I’d kiss my boss’ hairy naked ass for a 5% raise, especially if my children were starving. Outdated concepts of honor and dignity are at the root of this whole problem. Why are Arabs so obsessed with losing face? It’s reminiscent of Japan refusing to surrender at the end of WWII. We all know what it took to finally convince the Japanese of the futility of their struggle. Maybe it’s just my biased western perspective, but I think it’s much more “honorable” and requires considerably more courage to take a personal loss in order to establish a safe future for your children. It’s well past time for the Palestinians to suck it up and accept that they’ve lost .
BaldTaco
I would only add that the quote you attributed to me was actually posited by Rashak Mani, but it was well said, nonetheless.
Whoops. Difficulties with cut & paste. :smack:
The point was made that the Intifefad is best served by Israeli actions; ie when Israel retaliates by restricting a check point people feel sympathy for Palestinians and hence the militants get points.
Since starting this thread I’ve been looking at Aljazeera’s articles a little more closely and I realize that in many ways that above statement is true. The militants need the Israelis to act harshly to gain support.
So today I read this article on Aljazeera.
It talks about Israel blocking medical transport. But in the back of my mind as I read this, I can only imagine Hamas et al. using ambulances and patient transfer units to stange bombings.
So my new question, are we on the Straight Dope the only ones to realize this is what the Intefada is all about?
Not at all. Dn near ALL Israelis know that this is the case, just that we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Relax the security measures? We get blown up in innovatice ways. Tighten them? We live another day, but we give the terrorists what they want… Dned if we do, dead if we don’t
Dani
As I see it, there are two basic questions here:
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The legitimacy of the Palestinian cause.
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The legitimacy of the tactics used in fighting for that cause.
The first question hinges on whether or not one sees the Palestinians as an oppressed nationality. If you do, then you probably conclude their cause is legitimate. If you don’t, then you probably conclude the opposite. I presume, for the sake of argument - and please correct me if I’m wrong - that Israel does not see the Palestinian cause as legitimate and looks at it from the perspective of just another goddamn case of anti-Semitism - and have decided to declare war on it.
Now, to the question of tactics. emacknight is dead on - inidvidual terrorism just isn’t working. All the organizations that organize suicide bombings and sniper attacks and shootings of Israeli civilians have gotten for the Palestinians is a worsening situation. But since when does the opposing side - ie Israel and/or those who deny the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause - get to tell the Palestinians what tactics they may or may not use? That’s the right of the Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity and sympathy with them. Imagine how the American Revolution would have gone if the colonists had the list of permissible and impermissible tactics dictated to them by the British generals.
So - I believe the Palestinian cause to be legitimate- but I certainly do not support the tactics used by these Palestinian organizations. The majority of those who do perform suicide bombings, as well as other forms of individual attack, are, I daresay, guided by little more than strong feelings of indignation at the treatment of Palestinians by Israel - they lack the political experience even of the leaders of the organizations like Hamas and the PLO, and the ideas of anti-Semitism and terrorism as the correct path therefore remain largely unchallenged. It remains for those of us who are not directly in the fight, but support it wholeheartedly, to keep arguing hard and fast against both anti-Semitism and terrorism and try to find ways in which our voices can be heard by the Palestinian people. They’re the ones that have to directly challenge the anti-Semitism and terrorist tactics of the organizations that promote such things.
Really? So I suppose you believe the US should be part of the British Commonwealth, and that France should still have a king? The right to determine who administers the land you own is part and parcel of the right of self-determination.
Um, the point was that owning a property right in the land does not give you the right to decide who administers the land.
Example: I own land, you do not. We both have the same right to vote.
Example2: I am a Singaporean, owning land in California. I don’t have the right to vote in US elections.
Ah, I see it. Land ownership, of course, should not be a determinant in the right to vote, or the right to self-determination, of course. Residency, however, should. So you’re a Singaporean in California - did you move there because you got a job, or are going to school, or are otherwise planning to live the rest of your life there? You deserve the right to vote, to self-determination, etc. etc. The Palestinians were living in Palestine - living off the land if they didn’t own it, which was more often the case than not - so therefore they had (and still have) the right to determine who administers their land. As I noted in the other thread, the Palestinian General Strike of 1936 was fought on that very subject. The chief demand was “Independence for Palestine”.
