Sickening:
Celebrations in Gaza of the murder of eight yeshiva students at prayer. Thanks to reader N. Hecht for the pointer.
Sickening:
Celebrations in Gaza of the murder of eight yeshiva students at prayer. Thanks to reader N. Hecht for the pointer. |
Speaking as someone who struggles to merely keep a tent erect overnight, I find the durability of the Palestinians' camps a real source of inspiration.
I marvel at Israel's restraint in such matters - especially given that no matter how limited and measured their responses, the chorus of condemnation continues unabated.
Let's hear from the people who say that the three 'Abrahamic religions' are basically the same.
Right. They are showing tremendous restraint. I do wish Israel would 'damn the torpedoes' and end this thing. You know 'to the victors go the spoils.' You don't see any Arab country returning land they conquered, unless it is freed from their grasp by a greater force. Why should Israel?
But when Israelis are murdered...
There are such people?
How large is the difference between celebrating mass murder and calling for mass murder?
Take some Viagra.
Are you truly unable to see a difference between initiating massive terrorism against a civilian population and self defense?
If tomorrow morning Hamas et al were to stop violence the war would end that day. Can the same be said whatever Israel does?
I find these exhibitions of joy at the deaths of innocents to be pathetic and depressing. I remember how moved I was, despite my better judgment, when Arafat and Rabin shook hands at the start of the public Oslo process. These exhibitions remind me that Israel is in for at least a generation of struggle for its life, and the world will be subject to terror throughout that time as well. It's pathetic.
I would like to think the West will see these acts for what they are - a demonstration of the nature of Israel's enemies. There is no hope for peace in the near term and Europe and the Left should stop pretending that there is and that the Palestinians want peace [put differently - stop being racist and believe that the Arabs do actually mean what their leadership says].
Europe and the Left should stop to consider whether they want to be on the side of people who dance in the streets when children are murdered, or on the side of a people whose military works harder than any military in history to minimize the deaths of innocent civilians (and whose govt has been willing to apologize for the deaths of those they didn't even kill). I find the choice so easy that I cannot understand how others who claim to believe in the ideals of the Enlightenment can decide differently.
I'm not sure I see the difference between the former and wiping out millions of civilians with the use of neutron bombs on entire populations, however, which seems to be what someone suggested.
I can not recall a single time where Palestinian civilians were killed and seeing Israelis celebrate. You don't even see celebrations when the IDF kills a terrorist.
"We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel."
- Golda Meir
If I recall correctly the people Baruch Goldstein killed were not Palestinians, so I guess he is not a contradiction to your rule. There are pilgrimages to his grave, along with a plaque lauding him as a hero, as I understand it.
But I do not presume that the people who celebrate Goldstein's massacre are representative of Israelis, or Jews, nor does their behavior tempt me to wish ill of Israel as a whole.
Kind of hard to imagine the Tibetans playing this game.
OTOH, it's pretty clear that if the Gaza celebrants don't necessarily represent the average Gazan, they represent a substantial portion of Gazan opinion. Note that even the most "moderate" Palestinian leaders insist that the terrorists in Israeli jails are "freedom fighters" and "political prisoners" who must be set free in any peace deal--as a matter of right, not as a gesture of reconciliation.
Asher Steinberg and Xanth, you are aware that it wasn't until recently that murdering enemy civilians was par for the course? No one needed oppression as an excuse. Some parts of the world have grown more civilized, some have not.
I think it's time the World thinks about a program to pay Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza to other parts of the world. Perhaps forcibly.
1) That video is sickening.
2) There's nothing about "being Palestinian" that genetically makes you celebrate such things. Anyone who believes that is either delusional or purposefully deceitful.
3) Context means something, and probably more than most people want to believe. Terrorism around the world is highly correlated with "occupation." Without getting into a fight over the meaning of that word, it's safe to say that if Israel currently had little or no military and was being occupied by a strong military power, you'd see little or no "terrorism" from the occupying power, and plenty of terrorism from Israelis. Strong powers rightly object to random civilian killings. Those without strong power resort to it, and create elaborate psychological and intellectual frameworks to defend it. It doesn't make it right, but we're not talking about the normative world here.
The strong use organized militaries and call for rules of war. The weak use terror.
Gordo,
Nobody wants them. Especially, the Arab states do not want them.
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1693.htm
There's nothing about "being Palestinian" that genetically makes you celebrate such things. Anyone who believes that is either delusional or purposefully deceitful.
Certainly not genetically (plus "Palestinians" are genetically indistinguishable from Arabs). But "being Palestinian" evidently involves possessing a worldview which celebrates the murder of innocents.
Context means something, and probably more than most people want to believe. Terrorism around the world is highly correlated with "occupation."
Context certainly does mean something! Cult of death and all that; a worldview which celebrates the death of innocents. But in regard to "occupation", Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
Animals...
>>plus "Palestinians" are genetically indistinguishable from Arabs
Oy, I realize that probably wasn't the best example!
As to your 2 - No one here has blamed Palestinians' genetics; just their actions. Generally (yes, there are exceptions) those actions are attributed to the Palestinians' current culture and politics.
As to your 3 - Your knowledge of history is astonishingly stunted. A couple millenia of persecutions, pogroms and the Holocaust has not caused Jews to resort to the deliberate, political murder of innocent civilians. Look at the Mandate period in particular, and you will find that with a almost no exceptions (and those almost exclusively actions by fringe elements that the Israeli state forcibly surpressed), the Jews never targeted civilians. The jihadies do it because of their fanaticism.
I'm curious where else, outside the arab world, you see such terrorism. I see some from leftist loonies in pockets around the world, but again, they are motivated by their fanaticism, not "occupation". Pretend all you want, but terrorism has nothing to do with "occupation".
One needn't wonder - they want all the Jews to die or leave Israel. This isn't something they are shy about telling the world, you just have to show them the respect of listening and believing that they mean what they say.
"I think it's very dangerous to point to something like this and say that it proves the Israelis' moral superiority."
Why? It seems a very simple moral question: Is the death of children at school a good thing? Israelis say no; Palestinians (statistically, by a large margin) yes, if the childrent are Jews/Israelis. How is that not proof of the moral superiority of Israeli/Western culture over Palestinian/jihadi culture?
In fact, in the entire Land of Occupied Palestine, there are dozens of rabbinical colleges devoted to training *Jewish* rabbis. Yet since the Disaster of Zionist occupation, there has not been a *single rabbinical college* built for Palestinian Muslims or Christians! Not ONE!
How is progress and reconciliation--and progress *toward* reconciliation, lest I forget that--possible under these circumstances? This is theological-education Apartheid!
NOW can you understand the RAGE?!
Just as Israel solved the crisis of Jews in Arab lands suffering. It brough them all to Israel, after the Arab governments confiscated all their land and wealth, of course.
If the latter, then I would say that you can't conclude that Israeli culture is morally superior unless you put Israelis in the exact same situation as the Palestinians, and test their response.
Obviously, that's impossible, but might be interesting as a thought experiment.
And also hushed up by liberal journalists.
Shall we also ask what could possibly drive people to be so aggrieved that they would murder black people?
You have to understand what OCCUPATION can do to a people before you JUDGE them!
Also, It seems quite irrational to stick around in a fight wehre you fire bottle rockets and the adversary comes back with tanks.
I can only imagine, truly only igamine, myself and family in that situation. I would not stay. I would do everything I could to move.
Um, I thought I referenced fairly similar circumstances? In all the centuries of persecution and pogroms, Jewish culture never sanctioned the murder of innocent Christians. In twoo decades of occupation of Palestine by the British, the proto-Israeli state didn't condone the murder of Arab or British civilians, even in the face of the Arab violence against the Jewish civilian population.
You and others go on and on about the Israeli occupation, but that occupation has been incredibly benign by historical standards despite the continuing violence of Palestinian terrorists. It is no accident that the Palestinians, UNDER THE OCCUPATION, became the most educated and wealthiest general population in the Arab world. Or did you not bother to read (among all the other relevant information in the public domain) press reports about the Egyptian women who raced into Gaza looking for husbands after Hamas blew destroyed the wall between Egypt and Gaza?
Are you just ignorant or do you have an agenda?
Indeed, see this little gem from the Society of Professional Journalists: Guidelines for Countering Racial, Ethnic and Religious Profiling.
I've said this here before: I think creating Israel was a colossal mistake, perhaps the blunder of the 20th century, but the mistake having been made, it's an even bigger mistake to try to get rid of it. Israel isn't going anywhere; that's reality. And if Palestinians would spend half as much energy on bettering their lives as they do on trying to destroy Israel, they would have had a prosperous and productive nation of their own long ago.
Well, if you think teenagers are 'enemies.'
The Palestinians (who did not exist even as an idea until I was in my teens) and the Lebanese Muslims are a curious case. They had better opportunities to adopt modern ways of life, had in fact moved further along that path than any other groups of Arabs ever.
It's almost as if, you know, they really want to live in the middle ages.
it's safe to say that if Israel currently had little or no military and was being occupied by a strong military power, you'd see little or no "terrorism" from the occupying power, and plenty of terrorism from Israelis.
its indeed safe to say that because it isn't the case-and it claims something that cant be tested....thats the problem
many "occupied" populations militarily resist the forces of the "occupying" power-without having to kill civilians (think French resistance)
Professor Bernstein, some parts of the world have grown more civilized than others, but I think you still have to ask why that's the case. Some Americans are more civil than others - for example, we who live in the suburbs believe in informing police if we know who shot someone, while many blacks who live in the inner city would call that "snitching" and have a whole "Stop Snitching" t-shirt cottage industry going. And I think we'd all agree that one of those attitudes is more civilized than the other. But rather than just bash people who think that what you or I would call a civic duty is actually a violation of some street code of ethics, pace Bill O'Reilly, I think we have to at least ask why they've come to believe that informing on criminals is wrong, what experiences and societal conditions play a role in producing such warped values. Similarly, rather than just noting that many Palestinians are less civilized than Americans or Israelis, and ending the conversation there, you have to ask what the causes of such a lack of civility are. This doesn't necessarily mean that there is an explanation beyond just flat-out bad values, but you have to at least look before you dismiss the possibility.
If creating Israel was a mistake, what was the proper thing for the world to have done with the 2 million (give or take) Jewish refugees who wanted to go to Israel in the late 1940s?
Hamas, the radical Islamic movement that controls Gaza, praised the Jerusalem attack. "It was a natural response to Israeli crimes in Gaza," the organization said in a statement. "We bless this act. It won't be the last one."
I think the mistake was primarily in where Israel was placed. While it might have been possible to simply return the Jews to the individual nations from which they came (and providing them the funding to rebuild), I think given both the Holocaust and the thousand years of entrenched anti-Semitism that preceded it, a Jewish homeland was probably the better choice.
But that homeland was placed in the most rabidly anti-Semitic part of the world that could be found. The closest analogy I can come up with for how stupid that was would be to put a gay nudist resort between a Baptist preschool and a Catholic convent. Why go looking for that kind of trouble when there are other places to put it that will be far less inflammatory? As an historical matter, I don't see that the Jews have any more claim to that particular plot of land than the Arabs do.
Since the map of Europe was being redrawn anyway, I would have carved it out of somewhere near where many or most of the Jews came from. North Africa would have been another possibility since that, too, was home to many Jews. Hell, I might even have found a place for them somewhere in the New World, which has traditionally been a place for people to come who were trying to escape persecution. But to carve out a Jewish state where it will be surrounded by people who are fed anti-Semitism with mother's milk, whose religion requires them to try to wipe Jews off the face of the earth, whose holy book says that Allah himself will destroy the Jews -- that is sheer stupidity on a massive scale.
NI,
Maybe not the Arabs, but the Arabs are not the problem. The Muslim religion is the problem. Given that, the Jews have about 3,000 plus years (at least) on the Muslms, I think, when it comes to laying claim to the land.
That said, thanks for trying to make some sense. It won't work, but you can't be faulted for trying. I am not Jewish, but I think you miss the importance of this land to the Jews.
This poster is in some ways more disturbing than the rest of the celebration. I don't like it, but I can understand schadenfreude, and being pleased that the "enemy" were killed. At least with that, there is hope that "Now that we've evened the score, can we stop fighting, at least for awhile?" But alas, how to make peace with a "liberation movement" that propounds that the Moroccan-Jewish-Israelis, Iraqi-Jewish-Israelis, Yemenite-Jewish-Israelis, Kurdish-Jewish-Israelis, Syrian-Jewish-Israelis, etc. should all "return" to Poland?
HipposGoBerserk wrote: "I'm curious where else, outside the arab world, you see such terrorism." Answer: The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka are neither Arab nor Muslim.
DavidBernstein wrote "I think it's fair to say that the celebrants' of Goldstein's massacre ... justified it by claiming that Goldstein had inside information that the Palestinians were going to attack the Jews of Hebron, and he precluded a massacre of Jews." Lawyer-Wearing-Yarmulka echoed this claim. Would one of you kindly post a link in support of this?
AntonK: What is the problem? These guidelines, by and large, help make reporting more informative and less emotional.
Three points:
1) That video is sickening.
I stand by this assessment.
2) There's nothing about "being Palestinian" that genetically makes you celebrate such things. Anyone who believes that is either delusional or purposefully deceitful.
I stand by this assessment. The idea that Palestinians, or Arabs, or Jews, or the British, or anyone else is driven to suicide bombings by something innate about them is silly. I made no comment about culture: of course if you teach kids to kill people, they will kill people. And if you teach them pacifism, they will tend toward pacifism.
3) Context means something, and probably more than most people want to believe. Terrorism around the world is highly correlated with "occupation."
This is absolutely true, particularly in the case of suicide bombings. Go check the scholarly literature (plenty of it has sprung up in the last decade). You might be surprised to find that the majority of suicide bombings did not take place in the middle east.
Without getting into a fight over the meaning of occupation,
I stand by this, too, or at least the idea that the Palestinians are occupied. Just use a common sense definition: Is nation Y universally prohibiting nation X from building a traditional military? If yes, can nation X vote in nation Y's elections? If no, occupation.
it's safe to say that if Israel currently had little or no military and was being occupied by a strong military power, you'd see little or no "terrorism" from the occupying power, and plenty of terrorism from Israelis.
I stand by this. While I'm certainly aware of the romantic stories of jewish non-violence, this very blog has written many posts regarding the mythology of those stories. I also have no doubt that Israel will do whatever it takes to survive, up to and including the killing of innocent civilians. I say this with no value judgment. I just don't see how anything else could be argued.
Strong powers rightly object to random civilian killings.
I stand by this. It is the only way to have a global civilization that moves forward economically and socially.
Those without strong power resort to it, and create elaborate psychological and intellectual frameworks to defend it. It doesn't make it right, but we're not talking about the normative world here.
I stand by this. I'm not condoning it or justifying it, just explaining it. You can go round and round trying to link terroism with an ideology or a mindset or a culture, but it ultimately takes place as a political expression. There's a reason car bombs went off in london and a reason car bombs went off in baghdad. It was perceived occupation.
The strong use organized militaries and call for rules of war. The weak use terror.
I stand by this. If that makes me a realist and a cynic, so be it.
I understand the importance of the land to the Jews for religious reasons. As Chief Justice Rehnquist said in the Indian burial ground case, we can't accommodate everybody's religion, and displacing people who've been there for a thousand years to make room for people who were there earlier (but not continuously) makes no sense to me. The Jews should have been told that they were getting a homeland, even if not necessarily the homeland they wanted. Lots of people don't get to live where they want.
How many civilians did Israel kill yesterday?
How many civilians did Israel kill last week?
I disagree that we "have to." Noticing the evil and determining to oppose it is important. Figuring out how to oppose it is important. Sometimes figuring out the "root cause" is helpful in the fight, sometimes it isn't, often it isn't possible.
And all too often "well we have to understand why" sounds less like a practical suggestion to know one's enemy than it does like an excuse.
And this:
I think instead of just decrying stuff like this you have to ask what could possibly drive people to be so aggrieved that they would celebrate the death of college students, and I think it's very dangerous to point to something like this and say that it proves the Israelis' moral superiority.
is just totally misguided.
It does prove the Israelis' moral superiority, and the question "What drives a people to act this way?" is functionally equivalent to the question "What drives a people into brutality and evil?" The brutality and evil will not be erased by being explained.
I don't see any improvement in the situation until the world allows that national culture to be resoundingly, decisively defeated as opposed the last 60 years of telling/pressuring Israel to stop short when it faces an existential threat.
"I just don't see how anything else could be argued."
in other words "im so clearly right about this that everyone else is either ignorant or stupid"
and you day this without dealing with any of the actual historical points that have been made counter to the notion that a society under "occupation" will always kill innocent civilians.
pathetic
I made that statement to end the point in blockquotes below. I didn't separate it by paragraphs. If you stil disagree, I'll listen. But I've never herad anyone say that Israel will accept national death before taking all measures available.
I don't think I'm being uncivil in this debate.
How many civilians did Isarel kill yesterday who were not deliberately placed in harm's way by cynical terrorists seeking to use them as human shields?
How many Palestinian children were killed because Israeli soldiers burst into their schools looking to kill as many children as possible?
How many Arabs have been beaten and stabbed to death by Israeli mobs for the crime of walking through a Jewish neighborhood, or for hiking where Israelis were able to ambush them?
The answer to these questions, of course, is zero or close to it, and I find my questions much more relevant than yours.
My first reaction is to say 'No I don't.' I don't ask why is the dog rabid. I will first put the dog down, then cry and pray that the dog will still find its way to the rainbow bridge. But I suppose that I will ask what could have made that dog rabid, that I might seek out the source of the infection and eradicate it before it can infect others.
Asher, is that why you think we should ask these questions? Because like me, you believe that protecting the future of civilization requires good people to risk themselves eradicating the sources of such anti-social activities as murdering peaceful people in centers of education and trade?
That is what I believe.
I also agree with Hipposgobeserk. Look at Hebrew/Jewish history. Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Turks, Soviets, Germans, um actually most of Western Europe in the Dark and Middle Ages. If persecution or occupation provided an excuse, even a bad one, for terroristic activities then nobody would ever want to have even bagel shop in their community.
I believe in the inherent right of self-defense. I don’t see the attacks on Israel as defense. Nor are the attacks military in value. Therefore the actions of those launching the attacks are not defensible on either a moralistic or legal basis as I see it. I wonder about an additional legal dimension that perhaps someone here could address. In the US if a person (other than the retained counsel of the criminal!) witnesses a crime and assists in concealing the criminals’ identities then the witness can also be charged, correct? I would suggest that a similar situation obtains within Gaza and Lebanon when those locations are the source of attacks upon others. In this case the people that witness the launching of the attack, and those assisting in concealing the people and their identities after the fact.
BTW: in the interest of disclosure as is the Volokh tradition: my almost ex-wife is a Russian-Jew refugee in the USA. But I have no sword in this fight since I'm a pagan. Therefore none of the three main combatants for control of Jerusalem really like me all that much. :) I’d still rather nobody turned the region into a radioactive parking lot.
Just curious.
How many civilians did Israel kill last week?"
According to the NY Times, 59 on last Saturday and 80 for the period from Wednesday to Saturday, including at least 19 civilians. No comment other than it does provide some context for the response in the video.
"If you still disagree, I'll listen." ok...but you have to be responsive to the points people are making as well, i dont find you uncivil-i find you nonresponsive..i.e.
you STILL (3rd try) have not dealt with ANY of the historical examples brought by numerous people on this thread of peoples under occupation that have NOT resorted to killing civilians.
"I've never heard anyone say that Israel will accept national death before taking all measures available. "
thats-again because its not on the table. Israel is not in the situation that your positing...Ive never heard anyone day that about the US either-but again...thats not the situation..so of course nobody has said it. you also haven't responded to this point...yet you don't have a problem repeating your own point
I made that statement to end the point in blockquotes below. I didn't separate it by paragraphs. If you stil disagree, I'll listen. But I've never herad anyone say that Israel will accept national death before taking all measures available.
I also have no doubt that Israel will do whatever it takes to survive, up to and including the killing of innocent civilians. I say this with no value judgment. I just don't see how anything else could be argued.
yes-that blockquote was the very thing im criticizing as non responsive and presumptuous (presumptuous because you say that nobody could possibly disagree).not your whole speech on the matter
I sure do.
But they didn't actually ACT on that chant yet. So we're dealing with apples and oranges here. Or, really, apples and orangutans: There's no useful comparison between saying you want someone dead and taking steps to fulfill your wish.
Look, there are people whose obituaries I am anxious to read. That makes me an asshole. But I'm not a murderer. I'd like to think there's a difference.
this may be an example of over an over the top comment.
see-exactly 2 steps away from genocide
nah-no over the top comments here
Are you saying that terrorism is unique to Arabs? ETA? The IRA?
George Weiss,
I believe that every time they do an opinion poll in Palestine, over 90% of the people favor the utter, total and complete destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews.
It might be a more appropriate question, what Palestinians are not educated and trained to kill? In addition, when they are not killing Jews, they seem to do a pretty good job of killing each other.
I don't think stating facts is a call for genocide. You have to know what the problem is in order to even have a hope of solving it. Pretending it is just a misguided few will get us nowhere because that is absolutely untrue. I notice those of you defending the terrorists have no solution to this problem. What would you have Israel do? Hell, any Palestinian preaching peace is going to find himself dead. I don't know what is going to make them want to change. Again, what would you have Israel do?
Apparently.
Congressman Ron Paul was the lone dissenting vote this week on H. Res. 951, which condemned the firing of Palestinian rockets into Israel. Timing is everything.
Instead, pointing out their actual mindset is somehow "dehumanizing" them.
but saying that they have no humanity isn't stating a fact-its hate charged rhetoric and "over the top"
you didnt just point out their mindset-you said
they are turned into a group with no apparent humanity.
No. I think I was reasonably clear in arguing that terrorism is linked to extermist ideology, not to "occupation." Generally these days, that jihadism, but some residual communist groups continue to resort to terrorism. I'm not certain about ETA, but the IRA were communists as well as nationalists. I'm also not aware of if/when those groups crossed from guerilla movements into terrorism (and yes, there is a difference - I get very frustrated when Israel confuses the issue by calling assaults on its military terrorism).
This just isn't supported by any empirical scholarship on the matter. Granted, there are methodological problems with most, if not all, of the studies, but the bottom line is that there is a strong correlation between terrorism and the perception of occupation, at least at the level of suicide-bombings. For all its faults and critics, Dying to Win's underlying thesis on this count has been largely confirmed by follow-up literature.
Of course, almost everyone does. Most Israelis are also disgusted by it. Thats the key difference between the two sides. After the Arabs kill our children, we are still deeply concerned about calls to kill them indiscriminately. The folks chanting that were both the grieving and extremists - and the extremists are a much smaller slice of the Jewish world than the Arab world, not to mention, our extremists rarely act out (they're just noisy and bothersome, like Christian extremists).
If Arabs were appalled by this celebration in Gaza, it would be a sign of civilization.
Jim, you are the only person in this thread who has discussed genetics, which makes me thing you are either looking for racism in all the wrong places, or are a troll. Genetically, there is little difference between Jews and Palestinians, no matter how much we would like to think otherwise, after days like yesterday. This can't be blamed on biology - its a culture of death.
If I knew how to put a link in, I would. However, I will have to copy this from February 07.
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Denial of Youth
By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
Palestinian Media Watch | Friday, March 02, 2007
A recent poll of Palestinian children shows a direct correlation between the PA curriculum and Palestinian children's opinions. PMW's newest report on Palestinian Authority schoolbooks warns that because of the PA curriculum, which repeatedly and utterly rejects Israel's right to exist, "The well-meaning (Palestinian) student is left with no logical justification or religious option to accept Israel as a neighbor ..."
[See full Executive Summary below and Chapters 1-4 of report.]
At a Washington news conference to release the new report, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton likewise concluded that these PA schoolbooks are "...deeply disturbing, particularly for the denial of Israel's existence..."
The results that PMW and Sen. Clinton have warned about can be seen in a new poll released by Near East Consulting, a Palestinian research institute, which asked Palestinians, "Does Israel have the right to exist?"
Among young people ages 18 -25, those who have been most influenced by PA education, an overwhelming number - between 84% - 93% -- denied Israel's right to exist. [http://www.neareastconsulting.com/] This was higher than the overall figure of 75% who denied Israel's right to exist. It should be noted that PA teachings denying Israel's right to exist are endemic throughout PA society and media, including among Fatah leaders, which would account for the high levels of denial of Israel's legitimacy throughout PA society.
In reviewing what polling data I could find, I feel I did exaggerate somewhat, although not intentionally. Glad you were skeptical. Good to keep us all honest. The numbers are still not encouraging though.
Thank you. I will try it next time. Meantime, I will copy and paste your instructions so I will have them for next time.
I just learned how to text message today with my new cell phone (with a lot of help from my daughter). That is probably all the new technology my brain can handle for one day! Thanks again.
My ancestors lived in northern Georgia. My great-great grandfather was born in 1857 on a family farm. His family was poor owned no slaves, although I'm sure they had the same basic outlook on blacks as most southerners.
When the war came, his father and uncles fought for the confederacy, and some died for a cause that was on the losing side of history at best and, to be blunt, probably evil.
His father survived the war, but returned home to find the family farm burnt down, placing the family into abject poverty, not unlike many southerners of their class. They were humiliated.
Less than a year later, his father shot a Union solider that was part of the military occupation of the South. His father was killed by other soldiers.
My great-great grandfather spent the rest of his life hating northerners, Republicans, and yes, blacks.
Here's the point of the story: I can't defend any of the actions or opinions of my great-great-grandfather or his father. But I think I can understand them. Neither of them had a dog in the politics that led to the civil war, yet events beyond their control forced them into resentment, rage, and ultimately horrible actions and ideologies.
So while I don't in any way condone or even find anything redeeming in the actions or ideologies of the Palestinians, I think it's possible to accept them as the responses of regular people in a horrible situation not of their own personal doing on an individual level. Should they pay for the sins of their fathers? Maybe. But I don't think we can automatically give them the motives of their fathers when they take the actions of their fathers.
Sorry, not true, but that doesn't fit the historical evidence of which I am aware. Aside from general skepticism, the few studies I've seen have been so badly flawed methodologically as to have been meaningless, so I'll stick with broad brush analysis over ridiculously constructed studies.
A good point, for sure. Yet, the problem has to be solved, one way or another. Basically, whenever different groups have encountered one another there are only three options:
Integration
Segregation
Extermination
Israel coulnd't do the first and is refuses to do the third. It's stuck with the second option and will likely be dealing with it for a long time, because it can't offload these refugees to an equivalent of Liberia. Carry an uzi and pray; that's all they can do.
Poppycock!
A little homework, and the "Occupation Excuse" disappears.
Not at VC. Try Orrin Judd's blog.
++++
disinterested: not really parallel. Your Georgia ancestors defied and attempted to secede from the Union. That would have destroyed the Union, but it would not have destroyed the society 'at the North,' as the phrase was then, or all the people who lived there.
The Palestinians and their pals attempted to erase the state of Israel, which had — wisely or not — been approved by the UN, and all the people in it. It is, at least, ironic now that the Palis and their pals wrap themselves in anti-Israel UN resolutions.
Hard to credit them with much sense of principle.
Query: did you great grandfather swear an oath of allegiance to the Union after the federal army was withdrawn in '76? Mine did and even ended up taking an official position in the US government.
I think he even came to believe that slavery, which he defended up to '65, was a bad idea.
I look over the behavior of the Palestinians and I just don't see any parallels to the state of the US South after the civil war. Granted, before they had all been citizens of the same nation, while the Palis and the Israelis had never been as one.
You gotta hand it to the Arabs, though. Given a long historical view, no one would ever have thought that escaping from the rule of the Turks could lead to something worse, but they managed.
Hopeless.
A) Can Palestinians in the west bank and gaza build a traditional national army through free trade with other nations?
B) Can Palestinians in the west bank and gaza vote in Israeli elections?
Currently, neither is true. Thus, occupation. QED
Spin it any way you want.
Plenty of Palestinian Christians have been involved with violent Palestinian nationalist groups, like George Habash and his PFLP.
QED what, Grady's point that there has never in recorded history been a sovereign nation corresponding to what the Palestinians would claim as theirs, and hence a reason to dispute "occupied"? (Another, and I think better reason to dispute "occupied" is that no sovereignty succeeded the British Mandate in the "territories," though Egypt and Jordan asserted control in those parts from '48 to '67, when they lost that control in the Six Day War.)
Are the Basques or the Catalans "occupied" because they cannot "build a traditional national army through free trade with other nations?" (BTW, what is "build a traditional national army through free trade with other nations" suppposed to mean?) And no, "Palestinians in the west bank and gaza cannot vote in Israeli elections." Citizens of Israel, including Israeli Arabs can do that, and there are Israeli Arabs in the Knesset. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have been able to vote for their choice of a government (the Palestinian Authority), and we have seen the all too sorrowful results, which have been a major impediment to nationhood for them.
But let's be candid with one another, it isn't about "occupation" per se, it is about whether the Palestinians and their Arab and Muslim patrons will ever abandon their efforts to destroy the Jewish state of Israel.
You must be misunderstanding my point. Regardless of historical claim, you can consider a people "occupied" if:
A) they cannot vote as normal citizens, and
B) they cannot form their own nation, defined as building a military with which to defend themselves.
This is exactly the situation of the Palestinians. It is NOT the situation of the catalonians, who can vote and participate in politics freely.
It is a basic principle of modern western civilization that you either give people the vote or you give them the freedom to form their own country. The Palestinians have been given neither.
The funny thing is, everyone in Israel recognizes this, and knows that things must change, they only struggle with how. The inherent tension of the occupation is not up for debate. Only far away from ground zero, where the costs of militancy are cheap, do you find mainstream people defending the status quo as perfectly normal.
If the above post had been writeen with "Jews" substituted for "Palestinians," the poster would be banned from VC. I hope that this poster will be as well.
Disgusting.
Then Gaius Marius writes:
Then there's Ultimatimus's offering highlighted by "come on" upthread. BTW Gaius, what's this "we" stuff? Are you a member of the IDF -- do you even live in Israel?
I have my problems with Israeli policy from time to time, but
I don't know of another people on this earth who are trying as hard as the Israelis to hold onto their humanity in face of attacks like this. People like AntonK, Gaius Marius, and Ultimatimus would have the Jews of Israel forego that humanity. In the end, that's far more dangerous to the survival of Israel than anything the Palestinians can do.
Palestinian textbooks teach children to hate Jews, all Jews.
And please notice that he says “they’re trying to feed it to us.” There is a deadly serious struggle going on beneath the surface in this country.
When terrorists intentionally shoot rockets at enemy civilians, while hiding among their own civilians and using them as human shields, the responsibility for what occurs from the counterfire lies with the terrorists--AND ONLY WITHTHEM. They--and ONLY THEY--are responsible for the casualties among the civilians whom they intentionally hide among while shooting rockets at civilians.
Comments?
Subhumans? Untermenschen?
Are you also growing a brush mustache?
Short video about the killing in Jerusalem
See: The Palestinian Authority celebrates mass murder
So when I am in the position of responding to comments about Occupation, I always respond first with my own question, which is "When did the Occupation begin?" Those who won't answer are not worth my time. We know what they *really* mean.
Another example of the difference between civilization and barbarism:
The most popular show in israel is the source of the new HBO series “In Treatment”, which deals with a psychiatrist helping emotionally distraught patients. In the popular Israeli show one part deals with the traumatic effect (guilt) upon an Israeli soldier because he accidently killed civilians while hunting terrorists in the West Bank. In the American version, it’s a U.S. Airforce officer who accidentally bombed a Madrassah and is riddled with guilt.
BY CONTRAST, can you imagine a Hamas or Hezbollah or Al Aqsa Brigade terrorist WORRIED about this? Don’t be absurd! On the contrary–these people have been ideologically primed to kill civilians, including children, and they intend to kill civilians, including children. They CELEBRATE killing civilians, including children. And the Arab “street” in Gaza celebrates as well.
Religion is the problem? Please explain Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler et al.
come on wrote,
) Can Palestinians in the west bank and gaza build a traditional national army through free trade with other nations?
B) Can Palestinians in the west bank and gaza vote in Israeli elections?
I do believe that Japan is a Nation even though they were prohibited from building a military after WW II. I believe they were and are a nation even though the people could not vote in our elections during the time we occupied them.
You make no sense. Palestinians have voted in their own elections. You want them to vote in Israel's as well?
We are occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, but the people have voted in their own free elections for the first time in many years and in Afghanistan for the first time ever. In addition, we are busy building an army in both nations. But, for the time being, they are occupied, so to speak.
Your premise, it seems to me, is invalid.