Israelis’ side when we allowed them to build and expand settlements on seized Palestinian land during the Oslo peace process. We took the Israelis’s side when we continued to provide them with military assistance and hardware while they continue to occupy Palestinian land. We take the Israelis side in the United Nations when the rest of the civilized world votes to condemn Israel for their barbarous behavior. We take the Israeli side when we continue to call Israel an “ally” while their security forces torture Palestinian civilians.
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians have engaged in abhorrent acts. So why are we taking sides at all?
So by this definition the Arab nations that surround Israel are guilty of genocide in 1948, 1953, 1967 and 1973. And since 1973 each and every terrorist attack that has targeted Israel is an act of genocide.
You have no basis and no evidence for making such a sweeping statement. You are scapegoating without proof, which is exactly what our political leaders have told us to avoid doing. The U.S. Government itself does not blame the Palestinians. Do you have some knowledge the government doesn’t have?
I suspect you are wrong about American politics and American public opinion as well. You are merely expressing your own feelings and prejudices, and I can’t argue with those.