[QUOTE=spoke-]
I came into this thread only to challenge the suggestion that Carter had some sinister and hidden motive. That was and remains a vile suggestion.
[/QUOTE]
Well, to be fair, his support of Arafat and his identification with the Palestinian cause sure isn’t hidden. 
I don’t think Carter is sinister, for the record. Just horribly misguided and at times naive.
spoke-, hard to call solid evidence that Carter is saying things that are akin to a Hillary “misspeak” as “minutiae” …
I tend to agree with the statement that one is better served by talking to an enemy than not but Carter is not talking for Israel and it is not his role to make that decision for Israel. I also wonder if that rule is always true: is it better for the US to talk to Bin Laden than not? In any case, Israel has every reason to feel that Carter’s current actions are not in Israel’s best interests in either the short or the long term.
As to Carter’s motives … I don’t know but he reminds of the old days of Jesse Jackson … I think it is ego. He may really believe that Israel is just in the wrong and is therefore ready to unquestioningly accept “facts” that support that POV and to not see others. Or he may have other reasons for his biases. Maybe sinister maybe not. I can’t read his mind. But Finn has provided ample evidence that Carter is systematically ignoring evidence that goes against his perspective, choosing to accept “facts” given to him by Hamas that are not true according to other non-Israeli sources, and saying things that he should know are just untrue. Again, that hardly counts as “minutiae.”
[QUOTE=spoke-]
Thanks just the same, Finn, but life is too short to respond to your loaded questions and to battle you over minutae.
[/quote]
I, for one, am interested in debating this topic. That’s why I’m in GD. Perhaps if you’re not interested in debating, you’d feel comfortable yielding the floor so that someone who did want to debate your side of the issue could feel more free to post?
You might also want to more accurately describe the issues, if you want to debate them. Questions over why Carter lies so often, what the purpose of his lies are and whether or not he’s aware that his suggested path for a peace treaty would lead to the increased murder of Israelis are hardly “minutiae”. They’re well within the scope of the thread and you have steadfastly refused to engage with any of them, other than to handwave them away. If you want to claim that I’m asking something along the lines of “Is Carter still beating his wife?”, if behooves you to not just allege that my questions are somehow unfair, but to actually show that they are via rational debate
Whether or not Carter deliberately lied in order to make people think that Hamas was no threat, and thus his plans wouldn’t lead to Hamas murdering many more Israelis, is hardly a “quibble” or “minutiae”.
Will you debate the meat of this issue, or even any tangents of this issue?
[QUOTE=spoke-]
Instead, I’ll state the obvious: You can’t make peace with your enemies without talking to them.
[/quote]
While that’s a nifty soundbyte, it’s also overly simplistic to the point of being a caricature of a reasonable argument, as well as being, factually wrong.
Israel achieved peace with Egypt, for example, without even once having the faction that murdered Sadat for his ‘betrayal’, at the negotiating table. And Israel is still at peace with Egypt.
So despite your false to facts reasoning, yes, you sure can make peace with your enemies without talking to all the factions that are within those enemy groups. And not only can a country in general do so, Israel in specific has done so in the past.
Soundbytes aside, can you give any actual, logical and/or factual reasons why Hamas couldn’t be marginalized and defanged? Can you give any logical/factual reasons, at all, to explain how including Hamas in negotiations with Hamas as it is now, would lead to anything even resembling peace? Can you give any logical/factual reasons, at all, to explain how, rather than the slow process of “understandings” that DSeid suggested, Carter’s “all at once” plans would do anything other than allow rockets to hit Tel Aviv?
You may want to avoid my questions, which are based on 100% verifiable facts and fallacy free logic, as “loaded”… but that still doesn’t explain how letting Hamas have all the Iranian rockets it can import, and letting them get close enough to fire them at Tel Aviv, would lead to anything other than Hamas firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
Can you provide a fact-based, logical case that rockets hitting Tel Aviv wouldn’t be the obvious consequence?