BTW, while we’re tossing around “rights” like midgets in a Swiss bar, you might want to know what a “right” is. A “right” is something that is due someone by law or nature.
You argue that people should have the “right” of “self-determination”, which I take to be that of deciding their government, under which they live. Where do they get this right? Not from law, certainly - unless these Palestinians were citizens of Israel, they have no right to vote in Israeli law.
Then, this “right” must come from nature. How so? Government, by the fact of it’s existence, is not nature. There is no “government” in nature. Nature is the law of the jungle, of anarchy. It is where the strong prevail over the weak. It then hardly seems to flow that this “right of self determination” comes from nature, as the “right of self determination” is hardly the strong prevailing over the weak, but rather that of the weak(people) prevailing over the strong(organised government).
You say that residence gives the “right of self-determination”, that living somewhere makes due to you the right of deciding your government. Where, exactly, is this shown? Even if I live in the USA, and are a Citizen, felons still may not be able to vote. If I were residing in the USA and are not a citizen, I still am not eligible to vote. If I were in Iran, good luck with thinking about voting. If I were in communist Russia, voting wouldn’t make a difference.
It seems more to me that the “right to self-determination” (which I take to be the ability to decide who administers land) is given by the government, not a “right” given by nature, or by simply being human.
That said, the Arabs in the surrounding areas don’t seem to have too much of “the right of self determination”, either. Only in Israel, Egypt and a few other ME countries have muslim Arabs the right to actually vote for their government.
Let me just repeat that - you do not automatically have the right to decide who administers your land. Any argument that the Palestinians are somehow exercising this right by violence is false. Democracy is not your birthright. And I hardly think that Arafat was elected, anyway.
Olentzero
oh, come on now…what dark, warm, moist orifice are you pulling this out of?
None of the above actions carries with it the right to vote in this country except one: ** become. an. American. citizen!!!**.
I suggest that you take a trip, and reside in the country of your choice under any of the scenarios you posited and let us know how you fare.
It’s one thing to argue from logic, another to argue from emotion, but you just can’t make shit up.
I want that as my sig. Too funny.
I have a new baby and I really don’t have that much time to devote to this debate, but I just wanted to reply to this point.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, most Israelis support a unilateral withdrawal from the territories. A quick Google search turned up a few articles which show that most Israelis support a Palestinian state in the territories. Even Sharon himself has committed to a two-state solution. I really do think that most Israelis (except the omnipresent wingnuts) are committed to withdrawal and establishment of a Palestinian state. I think most of Israel is pretty much settled on this, it is only a question of how to get there with a minimum of bloodshed.
The idea of ethnic cleansing of the Jews between the river and the sea, the calls against Israeli legitimacy, holding Israel to different standards (on a number of issues, not only in regard to the intifada) that no other country is expected to meet – these are things that have many Jews and Israelis crying antisemitism. But as near as I can tell, committment to a roadmap, Oslo, Camp David, Wye River, and all those other accords shows that Israel views the Palestinian cause as legitimate. Almost all sincere moves to negotiation have been received favorably by Israel. If they were accompanied by action (like arresting some militants or enforcing a real cease fire), it would be an Israeli wet dream. It is the violent uprising that they fight, it is the attacks on Israeli civilians, not the whole movement. I realize Israel has dug quite a hole for them in many opinions, by destroying any Palestinian power infrastructure that has the legitimacy to negotiate for the Palestinian population as a whole (if that actually ever existed). Again, it is a question of how to get from here to there with a minimum of blood and treasure.
Sure, you can argue that. You can also argue that people have no “right” not be enslaved or mass murdered. Under your reasoning, might makes right, and if the might doesn’t give you the right, well you’re fucked.
But I don’t think most people believe that. Right can also refer to a moral claim as well.
Really? Tell me, did the blacks have the right not to be enslaved? Did the Jews have the right not to be mass murdered?
I’m sure that you can claim that the use of the word “right” merely meant morally good, as in
but is in no way does “morally good” mean that “we are due this, we are entitled to it”. Animals not being tortured is a morally good thing. But it doesn’t meant that they are entitled to it.
Yet foreign nationals, with the demonstrable exception of diplomats, are subject to the same laws and responsibilities as American citizens. Why not grant them the same rights?
