1) What would You do, if Your neighbourhood/country would be occupied? :eek:
2) How would You look at settlers that would come from the occupying country?
(I assume that we all admit that there is an occupation of areas outside the borders of Israel and that there are settlers from Israel.)
3) What should the Palestinian do?
I have asked this in other treads, but I seem not to get an answer. I will give my own opinions later, if it is OK with You?
**
I believe the Palestinians also demand the right of return. That is the right of Palestinians to return to homes with Israel proper. I don’t think that’ll ever happen though.
**
That really depends on what the Palestinians want. We’ll just pretend that the #1 thing on their want list is a Palestinian state. They should end all hostilities against Israel and use peaceful protest.
Marc
Here goes…
*1) What would You do, if Your neighbourhood/country would be occupied? *
I’m currently a resident of the USA. I rather like living here - I’m given many of the freedoms and rights that a human being deserves. An occupying force would probably make my situation worse.
However, the Palestinian government is nothing like that of the USA. It’s much more comparable to Germany during WWII. The Nazi’s created conflict (in the form of a war) in order to hide the fact that they were incapable of creating a stable, peaceful nation. If I lived in Germany during those times, I would be grateful to the American occupying forces.
*2) How would You look at settlers that would come from the occupying country? *
In the Middle East, there are two prevailing sentiments among Arabs living in Israel. The first is the hate-filled xenophobia that Palestinians feel towards Israeli farmers. The second is the compromising attitude of Israeli-Arabs. They work towards bettering all Israelis, whether Jews or Arabs. Several even serve in the government. Israeli Arabs are the perfect role models for citizens of any nation.
*(I assume that we all admit that there is an occupation of areas outside the borders of Israel and that there are settlers from Israel.) *
I find it hard to admit to something that is untrue.
3) What should the Palestinian do?
The Palestinians have 3 choices:
It’s easy to guess which one I’d choose.
boyohboy,
Lets hypothesis the following situation:
Are you telling me you would simply work with the japanese to create a society in which americans and japanese can live together peacefully? Is this what the French/Dutch/Danes/Norwegians should have done instead of forming resistance groups?
Don’t get me wrong, I think both sides in the middle east are totally wacked (one of the wonderful side effects of knowing GOD is on your side).
Exactly. If the Palestinians as a group dropped their arms, engaged in non-violent protest, if suicide bombers instead suicided by hunger strike or immolation, and if they continually pleaded their case in front of the world, Israel would lose the moral authority it currently has, and would be forced to deal with them. And the ‘peace’ movement in Israel would grow.
The way things are going now, Israel is going to wind up putting Benjamin Netanyahu back in power, and Israel will adopt an official policy of, “No Palestinian state, ever.” The occupied territories will be re-occupied, the Palestinians will be disarmed and brought under Israeli justice. And if that doesn’t work, they’ll be expelled from the occupied territories and lose everything.
I want to make it clear that I wasn’t agreeing with “burping_buzzard”, but with MGibson.
Both sides in the middle east are NOT ‘wacked’. Israel has been behaving with far more restraint than the U.S. would in the same situation.
Israel is a small democratic country surrounded by tyrannies that would love to see it destroyed. Israel is under constant attack. The actions Israel as taken are basically a democracy’s way of trying to find a solution to the problem. They have alternated between electing ‘dove’ and ‘hawk’ governments, trying to find a solution. Unfortunately, the Palestinians are intractable and irrational. And they are totally unrealistic, and are making demands that Israel simply cannot meet.
If the Palestinians miraculously changed overnight and stopped the violence and plead their case morally, they’d win. And Israel WANTS that. Israel would love to have a peaceful neighbor.
What would I not do is easier to answer. I would not target schoolkids for death nor send my children to their deaths as glorious and muderous martyrs.
What would I do would depend on the specifics of the situation. It would be foolish to say that a strategy good for one circumstance would work in another.
The short answer is that I’d care more about my children’s futures than I’d care about revenge.