[QUOTE=spoke-]
I haven’t seen any convincing alternative “agenda” for Carter. Therefore, I believe his agenda is as he says it is: peace.
[/quote]
Which, of course, is an evasion and not a real response at all. Shodan, Malthus and I have all provided numerous facts, and connected them with logic, in order to explain what Carter’s likely agenda(s) are, and why they are inconsistent with his PR to one degree or another. Simply stating that you don’t find them convincing is not a rebuttal. We are in GD, where you are supposed to rebut things you don’t agree with, especially well cited, well reasoned things you don’t disagree with. Do you think you’re convincing the peanut gallery, if your argument against facts and logic is to neither disprove the facts or show the logic to be fallacious, but simply to repeat your opinion that they’re incorrect… over and over again?
I, for example, have pointed out what the virtually certain consequence of allowing Hamas within rocket range of Tel Aviv would be, and how that result could not be called “peace” by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, you still claim that Carter’s agenda, which would see Hamas within rocket range of Tel Aviv, is one that has *peace *as it’s goal rather than, as Shodan pointed out, merely a peace treaty. That is not a rebuttal, it is merely a repeated denial.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
I do not say that his tactics in pursuit of that goal will be effective.
[/quote]
You have again evaded the fact that it is a virtual certainty that the results his goals would bring about, namely, rockets hitting Tel Aviv, would be not peace, but war. You have evaded the fact that it is extremely unlikely that Carter doesn’t know this, and that if he really doesn’t know it, it’s because he’s acting as Hamas’ totally uncritical and uncaring shill.
Explain how a man who knows, or damn well should know, that his proposed course of action would lead to rockets hitting a major city, is really interested in peace. Explain how the Israeli government/intelligence service wasn’t perfectly right to snub him, since his plans would lead to rockets hitting Tel Aviv and as such, he doesn’t deserve anybody’s time or faciltation.
Please actually debate this point if you want to disagree with what facts and logic show us about Carter’s agenda.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
I do not say that he is an evenhanded broker.
[/quote]
Explain how a non-evenhanded broker, who habitually lies on the issue and whose agenda can be shown to have the result of rockets raining down on Tel Aviv, is an appropriate choice for a negotiator. Explain why Israel wasn’t perfectly in the right to snub a non-evenhanded broker whose tactics would certainly not be effective at accomplishing anything even resembling peace.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
I came into this thread only to challenge the suggestion that Carter had some sinister and hidden motive.
[/QUOTE]
Well, we’re all waiting.
Get to challenging it.
Several of us have laid our facts out on the table, connected them via explicit chains of logic, and said exactly what we believe and what we’re unsure of regarding Carter’s actual goals, ideology and methods. You’ve just offered rote denials.
This is GD after all. If you’re going to challenge something here, you either need to attack the facts its predicated on, or the logic that connects the facts. You have steadfastly refused to do either.
Can you
A) show any rational, factual reasons why anybody shouldn’t call bullshit on claims that Carter wants peace rather than just a peace treaty?
B) show any rational, factual reasons why anybody shouldn’t call bullshit on claims that Carter has honestly related his goals and agenda, if virtually every single major point he makes is propped up by deception, fabrication and deliberate omission?
C) show any rational, factual reasons why someone who lies to support his agenda, cannot be trusted to accurately relate his agenda, supports a supposed goal of ‘peace’ that would lead to rockets hitting Tel Aviv and is obviously a raging partisan for one side… should be considered as a negotiator in a situation like this?
D) show any rational, factual reasons why Carter not only lies so often, but steadfastly refuses to correct his mistakes, methodology and/or ideology… other than that he’s deliberately using deception in order to sway people to a course that they would almost definitely not be supporting, were the facts clear?
E) show any rational, factual reasons why Carter’s lies, almost without exception, aim at deceiving people to think that groups like Hamas are no threat at all, while Israel’s leaders are warmongering rejectionists for not accepting Hamas as honest partners for peace?
