December:
Nonsense. The attack on the Marine Barracks in Beiruit in 1983 was a suicide bombing, and damn straight it had a military purpose. If the guy had jumped out of the truck in time to save his skin, the outcome of the whole campaign would have been different.
This is true. I meant to address the suicide bombings in Israel.
The world has indeed seen a lot of antisemitism, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean that every attack that kills a Jew is an instance of antisemitism.
I sure wouldn’t call bulldozing someone’s house a peaceful action, for that matter, and in fact would take issue with your claim that there is currently no state of war between Jews and Palestinian in That Neck of the Woods. Is searching all cars that cross a checkpoint located on something which for a long time wasn’t even an international border, strictly speaking, a normal peacetime behavior? Questioning the motives of a car’s occupants for traveling down that particular road, and denying them passage even when they have perfectly logical reasons for traveling that way, such as a job or a family visit?
Not all wars are declared as such, and the political reasons for not calling the 2nd Intifada a war could easily be a whole thread in themselves.
No doubt you intend to explain why Israel is a unique case.
If there were a state of war, Israel would be attacking Palestinian population centers at will. They have the military might to do this, but they’re not doing it.
It’s pretty normal behavior when terrorism is a big threat. My car was checked before entering the Lincoln Center Garage last week.
That’s unfortunately necessary to try to prevent terrorism.
Israel is not fighting a war on the Palestinian people. If they ever decided to do so, it would be a bloodletting. Instead of dinging Israel, you should be congratulating them for their moderate response to these provocations. Note that Russia, the United States, and many other countries have responded far more violently to similar acts of terror.
ElvisL1ves, Israel is a unique case, because mass murder against their citizens has become normal behavior for many Palestinians. It’s a unique case because the world demands that Israel not use its strength to retaliate. E.g, it’s clear that Yassar Arafat supports terrorism against Israel, but the world insists that Israel not kill or imprison him. In fact, he was given a Nobel Peace Prize. :rolleyes: There’s no such protection for Osama bin Laden and his henchmen.
Israel’s responses to terror are routinely ciritcized by many. E.g., people like** Eva Luna** complain when Israel merely destroys the homes of supporters of terrorism. Most countries would kill or imprison those who support terrorism against them.
Got to call you on that one, december. Isreal bulldozes the houses of the families of terrorists. This is classic reprisal, and it is reprehensible. For the record, I’m with Amos Oz on this, the true meaning of tragedy is when both antagonists have valid cases and greivances. They will live together or they will die. There is no third alternative.
The word is “Shalom”. There is no other hope.
Why do you feel it necessary to say it would be “a bloodletting”? Does that make you feel better? Empowered?
And to suggest that we ought to be congratulating Israel on their restraint is absurd. The killing of innocents ought always be condemned.
(Though what this has to do with Delay I don’t know.)
By that criterion, the recent conflicts in El Salvador and Guatemala weren’t wars, either. Never mind how many thousands of Guatemalans and Salvadorans were murdered, internally displaced, or were granted asylum in other countries based on a well-founded fear of persecution as determined by an (ostensibly) impartial fact-finder. If their villages weren’t leveled and inhabitants slaughtered wholesale, or all men of military age forcibly recruited into the military and/or guerillas under pain of their own deaths or the deaths/torture/rape of their families, then I guess it doesn’t count as a war.
Well, I guess this opinion is consistent with the rest of your world view.
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I thought we were fighting a War on Terror?
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I guess bombing Palestinian villages would be less moderate than the current state of affairs, but I wouldn’t exactly characterize the status quo as ideal, and that goes for either side. You may remember that I have criticized Russian policy in Chechnya and U.S. policy in a variety of places just as harshly.
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That hardly makes Israel a unique case. See above.
Damn straight, and I will continue to criticize any state or nongovernmental actor that routinely violates international law and the human rights of innocent civilians. Collective punishment is forbidden under international law:
…so unless you are alleging that every inhabitant of every house bulldozed by the IDF was tried in an impartial court of law and found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of specific terrorist acts, and has exhausted all legally available appeal rights, I will continue to bitch about it until I am no longer physically able to do so.
(Besides, somehow I doubt there is any specific provision under Israeli law allowing for destruction of an offender’s personal property, assuming the offender is the owner of the house – which I suspect is rarely the case anyway. Somehow a prison sentence seems more appropriate. But then I’m one of those crazy people who believes in the rule of law.)
ISTM that you are selective in which governments you criticize in this way. E.g., I cannot recall posts where you criticized the Palestinians for the all-too-common lynchings and extrajudicial executions of Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel. Nor do I recall your posts criticizing the mistreatment of gay people by the Palestinian government. I don’t recall your criticism of the International Solidarity Movement, which supports Palestinian terrorism.
