Eye On Israel/Palestine

I can't speak for Rick, but I know that he lives in a country (like the majority of people, btw), where even mass murders have the right to get a fair trial. Those countries are called democracies.

Finally some strangely uncommon common sense. Thank you Au1929.

Lusatian
I have learned to stay away from posts such as this unless I want to get into a slug fest. You will find very little love lost for Israel on them.

au1929: with peace process I do not mean an "official" peace process, but eventually avoiding more horror and killing. OK, it would have been better if I had called it "working to a better climate".

Lusatian: where do I say you should never kill a mass murderer / terrorist? In this case, I do not agree with the killing of Rantissi, not because I liked the guy (hell no), but because it has no use for the situation in the area, no in my eyes it can even have a bad impact. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict can not be "solved" 1,2,3, and surely not by simply killing. It will not stop terrorism, because the roots of this terrorism do not lie simply by some terrorist leaders, but by deeper reasons. At least, that's what I found out after two years of discussions on arabia.com (sadly enough the site isn't that good anymore, but the best way to find both Palestinians and Israeli's who want - in most times - talk seriously about this topic). Note: I do not say I'm an expert, before people start criticizing me on that :wink: . That's why this is a discussion forum.

Walter Hinteler: thanks for backing me, my EU-brother :wink:

Bush has altered his position on Israel/Palestine and his Road Map yet again in response to Arab and European complaints about his previous alteration to his previous stance thereof. Has this guy got a clue? He urged the Israelis to withdraw from territory captured during the Six Day War. "Bush also promised not to ``prejudice the outcome'' of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians when and if they are held.," writes Barry Schweid in his AP news story. During his meeting at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan he conspicuously left out mention of his support of Israel's opposition to the Palestinian claim of Right of Return which is a point of criticism in that it undermines the Palestinians' barganing power in negotiations with the Israelis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4062270,00.html

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1875110

Sharon, for his part, looks to be disengaging from his disengagement plan after a resounding rejection by his Likud party. He said it will take three weeks for him to present an alternative to his disengaement plan.


http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=14056&intcategoryid=1

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=507359§ion=news

Around 100,000 Israelis marched to express support for an Israeli pullout from Gaza in opposition to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party's resounding rejection thereof. It was the first major public demonstration by the country's peace movement in two years.

"The Israeli peace movement has been fractured and demoralized in recent years as a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings of passenger buses, cafes and other civilian targets in Israel have caused deep public revulsion and built support for Sharon's hard-edged security stance," writes Glenn Frankel for the Washington Post.

But there is strong support for the Gaza pullout as featured in Sharon's so-called Disengagement Plan among the Israeli peace movement.

The peace march ended at Rabin Square, named after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated by an Israeli zealot for having signed the Declaration of Principles, otherwise known as the Oslo Peace Accord.



Thousands of Israelis Urge Gaza Pullout

Killing of Rantissi served another goal: it was a message to the high-rank leaders of the terror-engaged organizations that they are no more intangible, unlike the field commanders that were always an objective. People like Rantissi (despite of their public statements where they prefer the death resulting from the Apache missile launching to death of cardiac arrest) value high their personal life and even living standards, and making them a target may seriously affect their motivation to promote terror.

steissd, welcome back! You have been missed.

Thanks. Unfortunately, now I have to work 6 days a week (unlike 5 days before the recession in Israel, that made me to lose 2 consequent jobs), and I am awfully tired almost all the time. This prevents me from active participation.

I seriously doubt this. Not only because these people don't see what we call terror, as terror, but as a freedom struggle. My point was that the followers of Hamas don't see people like Rantissi as terrorists (of course), but as their leaders in a fight against Israel. When Rantissi got killed, these people saw this as "another terrorist act by Israel". It will only spur up hate. Is that what we want? Just this evening I saw a documentary about a German who had converted to Islam, and who - after seeing a lot of news about Palestine and Israel, and talking to local Hezbollah cells - wanted to blow himself up in Israel, to only be prevented by the Israeli secret service at the last moment. This killing of Rantissi can and probably will be used as propaganda. Is that what we want?

Now the question is: will the killing of Rantissi have any effect on Hamas? There have not been real big suicideattacks anymore. But the hate is still there. And on the long term, I'm afraid hate is the last thing we all want, if we ever want to have peace in the area. On the short term, lives are saved indeed. But on the long term?

It will always be there. Hatred toward Israel, Jews and the Western civilization is used by the Arab leaders to pull their subjects' attention from the internal problems: poverty, tyranny, corruption, socioeconomic and technologic retardation. Let them hate anything they want to, but let them at the same time be scared of possible response to their actions.
It is impossible to scare the impoverished performer of the terror attacks: he has nothing to lose. But people like Rantissi that belong to the upper class of the Palestinian society have many things to value in their life on the Earth (in fact, they are not so much religious, as they pretend being, Mr. Rantissi has strongly opposed to his son's participation in the suicide bombings several years ago; at the same time he blessed his son's underprivileged age-peers into such an activity). If they are scared out from the so-called "liberation movement" it will fade out due to lack of leaders and money.

So glad to see you safe, steissd.
Many people have mentioned missing you. You live in such a dangerous place--nice to see you pop up.

<whew>

Many thanks.

Hullo, Streisd. Good to see you are still here.

Many thanks. I shall try now to be more often on the forum. I was unemployed for 6 months, and I was too much depressive to be interested in international affairs at that time...

Depression - The worst defeating mechanism known to man.

I don't want to protect Rantissi in any way steissd - to make that clear.

You said that the hate will always be there. Is that because it is really so, or because people don't believe it can be different? I understand that this sounds enormously naive for an Israeli like you who is being confronted which so much terror, bloodshed, and fear. But in time, even this can change. Just to take an example: when WW II was over, the Dutch were enormously angry with the Germans, like the majority of Europeans at that time. There was no good word left for them, "they were all Nazi's". That feeling lasted long, very long, also after the War. When it became clear princess - and later queen - Beatrix had fallen in love with a German, people were furious. How could she do that?? This person, Claus von Amsberg, had even been member of the Hitler Youth!
When they married, leftish activists (Provo) threw smokebombs. People were still very angry.

And still, the older generation is still not keen at Germans, after 60 years. But the younger generations have said: the Germans now are not the Nazi's from the '30's and '40's, and not all Germans were Nazi's during those years. We forgave them. 250,000 Dutch died in Nazi and Japanese hands, but we forgave them - both. (NOTE: this is not a serious parallel with Israel; with that I mean, the Nazi's are not the Israeli's nor the Palestinians, but this sort of hate is the only thing that came close). Point is, that many Palestinians believe that Israel has done many bad things to them as a people. The conflict is still going on. Did both parties ever really tried to do something for peace.? In my eyes: no. So how can we know that hate will always be there?

Because there is one big thing Israeli's and Palestinians both seem to share: they both want to live in a peaceful place, without war, destruction and fear. Or am I wrong?

2 Mr. d'Israeli: This hatred is not bilateral. Majority of Israelis do not hate Palestinians as an ethnic group and do not search possibility of killing any of them (except the terrorists and terror organizations' leaders). And when some extremists, like Amy Popper or Major (Res.) Bernard Goldstein took laws in their hands, there were not too many people supporting or condoning their actions.
For Arab leaders in general and Palestininan in particular cultivation of hatred toward Israel and Jews is an instrument used to distract attention of their subjects from the faults of their regimes: corruption, nepotism, tribalism (it exists not only in the Sub-Saharan Africa: majority of Saddam's top brass belonged to the Al-Tikriti tribe, the same the dictator himself belonged to), socioeconomic and technologic retardation.
There is a peace treaty with Egypt for more than 25 years. There were no military conflicts between two countries since it was signed. Egypt and Israel have no mutual territorial claims. Despite of this Egyptian media continuously deal with virulent anti-Semitic defamation (examples can be found here[/color][/b] or here[/b][/color]). It has nothing to do with freedom of press: media in the Arab countries are under strict control of the government...

I totally agree with you steissd; the fact that extremist islamic groups gain ground in a lot of Arab countries comes also out of the fact that most Arab regimes are corrupt, don't respect human rights etc. I read some books about it, so it's pretty clear to me.

I also know about the anti-Semitism in the Egyptian media. The fact that they made a TV-serie about the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" really hurt me.

But I think you should have hope. Not so long ago I saw a documentary about a Jewish Israeli who had close friends in the Palestinian Territories, in Jenin. They were kind to him, absolutely no hard feelings. Some of the Palestinians he knew were part of a militia who protected the city against the IDF (I will have no further comment on this though). The Palestinian children called him - in a friendly way - "Uncle Jew". This Jewish Israeli - whose name I don't name now - was not anti-Israel; he DID grow up with Palestinian children who he met through his mother. This is indeed just one simple example, but I think it does show that it is not impossible as a Jewish Israeli to be friends with a Palestinian.

I don't want to underestimate the anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Too often is it called "anti-Zionism" or just anti-Israeli feelings; but in many cases these movements / feelings have anti-Semitic features.

I have to go now, I will add something to this later.