If you can’t debate the issues, and can only repeat your position while your content-free argument gets clobbered with facts and logic, time and again… why not bow out of a GD thread and see if someone who does want to debate might not argue your position in your stead?
On preview: damn you DSeid, you said it in fewer words and more eloquently than I. 
to you I say, sir!
[QUOTE=DSeid]
I also wonder if that rule is always true: is it better for the US to talk to Bin Laden than not?
[/QUOTE]
Hamas has been democratically elected. Bin Laden has not. I see that as a distinction worth noting.
And as long as I’m at it:
[QUOTE=DSeid]
I tend to agree with the statement that one is better served by talking to an enemy than not but Carter is not talking for Israel and it is not his role to make that decision for Israel. I also wonder if that rule is always true: is it better for the US to talk to Bin Laden than not?
[/QUOTE]
Or for another example of a type of ‘peace’: in America during the age of segregation and explicit bigotry, even though they were often elected to positions of power and continued to be for some time (see David Duke), the KKK was never a part of the civil rights struggle. Blacks never ‘negotiated’ with the KKK for the right to be equal. And yet, comprehensive civil rights laws were still passed.
Likewise, there is no reason to assume that, as an ironclad rule, Israel must make Hamas part of the struggle for peace. Israel has no need to “negotiate” with Hamas for the right to continue breathing and/or not be ethnically cleansed. And still, there is a possibility that a comprehensive peace deal can be reached.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
Hamas has been democratically elected. Bin Laden has not.
[/QUOTE]
And if he had been? Would you speak with Osama Bin Laden if he were the democratically elected president of Afganistan?
[QUOTE=Alessan]
And if he had been? Would you speak with Osama Bin Laden if he were the democratically elected president of Afganistan?
[/QUOTE]
That’s a moot point.
If bin Laden were elected president of Canada, right next door to the US, then I would think maybe we should talk to him.
So no debate, just denial?
Three interesting bits of news today:
That last one is very interesting. As I understand it, Israel annexed the Golan Heights because they are heights – the Syrians used to lob artillery shells into Galilee from there, it’s the perfect location. If Israel’s ready to give it up, they must think Syria is no longer a significant military threat. Which is encouraging.
[QUOTE=spoke-]
If bin Laden were elected president of Canada, right next door to the US, then I would think maybe we should talk to him.
[/QUOTE]
At his trial after we occupy Canada, sure.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
That last one is very interesting. As I understand it, Israel annexed the Golan Heights because they are heights – the Syrians used to lob artillery shells into Galilee from there, it’s the perfect location. If Israel’s ready to give it up, they must think Syria is no longer a significant military threat. Which is encouraging.
[/QUOTE]
It was pretty well known (although never publicly admitted) that Israel and Syria had been in serious discussion of the issue for several years, even before the elder al-Assad died. The WTC/Pentagon attacks appeared to have halted those discussions. I am glad that it appears the discussions continued. (And, no, I am not ignoring the fact that Syria has, in fact, played a disruptive role in Lebanon or that al Qaida recruits certainly entered Iraq through Syria. I am simply pointing out that Israel, at least, appears to understand Realpolitik well enough to consider engaging certain enemies in talks–even if the talks have to remain secret. It is a lesson that Bush and Company could learn.)
I doubt that any similar talks are occurring with Hamas, but then the more Bush/Rice-like leaders of Hamas do not seem to believe that long term peace is in their interest in the way that the younger al-Assad recognizes.
[QUOTE=Sevastopol]
Choose your own caption.
By now you will have realised that Weirddave has declined to supply the evidence on which he claimed that Hamas has a coherent plan to liquidate the entire Jewish ethnicity of Israel. To wit genocide. Being as that’s a large claim, some plain and unambiguous evidence was doubtless his source.