In the case of the Palestinians, I would recognize that the Israeli mainstream wants out of the West Bank, and would be thrilled to help build an economically viable and peaceful neighbor. I would recognize that there is an internal divide within Israel in which a small minority desires a “greater Israel”; a minority which nevertheless has power outside their numbers because of the need to form ruling coalitions. I would recognize that terror attacks strengthen the position of that minority and weaken the position of the secular mainstream. I would use every means possible to stop all terror attacks and negotiate to the end of building an economically viable homeland for myself and my children, with attention on jobs, investments, and educational institutions, and not on getting 100% of the land that I feel I “deserve”. I would trade some settlement lands for guarentees of industrial investments and for a good cut of tax revenues produced by Palestinians working in Israel, for a good deal on coventures in a future tourist industry bonanza. I would recognize that by seriously partnering against terror I will get more of what I need to develop my country sooner.
I presume that you have a different idea.
What would I not do is easier to answer. I would not target schoolkids for death nor send my children to their deaths as glorious and muderous martyrs.
What would I do would depend on the specifics of the situation. It would be foolish to say that a strategy good for one circumstance would work in another.
The short answer is that I’d care more about my children’s futures than I’d care about revenge.
In the case of the Palestinians, I would recognize that the Israeli mainstream wants out of the West Bank, and would be thrilled to help build an economically viable and peaceful neighbor. I would recognize that there is an internal divide within Israel in which a small minority desires a “greater Israel”; a minority which nevertheless has power outside their numbers because of the need to form ruling coalitions. I would recognize that terror attacks strengthen the position of that minority and weaken the position of the secular mainstream. I would use every means possible to stop all terror attacks and negotiate to the end of building an economically viable homeland for myself and my children, with attention on jobs, investments, and educational institutions, and not on getting 100% of the land that I feel I “deserve”. I would trade some settlement lands for guarentees of industrial investments and for a good cut of tax revenues produced by Palestinians working in Israel, for a good deal on coventures in a future tourist industry bonanza. I would recognize that by seriously partnering against terror I will get more of what I need to develop my country sooner.
I presume that you have a different idea.
I will comment Your comments a little bit later.
I just want that all of You that are interested, please read the speech of President Bush:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush-Text.html
If he can put this through, he really deserves the Nobel-prize, or even two.
Unfortunately there are some "but"s in everything as complicated as this question.
The good thing seem to be that there has been very much work behind the curtains. Good work I believe.
I do not know what is the policy here, but if I can, as a tread starter, invite here also a discussion about this new, positive turn… it is so near the original tread.
Well, I welcome this kind of discussion.
Which bit do you consider untrue - the ocupation outside of Israeli borders, or that there are Israeli setlers there?
I think that boyohboy 17 might be mistaken on two accounts and correct on one here. I happen to know that the German people agreed with boyohboy re the US forces being a liberation force by the time of the invasion. On the other hand although I might be all deluded I sort of smell a fallacy re the German administration under the NSDAP headed by Hitler and the PA needing conflict to hide inadequacies to the point of serving as the basis for one World War and the current conflict in Israel.
Now, I would be more than impressed to receive some grounds for the arguments presented, hence I might request that boyohboy would be so kind as to furnish some cites pointing at a) the reason for Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 and the subsequent beginning of WWII was that the NSDAP needed to hide their incompetence and b) that the Palestinian Authority needs the conflict at hand to hide their incompetence.
I wish boyohboy the best of luck in proving this somewhat if not utterly tenuous stand.
Sparc
Regarding the comment: (I assume that we all admit that there is an occupation of areas outside the borders of Israel and that there are settlers from Israel.)
Why do I disagree with this statement? This statement assumes that Israel took land from the Palestinians. Israel conquered that land in a war of defense against Jordan and Egypt. As of lately, Egypt and Jordan have not requested the return of either the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. There comes a time when land conquered in a war is no longer considered “occupied”, and I think that that time has past. Of course, it follows that Israeli villages will spring up in order to use this land.