I’m not blind. I know how things work, that this is how they are. Doesn’t mean it’s how I think things should be.
What, exactly, am I making up? Is it not a fact that there are people who move to the US from other countries and become residents here? According to the IRS, they’re expected to pay taxes like American citizens. And, unless I remember my history wrong, there was some fuss about taxation without representation being unfair and founding a country repudiating that as a principle. So, if foreign nationals move here and are subject to the same laws, and subject to the same taxation of their income, as American citizens, why should they be denied the right to vote and the right of representation in American politics?
Tabby_Cat, rights do not come either from the government or from nature. Nature doesn’t care one way or the other, and governments can only politically legitimize what is a social fact, if and when they are compelled to do so. Rights come about because people become aware of injustices in society, decide that things should change to correct those injustices, and organize to bring that change. In short, right is the reflection of a material understanding of the social conditions in which people find themselves and material demands for changes thereof.
Like, for example, the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. Since 1936 at the least, and probably for decades before that, the Palestinian Arabs understood that they were just a pawn in a chess game between empires. They had no say in being turned over to Britain after Turkey’s defeat in World War I; they had little to no say in determining who would be allowed to immigrate under the British Mandate, so they built a general strike in 1936 to forward the demand for independence; they had little say in Britain’s decision to allow the UN to decide what would happen to the territory after their withdrawal. And they’ve had no say in how much land Israel decided to take for itself in 1948 and 1967, although they’ve done so in rejecting the Wye and Oslo accords in the 1990s. (Not that it’s stopped Israel.) So they formed organizations to fight for that right - unfortunately some of those organizations have embraced anti-Semitism and adopted the tactics of individual terror. That, however, doesn’t negate the fact that Palestinians, like any other oppressed national minority around the world, deserve the right to self-determination.
Ordinarily, that right would mean the right to free political separation from the state of Israel and the right to form their own state. That would have been sufficient under either the Ottoman Empire or the British Mandate. A two-state solution would effectively mean legitimizing and accepting the distinctly inferior position in which the Palestinians now find themselves. A Palestinian West Bank/Gaza state would be an economic joke and a political mess. Hardly an advantage. There needs to be one democratic, secular state comprising the territory of Israel and the Occupied Territories, and one’s ethnic or religious background should not be a determinant in whether one stays or leaves.
To even get started in that direction, though, there will have to be Palestinian organizations that consciously and decisively reject anti-Semitism - which is entirely possible - and that seek to form links with the more revolutionary elements in Israel - which do exist - to form a united front against the leaders of both Israel and the Palestinians who exploit fear and anger to promote divisions between the two peoples.
Again, please read the definition of a “right”. I don’t know where you’re getting your definitions from, but keep it in your world. On this plane of existence, use the proper terms. Your use of “right” implies that they are due something by law or nature, when they clearly are NOT. You even admit as such.
You aren’t talking about a “right” that can be exercised against anyone else, you’re talking about something that is morally good, that SHOULD be turned into a right. I quote, “Rights come about because people become aware of injustices in society, decide that things should change to correct those injustices, and organize to bring that change.” Injustice by whose standards? Clearly, you admit that you are talking about a moral justification for a something which is due someone, which you have not proven that they have. You arguing that they “ought to have it because it’s moral, and therefore they do”. Great chain of causation there. Just because someone ought to have something doesn’t mean they have it. In any case, actually having the right would be pretty hard to prove, I’d say, since they don’t have a government to grant them the right, and as you say, nature doesn’t care.
By the way, what’s morally good for them is vastly inferior to what’s morally good for the innocent victims of their terror attacks, AKA “life”. EVEN IF the Palestinians somehow had the “right” to “self determination”, or the “right to eat carrots unmolested”, or the “right to jerk off to Britney Spears” (all of which are morally good justifications - but they don’t have them), even if they had these rights, the exercise of those rights ends where the Israeli’s “right to life” begins.
Oh, and by the way? Governments do give rights, not just “politically legitimise social facts”. The Human Rights Act in the UK is one of the sources of human rights, and it gave many defendants rights against the government (shock!! horror!!!), which protected them from prosecution.
Hell, even in the US, the government made an amendment to the constitution of this section: *“No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” * regarding slavery. You think this section was “social fact” in the north? You think the amendment was “social fact” in the south? You guys fought a war over this, before the southern states would accept the amendment. The right of slaves to be free was given by the government that was victorious in the end. Had the south won, it would be the other way around - people would have the right to keep slaves. It’s therefore clear that rights are given in law.
I’m sorry to say, “rights do not come either from the government or from nature. Nature doesn’t care one way or the other, and governments can only politically legitimize what is a social fact, if and when they are compelled to do so.” = false. False by definition, and false by logic. And irrelevant even if it were true.
It’s not just America which imposes responsibities on its resident non-citizens. Every country works the same way. Citizens get to vote (assuming said country actualy holds free and fair elections). Non-citizens don’t. And * both* groups have to pay taxes because in return they * both* get the use and benfeft of say, roads, police, garbage collection and other services, goods and infrastructure which, in this imperfect world, have to be paid for.
As you said, this is the way things work. What you were “making up” was your implication that while this is the way it is for everyone else, it should need not apply to the Palestinians.
Tabby_Cat, in both cases you’re looking at the end stage of a long and (in the case of the US Civil War) bitter process, and stating that that particular stage is the whole process. I would presume, in the case of the Human Rights Act in the UK, that there was some sort of organized human rights campaign(s) on the ground that attempted to organize forces to demand that the UK legally codify what many viewed as morally and ethically just. In the US, the abolitionist cause stretched back decades before the Confederacy fired the first shot at Fort Sumter.
I honestly think the distinction over whether a people “have” or “should have” a right based on whether or not their respective governments have passed laws on the matter is semantic quibbling. France outlawed slavery in 1815. England did so in 1834. Are you saying that the same right not to be enslaved did not extend to the slaves in the US because the government refused to acknowledge it until 1863? I find it hard to swallow the argument that rights don’t transcend national borders.
In that vein, what about the UN? I believe they’ve issued charters both on human rights and the right to self-determination. Do they not count because the UN is not a national government?
bizzwire, nowhere am I either stating or implying that the Palestinians deserve rights that other peoples don’t. I strongly disagree with the sentiment that residents in any country should only be required to fill the responsibilities of a citizen without being granted some of the basic rights of a citizen, whether they choose to become a citizen or not. That this is how things are is undeniable; again that doesn’t mean I feel that’s the way things should be.
Oh yes, I also wanted to point out a glaring omission in one of my previous posts. This phrase:
should have had “and individual terrorism” tacked onto it.
No argument. But before the war was concluded, slaves did not have the right to freedom. Stating that they had the right to freedom and were therefore justified in fighting for it is slightly illogical. Same thing in the UK - sure, people felt that they should have Human Rights, but it was not until the Human Rights Act was signed that they had them. Saying that they were due a fair trial in Luxembourg before the HRA, because they “should” have that right - not going to happen.
This is EXACTLY the distinction. Did you read about what a right was in the first place?
"Something that is due to a person or governmental body by law, tradition, or nature. " - Dictionary.com
If you think that just because one country has a right, that all humans have that right… well, I got nothing to say to you. Good luck in convincing the Chinese that they have the right of free speech. Or you can try to convince Bush that you have the right to take multiple wives, as per many muslim countries. Or you can try to convince the Japanese that they have the right to take up dual citizenship without losing Japanese citizenship.
PLEASE tell me you’re joking.
Let’s start with an example, hmm? Do the Al-Qaida prisoners in Gitmo have the Geneva Convention rights? Should they?
Campaign all you want, but until you finally succeed and get Gitmo prisoners the Gneva Convention rights, they don’t have those rights. This illustrates my point very clearly. Oh, and BTW - a little Cut 'n Paste from the UN website
Again, just because it’s morally good doesn’t mean they have it. And BTW, UN member states - I don’t see Palestine in there.
Anyway, back to the subject:
They do not have this right. It is not "Something that is due to a person or governmental body by law, tradition, or nature. " If you want to argue that they are relying on this right to gain it, well… You know. Circular arguments and all that.
If you’re arguing that you’re talking about the Palestinians having self determination as a “morally good” thing, and therefore justifying their actions, well, I gots ta tell ya - when you start killing people and justify it as being “morally good”, it stops being morally good. And is therefore not a justification.