[/QUOTE]
Sure. It’s right in their charter, links to which have been posted numerous times in this forum. Apparently, you’ve never bothered to follow any of them and read the source material for yourself (Here’s another chance), but I realize that clicking on links and reading and comprehending what is cached there can be a long, hard process, so I’ll provide you with some excerpts:
Hmm. “obliterate”…“Jihad”…“Imperialist Zionists expansion(I’m compressing a couple together here)”..etc… Gee, you’re right, my classification of the aims of Hamas as genocide was way off, what was I thinking? :rolleyes:
[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
You seem to have PM’s disabled, I think.
If you’d like a bit of the straight dope on this tangent, please either enable PM’s or confirm that you don’t mind receiving emails.
Cheers.
[/QUOTE]
Hmmm. I’ll check. Still kinda new here, never got a PM before (here).
[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
You seem to have PM’s disabled, I think.
If you’d like a bit of the straight dope on this tangent, please either enable PM’s or confirm that you don’t mind receiving emails.
Cheers.
[/QUOTE]
PM’s are now enabled. I have received email from other members here before, though.
Thanks for any info. This Israel/USA/Arabia Love Triangle is the singular most polarizing, passionate and deadly topic of our era.
Yes but, you see Dave, they don’t really want to commit genocide as they already believe that all the world’s Jews are dead already. Which of course isn’t racist either, as it’s only due to that evil Zionist controlled US media that anybody would even consider hating all the Jews on the planet to be a racist position. Obviously, believing that Jews are human beings who deserve the right to life just shows how very racist some people are… against Palestinians!
It all becomes clear now.
Personally, I think it’d serve much the same purpose if folks just responded with this (long dead) Pit thread. Even though the thread hasn’t been updated with more recent comments, I think it sums up the situation rather well.
But at the same time, I understand the desire to clear up obvious factual inaccuracies that have the possibility of misleading people, and I grok the tendency to keep tonguing a sore tooth, no matter how annoying it is when you do it.
Thanks for fighting the good fight though. More power to you. I assume that most people aren’t fooled by sevastopol’s apologetics for genocidal, racist maniacs, but your path is probably wise in the long run, as well. If even one lurker is prevented from reading those sorts of posts and coming away thinking “Gee, Hamas really are just freedom fighters. Why has the Zionist controlled media and ZOG cast them as bad guys? It must be because they’re racists!”
Well… then you will have made a real difference in the fight against ignorance.
My hat is off to you, I don’t have the kind of stamina to keep engaging with that poster on repeated claims of that nature.
On preview: (what does ETA stand for, anyways?)
FoieGrasIsEvil, I’ll be happy to expand a bit in a PM that makes the history of some arguments on the Dope a bit clearer. It may take me a few hours, as I’ve got some other stuff to get done first. I generally prefer not to email people, as some folks might not be quite so happy with unsolicited emails as unsolicited PM’s, but that’s just my quirk.
I’ll get back to you asap.
[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
<<snip>>
[QUOTE=Sevastopol]
To what end? I used to believe it was merely to agitate Americans so as to keep an uncritical flow of aid money to Israel. The text was, Palestinians are really the Nazis pt II & we need your cash. On further reflection, there are other reasons, one above all. Hate speech is functional. It is an identity. With the frenzy of hate speech and historical injuries, it is that much easier to brutalise your society to something less than civilised. Which is what has happened. Hate speech is part of the chorus and anthem of support for Israel.
[/QUOTE]
<<snip>>
That hate speech you refer to cuts both ways, and therein lies the rub.
And whom ever referred to the Palestinians as Nazis?
Is it your assertion, then, that Israel is defined by hate speech? As opposed to, say, Hamas?
:dubious:
[/QUOTE]
Glad you asked. Perhaps it would be better to refer you to Juan Cole who you really should read. It is as though he sometimes reads this MB. His recent take on the this situation:
(my emphasis)
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
Sure. It’s right in their charter, links to which have been posted numerous times in this forum. …
Hmm. “obliterate”…“Jihad”…“Imperialist Zionists expansion(I’m compressing a couple together here)”..etc… Gee, you’re right, my classification of the aims of Hamas as genocide was way off, what was I thinking? :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]
We’ve all seen all this material before. Where’s your alleged genocide? There’s no gold stamp for not being way off. When you claim genocide, as you did, you do not get to be approximately in the vicinity with your evidence and handwave in a vague direction.