============================
Sparc: I might request that boyohboy would be so kind as to furnish some cites pointing at a) the reason for Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939 and the subsequent beginning of WWII was that the NSDAP needed to hide their incompetence and b) that the Palestinian Authority needs the conflict at hand to hide their incompetence.
Since both societies would immediately destroy any evidence of inadequacies, I cannot give you exact citations, however, let me try to lead you through my reasoning. Hitler and Arafat ruled by directing the anger of their people against outsiders. Coincidentally, they both picked the Jews (similar to many other hate-based groups throughout history).
Hitler directed anger caused by the horrible economy against the “Jewish money-lenders”. And then, to bind his people together further, he went to war against the “oppresive powers” (who, granted, were somewhat oppressive sometimes). He pitted his people against the rest of the world in order to focus their anger on each other instead of on him.
Others have already explained how the Palestinians could build their nation if they stopped focusing on blowing people up. When two groups want to compromise, they each give a little at a time, until both are content with what they have. Israel has proposed peace plan after peace plan, at one point offering 97% of the requested land. What has Arafat brought to the table?
He knows that as soon as a peaceful solution is reached, he will no longer be considered a great leader. Under the light of truth he’ll be seen as the man who lengthened the suffering of his people in order to gain power for himself, and the Palestinian suicide bombers will be seen as the fools who followed him.
[edited to fix sidescroll --Gaudere]
Well, as a group, the palestinians would probably get more than they currently look like they will get, if they, as a group, adopted passive resistance techniques. However, that would require that the suicide bombings stop. But certain groups who do not represent the best interests of the palestinians, and are more interested in keeping the power to themselves, would certainly keep attacking even if a majority of the palestinians had foresworn violence.
Thus, if I were only one palestinian in palestine, there is not much i would be able to do to stop the suicide bombings. Far too many self styled martyrs and martryr makers out there who would A) keep attacking anyway, and B) probably eliminate me as a policital threat if i tried to convince others to adopt my tactics.
I don’t want to hijack this thread, but the absolute idiocy of comparing Arafat to Hitler beggars.
Hence;
You are deeply mistaken young boyohboy. The rule of the NSDAP is thoroughly documented. Hitler’s direct orders are the only thing that is poorly documented since he had the pissy habit of refusing to give orders in writing. They are however largely preserved through the missives that were then issued in his name by his closest henchmen. The Nuremberg trials leaned back pretty heavily on this material. The NSDAP were actually ridiculously meticulous in their bureaucracy, practically every single action they took, down to moving pencils were registered, filed and archived. It’s quite a sick read I might tell you after having perused some lengths of the stuff. Some of the NSDAP archives were of course destroyed in the end phase of the war but the Nuremberg Tribunal did a pretty thorough job in reconstructing the greater and smaller picture.
Now the biggest error boyohboy makes is assuming that the NSDAP rule was inadequate. Horrid, oppressive, evil, disgusting and lethal to humanity; yes, but not inadequate. Hitler turned the economy in Germany around, forced an end to the recession and created somewhat of an industrial wonder that was admired and envied in a larger than comfortable part of the Western world. It wasn’t a long term strategy in as much as that the oppression under Nazi rule and the stifling bureaucracy that was building up would probably have led the economy to stagnate and even collapse eventually. There is no evidence whatsoever that this would have happened in any of the years immediately around 1939.
As the PA goes I think you’ll find that the mess they are in is also fairly well documented. To attribute this mess to them alone is not only unfair, but also downright wrong. We’ll get back to that.
This is probably some of the worst gibberish that has appeared regarding anything in the Middle East since a certain other poster posited that Muslims routinely kill homosexuals. First off the analogy is absolute nonsense in itself, and second the statements regarding Hitler’s modus operandi are so sweeping and ill argued that I don’t even know were to start dismantling them. Instead of going into a lengthy explanation of the NSDAP rule I’ll just say this: there is a smidgeon of truth in what boyohboy says, but that’s a small smidgeon I’ll say. It would be more fair to say that Hitler mongered hatred towards enemies within and the Jews in general (under which he lumped anything that he perceived as internationalism, including bolshevism) and that he played the German nation into the war by bolstering national pride riding on ill conceived myths regarding who the German peoples (he called it race) were and what the German borders should be. He also used the common feeling of humiliation after Versailles to motivate the nation into a state of rearmament.
Now to Arafat… oh boy (pun intended) is this thick. First of all which Arafat are we talking about? The Arafat in exile or, the post Oslo Arafat? Disregardful of which this is absolute hogwash. Arafat’s rule is not maintained by directing hatred in any direction. He has been struggling for some 40 years for what he perceives as the right of his people to have a land and basic human rights. That the Israeli state is his enemy in this struggle has something to do with that they are predominantly Jewish since the existence of Israel happens to have something to do with that fact, but the fact that they are sitting on what he and his fellow people consider their land is the real clinch, not that they are Jewish.
In the past he has been a leader of a guerilla organization employing means of terror at times and fighting a standard war to regain their land at other times. Recently he has been trying to find a way to compromise with the Israelis. After the peace process broke down and the Intifadah started he has been held hostage to an unbearable situation by extremists in his own ranks and Israel’s hard liners in Likud. He is by no means innocent as a lamb, he might even have supported some of the terror acts by the extremist ranks recently, we don’t know for sure.
He was never big on any religious or racial demagogy. He might have felled some less than tolerant remarks over the years, but generally he has maintained a policy of not getting into religious issues at all. In his youth, back in the fifties he actually made a frequent point out of his secularism and always referred anything of religious nature to others. Back then he also maintained rigorously that he was not a leader of the people but a soldier and a mere administrator of the Palestinian people’s struggle.
I’ll be distinct: he is not waging a war against Jewry and he is not ruling by bolstering hatred of the Jews. To the contrary he has lost much of his power since the conflict escalated because he has chosen to not go full out with violent attacks on Israel or the Jews or anyone else, thereby being perceived as weak by certain power circles within his own file and rank. His old time personal enemy Sharon has made it three degrees worse by robbing him of whatever little power to maneuver he had left. The vacuum thereby created has been filled by the madmen in organizations like Hamas, which plays pretty well into the hands of anyone who wouldn’t want to have peace and Arafat seems to belong to the ones who want peace, but at the right conditions of course.
Which leads us to the inadequacy of the Palestinian Authority. They sure aren’t doing too well and one doesn’t have to be a genius to understand that this has to do with the situation at hand. To imply that the reason for the terror waged by Palestinian Extremists would be to hide the incompetence in the administration is downright irresponsible thinking and moronic to the lowest degree possible. It is a complete reversal of probable cause and effect.
By applying a modicum of reason and analysis it should be fairly obvious that in a land where freedom of movement is restricted to the point where people cannot get to their workplace, where homes are being torn down by bulldozers in efforts to ‘weed out the bad’, where parts of the population are engaging in suicide attacks on innocent perceived enemies, where the real enemy is settling on land that has been promised you and random policing to ‘calm all that down’ is carried out with the help of missiles and tanks it’s going to be a little difficult to be an effective administration. Don’t you think? To imagine that anyone who so ever would bring all that upon themselves to hide inadequacies in their rule is positing that this someone is completely devoid of all reason. Not even Hitler did that, he did something much worse, but even then there was a sick and twisted rationale for it based on his disgusting and despicable worldview. Arafat is not that twisted, nor is he brain dead enough to do what boyohboy suggests, otherwise the Middle East would have looked a lot different already thirty years ago.
Sparc
I must disagree. The utter worst gibberish that has ever appeared was undoubtedly the fact that **most predominantly Muslims countries will have you shot if you tell them you aren’t Muslim. **
Sparc wrote:
“I’ll be distinct: he is not waging a war against Jewry and he is not ruling by bolstering hatred of the Jews. To the contrary he has lost much of his power since the conflict escalated because he has chosen to not go full out with violent attacks on Israel or the Jews or anyone else, thereby being perceived as weak by certain power circles within his own file and rank.
His old time personal enemy Sharon has made it three degrees worse by robbing him of whatever little power to maneuver he had left. The vacuum thereby created has been filled by the madmen in organizations like Hamas, which plays pretty well into the hands of anyone who wouldn’t want to have peace and Arafat seems to belong to the ones who want peace, but at the right conditions of course.”
End of quote.
I fully agree.
But when this theme is taken up, let us think a little bit about it:
If the people A takes the homes from people B, it is disgusting.
Then people A puts people B in wagons and later kills them in camps.
This is horrifying!!!
This happened with Jews all over Europe before and under W.W.II.
It is a fact.
So if people B takes homes (or destroys them) and land from people C and send the people away, but do not kill them, and these C-people lives in these camps for decades, it makes C-people to fascists???
I would say that it is not a fact. It is not even logical.
Then these C-people (unter- oder ubermenschen?) begins to fight!
What the fuck!
It is historically incorrect because B-people did not fight A-people when they were stealing their property.
Conclusion = The C-people are fascists*, trolls* anyhow, that is for sure!
And then we found out that these facist*-terrorist*-mindless morons*-trolls* are all landowners! How convenient!!!
They need to be de-nazified*!
And because these are land-owners, the B-people moves in to the land guaranteed by the world (UN) to the C-people and begin to build on that land also, makes the C-people even more suspect???
And the the government of the B-people says: "Do not fight, just lay low, be as we would not be here, and we will build a little bit and then go away and leave You in peace (in one piece).
I want to clearly say, that many times when people looks at the window of history, or believe they do, they are in reality looking into the historical mirror.
Addressed to everyone that need “names” for the other part => (Read this three times if needed, I have written it very slowly).
So please, open the window and let some fresh air in!
Show me one Israelian, in the English language, site where people use “normal” language. I am sure there is such.
And I would also like to find a “moderate” Palestinian site.
I would like to speak with these people.
I checked out The New York Times site.
There was many that would have happily been taken into Hitler Jugend without further questions. The only problem would have been that these people seem to be adults. And there might be another problem…
I am personally sure that there are as many good Jews (most of them) as there are good Palestinians (most of them).
Or vice versa.
We just have to find them. And try to back up them to a overwhelming majority.
OK everyone, lets step back here. Israel has illegally, according to the UN, siezed and occupied land. I suspect we can all agree on that one point at least.
How is what they did, and or are doing, in any way different then what Iraq did to Kuwait? I mean according to the arguments being supported, by several people, I hear the ‘stronger country took land from weaker country and geographical darwinism took place.’ People the United States will never be viewed as impartial because things like this do not play well in the global view.
Now, back to the initial thought of the thread.
1.) If my home was being attacked, and the way of life of my wife/children was threatened I would fight back. I would probably use whatever means were available to defend them and resort to some unsavory tactics. History has demonstrated that this is the normal reaction, so I make no apologies.
2.) If my home was bulldozed, so you could build Condo’s for the citizens of the invading country I would burn them down. I would be damned if I lived in squalor and dug through ruins while you built a new apartment building on top of my old shanty. Even if I was a moderate that might swing me in to the radical camp.
3.) The only thing they can do. People an entire way of life faces extiction, and they know it. There situation is very similiar to that of the American Indian. Hostile force has arrived. There population growth rate is much higher then ours. They have better weapons, communications and transportation. So I pick my battles and hope to do some damage before being exterminated.
On a side note, using the American Indian analogy, does anyone else see the similarities? I mean I suspect that in the 1800’s Geronimo was an Outlaw/Terrorist.
I thought that the sign of an advanced society was the ability to learn from past mistakes and become a better fairer society. If so we are going to fail this test miserably, as we have soo many times already.
ChrisG1016
So, Chris…you feel that you have a right to murder my daughter? Stop dancing around the issue. You feel that the Palestinians have the RIGHT to murder my daughter, if that would help them to gain their state.
You people excusing the suicide bombings are excusing murder, pure and simple. Murder. Of children. On purpose. For political ends.
One more time. Murder. Of children. On purpose. For political ends.
And you justify it.
The ends NEVER justify the means. Never. Because there are no ends. The means ARE the ends. We live our life from day to day, and the way that we live our lives is the purpose of our lives. If we justify murder of children on purpose, for some political end then we embrace murder as an end. As something good.
You cannot justify murder. You cannot justify mass-murder. Godwin’s law? We are talking about the mass-murder of Jews here. Godwin’s law doesn’t apply, when people are actually advocating the mass-murder of Jews. Or even when the condone, or “understand” the mass-murder of Jews.
Stop condoning and understanding and excusing the mass-murder of Jews and I’ll stop with the Nazi comparisons.
And anyway, this argument collapses on itself. If you anti-Zionists are justified in murdering random Jews, if this is the law of the jungle and people are justified in doing anything (murder) in order to hold on to their land or way of life, then why aren’t the Israelis justified in exterminating every last Palestinian? After all, they are threatened with extinction too. That justifies anything, in your view–you aren’t upset by the random murder of Jews, so why should you be upset by the random murder of Palestinians.
Either murder and genocide are jusifiable means, or they are not. Make a choice and stick with it.
Someone mentioned earlier in this thread that hunger strikes would force the Israeli government to attempt to make peace wth Palestine. I have heard many news reports of Israeli soliders “accidently” klling Arab cvilians in raids. (I wil try to find a link to post)
I don’t think Ariel Sharon would really care if they went on hunger strikes. Just one last suicide bomber, in his mind anyway.
I think neither side wants peace, because both leaders can gain more support from their own people by war than with peace.
When either side actually wants, and attempts peace, they may achieve it.
ChrisG1016 wrote:
On a side note, using the American Indian analogy, does anyone else see the similarities? I mean I suspect that in the 1800’s Geronimo was an Outlaw/Terrorist.
In the tread Palestinian bombers have no excuse. Prove me wrong!, I wrote:
“- After decimating the indians in USA, some 100 years ago, some
50%(?), have the integration of these been successful? Or do You still have reservates? Are these guys peaceful and happy?
I am sure they are.”
In fact, I agree to everything that ChrisG1016 wrote!.
Lemur866 wrote:
“One more time. Murder. Of children. On purpose. For political ends. And you justify it.”
May I ask who justifies it? Read again, please. Read carefully.
Lemur866 wrote further:
“Stop condoning and understanding and excusing the mass-murder of Jews and I’ll stop with the Nazi comparisons.”
I do not either make the deeds I write about, and I hope, neither do anyone else of us.
Lemur866 wrote:
“…you aren’t upset by the random murder of Jews, so why should you be upset by the random murder of Palestinians.”
I am not upset about that.
Just close Your (land)borders and if someone is killing someone else, (s)he is obviously a criminal! Punish her/him according to Your laws.
But when You are intruding to another country, occupying it, You have declared war.
And in a war there are no special laws for any nationalities, citizens, tribes, cultures etc. It is war.
And if the settlers do not think that they also are soldiers in the eyes of their enemy, what can I do? Tell them that they are. OK, now I have told.
Try to bulldoze in any other country, and put there settlers, and the result will be the same. War.
People defend their stows, even You do it, if someone comes inside Your legitimate borders (UN-borders), but that You stretch it where ever You want, when ever You want, that people opposes.
Even President Bush, even if it took him some time.
And I also oppose the fact that the refugees can’t go back to their, Your country.
We Finns had the same situation (as the Palestinian) for 50 years, but now we can move back to Karelia, which is a part of Russia, has been since 1944.
Well, I am in the wooden business, and I take everything back, log by log.
Tell me that I am a facist, (because the situation for us has been the same as for the Palestinians) and I will ask for some proofs.
Now I just ask the proof about how You can tell that Palestinians are facists?