You may have criticized the Palestinian Authority itself for supporting anti-Israeli terror, but ISTM you’ve more often criticized Israeli efforts to deal with terrorism.
**december, ** given my limited time available to devote to any given GD thread, I try to address issues where I feel there is a POV or fact missing from the original debate, or where I otherwise have something to add. You do quite a thorough job of slamming the Palestinians, so I fail to see the value of aiding you in slamming the Palestinians. Consider it a compliment if you like.
P.S. Are you going to address my other points? Or can I assume that otherwise you agree with me?
IIRC a while back december posted a brief outline of a way to determine if someone was a bigot or not. One of the criteria was “selective criticism”. The canonical example was criticising Israel more than the PA.
So, december, are we heading down the road towards an accusation of anti-semitism leveled at Eva Luna? If we’re not, could you please re-phrase your previous post as to highlight the part of it which was an actual address of her position regarding “state or nongovernmental actor that routinely violates international law and the human rights of innocent civilians.” Because all I can see is a thinly veiled “You are a bigot” in that post.
Enjoy,
Steven
Awww, and I was so hoping december would head down that road. I could use a good chuckle.
Eva Luna, Loser Jew ;j
Hmm, it’s awfully quiet in here…december must be taking a long dinner break or somethink. Or maybe he’s just otherwise Occupied with some other Territory…
[Elmer Fudd whisper]
…be vewwwy, vewwwy quiet…we’we hunting Pawestinians!
[/Elmer Fudd]
Not only does Post #2 contradict Post #1, it also ignores the rest of the GD universe. I’m just about the only poster here who criticizes the Palestinians, whereas there are a dozen or more who routinely vilify Israel. Do they really need your help? I don’t know why you focus on Israel’s misdeeds, but Post #2 doesn’t look like a convincing explanation.
There were civil wars in these countries. Both sides were fighting each other, with all the weapons they could get.
Perhaps some of the Palestinian people are fighting a civil war against Israel, but Israel is not fighting a civil war against the Palestinian people. It’s treating Palestinian terrorism more like a civil crime than an act of war. As I pointed out, Israel has the military might to decimate the Palestinian people, but they aren’t doing that.
E.g., in Jenin Israel carefully used troops on the ground, rather then simply bomb the city. As a result, there were fewer Palestinian casualties and more Israeli casualties than there would have been, if Israel had they treated this as a purely military exercise against an enemy. Compare Israel’s behavior with Bill Clinton’s in the former Yugoslavia and George Bush’s in Afghanistan, where the enemy was bombed with abandon.
Well, then, I guess we can see the following:
(a) Israel can do no wrong, any action Israel takes shows massive restraint and its wonderous good character.
(b) Jews and Israelis dying requires a special language because their deaths are special, Sri Lankans etc. dying in suicide bombings however is something ordinary, ergo we need not be moved to create a special (and as I have shown, highly inconsistent and illogical) vocabulary.
© Contradciting (a) or (b) is presumptive bias.
I’m done with this.
I don’t see anything selective, here. We have a unique situation in that only one nation has annexed another land and refused to incorporate the people into the annexing nation, refusing the people of the annexed land the right to form their own nation while simultaneously handing out portions of that land to its own citizens as war booty.
The indians of North America are citizens of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. The peoples of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, all the -stans, and even Chenya were granted citizenship in the Soviet system (for what it was worth). Tibetans are considered Chinese citizens, not nationless people.
Only Israel has held an entire people citizenless in their own homes. That seems to be a pretty unique situation.
(If supporters of Israel want more criticism of Palestinians as a nation, perhaps they should have spent more time in the last 36 years encouraging Israel to allow such a nation to exist. There is no point in the United Nations–addressing national transgressions–to speak to Palestinians who are not allowed to have a nation.)
Unfortunately, refugees are not the least bit unique. Nor is it unique for a government to deprive certain people of equal citizenship. In particular, hundreds of thousands of Jews were driven out of Arab countries in the last 50 years, without the world noticing. E.g.,
Of course, the Jews who were driven out of various Arab countries weren’t committing mass murder on a regular basis, so it was easier for the world to ignore their plight.
Changing the discussion does not change the situation. The Palestinians include refugees, but they are not, inherently, refugees. They are non-citizens in their own homes and cities and farms.
The Israel-Palestine situation is hardly unique. Just to the north, Syria occupies Lebanon. China occupies Tibet(and is engaged in moving Chinese into Tibet to change the nature of the province on a level that Israelis aren’t even coming close to trying in Palestine.)
Palestinians in Israel proper are citizens. Those in the occupied territories are only not citizens because the status of the occupied territories is not settled yet. Israel cannot annex them, nor can they give them back to Jordan, nor can they just cut them loose.