Lots of people express hostility, everyone understands there is hostility. It is a much larger step to then go on to claim there is a plan for genocide. That is where the evidence fails.
E.g. see above for a sufficient example.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Speaking of genocide . . .
[/QUOTE]
You know, you really shouldn’t take your knowledge of Judaism or Israel from Al-Ahram Weekly.
On its face, your selected quote contains a gaping error:
… is an obvious attempt to puff up this fellow as being of more importance than he is. Hint: no such “authorities” exist capable of issuing religious opinions for “Jews”.
The rantings of some nutter Rabbi do not, IMHO, demonstrate any equivanence to the official Charter of the democratically elected party governing half the Palestinian nation.
There are nuts calling for bloodshed everywhere. What is significant about Hamas, is that they nuts calling for bloodshed who happen to be in power and who actually carry out their threats, to the extent they are capable.
First, glutton, WTF are you thinking? You cite democracy now as if it was an accurate, thorough cite, and now you cite an article talking about an Haaretz article… wihout even bothering to reference the primary source? One that doesn’t even link to the primary source? And most sources for it on the web reprint the allegations, without once linking to the supposed article? In fact, most list the allegations’ source as the Al-Ahram article, and not any Haaretz article.
This doesn’t trip even a single warning light for you? Not one? Where did you even first hear about this story, as it’s mostly making the rounds at racist and/or anti-Israel hardliner propaganda cites? Shouldn’t that have served as your first clue?
And even if your bullshit detector is broken, doesn’t it strike you as odd that all context is removed from the equation and you just threw us a soundbyte? Were the supposed genocidal incitements supported or opposed by many Israelis? How about shows like Pioneers of Tomorrow and various sermons at mosques all over the region that call for genocide? Generally supported or opposed?
By the way, since you evidently couldn’t be bothered to track down the actually primary source to perform even rudimentary fact checking, here it is.
Let’s see, glutton, if your claims are fact… or if they’re bullshit.
Starting with the basics, the very first line of your cite, did, in fact, Rosen say “All of the Palestinians must be killed…” ? Nope. The phrase “all the” actually appears nowhere in the article. It is, in fact, totally made up. Invented. Fiction. A lie. One that you fell for and repeated as truth.
Status: bullshit.
Moving on, what did Rosen actually say?
So, gee… not only was he not referring to “all Palesinans” as the fabricated quote claims, he was only referring to terrorists who “hail the destruction of Israel and dance on the blood”. Odd “mistake” for Al-Ahram to make, eh, eh?
Status of your claim on that point: bullshit.
Moving on, what did one other Israeli religious authority have to say about the issue, for example?
Status of your claim on that front: bullshit.
Further, did “most” of those “authorized” to give Jewish religious opinions agree with a call for genocide? Do I even really need to quote the article, as it’s clear that Al-Ahram was simply lying when they claimed any such call for genocide actually existed?
Sorry, but no, not going to waste any more time with this garbage.
Please actually verify your facts before tossing out rotten propaganda.
On the other bullshit claim we just got, let’s look at Juan Cole’s capabilities for honest discussion and scholarly analysis of facts.
[
On the edit: Malthus, it’s worse than all that. There weren’t even any “genocidal” rantings of any nutter Rabbi. They were invented, pure and simple.
And to the peanut gallery: we can, of course, also look at Cole’s claim that Iran hasn’t attacked another nation aggressively in 100 years. I wonder, then, what the hundreds of Americans who were murdered by Hezbollah, at the direct orders of Iranian governmental officials, would have to say about them being non-aggressively murdered. :rolleyes: