Fourth Generation War: Racists Infiltrate Anti-War Movement

The reason I voted 'no' is not because of some naive thought that some in the anti war do not hate Israel, but because every anti war person I am in personal contact with supports the notion that the two peoples must be separated, the killing stopped, then two independant nations established. This stance is neither pro or anti anybody. Right now Israel is using excessive force and violence against the civilaian population while many arabs are useing suicide bombing and random shooting against civilians. If Bush were doing his job he would be trying to rally a coalition to separate these people instead of attacking Iraq.

OK, Edgarblythe, I do not think that everyone that opposes war with Iraq wants to eliminate Israel. Majority shares your approach. BTW, despite of the popular prejudice, the same approach is shared by the Israeli government. I meant another thing: Palestinian extremists try to exploit anti-war movement in order to promote their agenda; and there is no place for Israel in their plans. Unfortunately, the liberal and non-anti-Semitic leaders of the anti-war movement do nothing to separate themselves from the Palestinian racists.
Excessive force usage by IDF is a constraint. When the Palestinians restricted violence to rock throwing (in 1987-93), soldiers were instructed to use only non-lethal weapons (like rubber bludgeons and tear gas) against them. The enemy started shooting and launching homemade rockets/mortar rounds, and they got reciprocal shooting and tanks in their streets as a response.

But there are racists in most large movements. In my case I call them out or avoid them.

Steissd,

The following is the enemy's strategy for winning without the risks of facing the military might of the West.

If you cannot win on the battlefield, you must win be sapping your enemy's will to resist. Terrorize and threaten him with dire consequences of resistance. Sow doubt and discord. Undermine support for organized government, and any leadership that might get in your way. Lie and distort facts to suit your purposes. If caught in a lie, deny it and accuse those who catch you of manufacturing the evidence. Western media can easily be turned against itself. Give them pretty pictures, sound bites and well-groomed apologists and they will send your message to millions. Americans are suckers for pictures of starving children and can't bear the thought of casualties, especially their own. Make it appear that you and your sponsors are victims, and not really responsible for acts of terrorism.

The West values consensus so split them into factions and set them against one another. Make confederates of those you intend to destroy. Americans especially have a guilt complex, so play upon it wherever possible. Americans love a good conspiracy theory, so give them plenty of material implicating their leaders to work with. Get well-meaning dupes to advance your cause in the belief they are averting war and suffering. Mingle your propaganda into the legitimate public demonstrations. Follow the example of the North Vietnamese, they lost everything on the battlefield and managed to win by sapping the will of the American People. You can do it to. Capitalists are always willing to sell you the rope you intend to hang them with, so make them submit competitive bids.

The West loves to negotiate, so make outrageous demands. If they are met, then demand more. If your demands aren't met, then demand something else. Time and delay always favors you, because you will become stronger as the enemy finds reasons to fight among themselves. Western nations threaten, but won't follow through with their threats.
****

Is any of that taking place? Nah, couldn't happen here. If we just back away from the challenges forced upon us by Saddam, Kim and Bin Laden the world will go back to being a nice sunny place. All this fuss is really just a conspiracy by the Bush family to turn the USA into a Theocracy run by Oil capitalists. The Republicans hired the Mosad to bomb the Twin Towers to cover the inadequacies of Bush's economic plan, and to insure his relection for life. Saddam and Kim are just innocient bystanders who are only concerned with making their people content and happy. If the evil United States were to leave them alone, their nations would prosper. Sure.

This dupe is not about to change his approach.

I didn't expect you would, nor do I question your good intentions. Who knows, you might be right. We have a duty and responsiblity to make our opinions known.

I also expect that by the end of March, the faith I have in our military and civil leadership will have been vindicated -- though all the positive effects may not be clear for several years. I expect we will have to endure more terrorist attacks on our interests at home and abroad, but those attacks would have occurred in any case.

Like Edgar, I think that the extremists are in any political movement.

Anti_War Movement comes from different political 'edges', in different countries around the world.
Thus, you can't compare it alltogether.

Here, in Germany, momentarily it is dominated by the two main churches: the Protestant and Catholic. (The latter very conservative.)
(In my village here -80% voting for the conservative CDU- we have regularily anti-war services in both churches: every day, alternatively in one of the two.)

The Guardian gives an excellent overview to the UK-situation:

Special report: Anti-war movement

Germany is a very special case: she was involved in two World Wars, and lost the both; human casualties of these wars exceeded 10 million Germans. This may explain the fact that now this country is the most pacifist in Europe, and maybe in the whole world.
Of course, Russia lost more people, but in military aspects Russians are strongly result-oriented. The fact of winning the WWII makes people to come in term (in certain extent, of course) with enormous number of human casualties. Pacifists are not too much popular there, and average public opinion confuses them with mere deserters from the army. By the way, regardless of the position of Russian government, the major Russian media (in Russian language) are supportive toward the U.S. operation against Saddam; they only express concern about possible ousting of the Russian companies from the Iraqi market in the post-war Iraq.
Asherman's comment, IMHO, completely explains what is happening right now: the major manipulation trick that the Third World (not only Arabs and Muslims) plays with the Western public opinion in order to get unilateral advantages.

And, by the way, I did not mean that the anti-war movement per se was anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic. I meant that it is being actively abused by the anti-Semites (mainly from the Third World, neo-Nazis usually are not involved in the pacifist demonstrations) in order to market their ideas to the general public. In fact, Palestinians are very far from being pacifists themselves, but having failed to defeat Israel in the terrorist war, they try now to gain success in the public relations field.

What freedomfighters are to you may seem terrorists to me and vice versa. After 11/9 many countries like Greece(November17), Spain(Eta), France(Corse), Russia, Colombia,..... are bandwagoning in the war on terrorism in order to deal with domestic problems. The first country to do so was Israel.

I strongly condemn blowing up civilian targets. But i dont feel any indignation when Hamas blows up a tank.

BTW: Palestinians are semites too.

About anti-Semitism in general. The Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines it as

The term appeared in 1882, and at that time there was no sufficient Arab population in Europe. I have no clue what are the French/Flemish definitions of the term, but in English the word refers to hostility toward Jews, and this site uses English as an operational language.
Regarding attacks on the tanks: if Palestinians restricted themselves to attacking military men and facilities, this would be a guerilla war rather than the terror war. But there were hundreds of instances of successful or failed attacks on the Israeli civilians since September 2000. These included explosion of cars and charges, suicide bombing, indiscriminate fire, snipers' fire toward civilians (in one of the episodes of the snipers' fire the 10-month-old infant was deliberately killed: unlike indiscriminate shooter, sniper thoroughly chooses his/her target). I do not give links, since if there are hundreds of these. But I shall provide just one Killer of The Baby Arrested, and any unbiased participant would be able to learn something about how do the Palestinians pursue peace. By the way, the babies-killer did not belong to either Hamas or Islamic Jihad: he was a member of the Tanzim group that is directly subordinate to Arafat. This may make clear reasons for PM Sharon's reluctance to recognize Arafat as a fair partner for negotiations.

By the way, that is nothing wrong that the different coutries join the war on terrorism in order to solve their domestic problems with terror. Terrorists are terrorists, regardless what organization they belong to or what religion they confess. When several ultra-right extremists in Israel attempted to launch a terror attack against a Palestinian school, such an attempt was treated in the same way the Arab terror is treated: the attempt was prevented by the IDF, and the participants were arrested by the General Security Service, prosecuted, tried and convicted. They got long jail terms, just as their Arab counterparts do.

Arabs are semites with as equal a merit to the title as Jews and Israelis.

Semites are a group of peoples, including the Jews and Arabs, said in the Bible to be descended from Shem, Noah's eldest son. The Babylonians, Assyrians, Canaanites, and Phoenicians were ancient Semitic peoples.

Languages of the semites include Sumerian cuneiform (the first recorded writing), Canaanite, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Maltese, and Amharic, a language of Eritrea.

Armed with the knowledge that anti-semitism is a European manifestation, and that the term Semite refers to Arabs and not only Jews, the question begs itself: why would people publicly accuse Arabs of anti-semitism?

Are all protesters against the war in Iraq Anti-American? I dont think so. So don't mix the fight against Israeli policies towards Palestine, the Golan Heights and south Lebanon with racist bigotry (anti-Jewishness).

I most cases Arab assaulters get killed. Sharon even introduced the preemptive killing of 'so called' terrorist.

About freedom fighters. There is an excellent example of freedom fighting without violence. I mean, the way Gandhi achieved liberation of his country from the British possession. Gandhi has never advocated terror, and despite of this, India is independent since 1946.
There are numerous examples of non-violent freedom fighting in the former Communist countries. The most famous non-violent oppositioners to the Communist regimes were the late professor Andrew Sakharov and the current Czech President Vaclav Havel. These people have no blood on their hands, therefore, they have all the right to call themselves freedom fighters and not indiscriminate rabid murderers (examples: Arafat, bin Laden, Sheik Nasralla, Abed el-Aziz Rantissi, Marwan Bargouti).

your view is so unidimensional. Ever heard of Amira Hass?

Amira Hass is an Israeli living and working in the occupied
territories. She writes for Ha'aretz. I think she can open your eyes and see that the way IDF and Israeli forces are dealing with the occupation (and the fight against it by palestinians) isn't a war of "the good against the bad", "the right against the wrong".

How do you breed future generations of suicidebombers? By killing their parents, killing their future.



How will the brothers, sisters and family of this boy react? REVENGE, because they know justice will never be done.

I do not need Amira Hass to learn what exactly takes place in the West Bank. Every year I have at least 24 days of active reserve service (I am a combat medic in the IDF). And my own impressions are as follows: Amira Hass is either naive, or biased (the very specific type of self-hating Jews), or she is on Arafat's (Saddam's, Chirac's, etc.)paycheck. In the latter case she should rather change her surname to Goebbels or Lady Haw-Haw.
Arabs have very easy way to stop killings, and even to have the settlements gradually removed from the West Bank: to stop terror immediately and without any preconditions, and to return to the negotiations. PM Sharon is ready to resume talks just after the Palestinian violence stops.

About the pictures: as a combat soldier with rich experience (four years in Afghanistan as a Soviet infantry officer) I come to conclusion that these people got caught in the crossfire, and they are hiding until the fire exchange between IDF and Palestinian militants comes to end. No one is attempting to kill them. If there was such a purpose, they would not survive more than two minutes: I guess, you have never been a combat soldier, and you have very slight idea of hand grenades, grenade launchers, flamethrowers and other facilities that can be used against people (I mean, of course, not these particular ones, but the armed militants) hiding behind a barrel.