McGentrix wrote:<b>John Malkovich</b> wrote:I have no objection to taking in Palestinian civilians. Better than having them killed as "collateral damage" of those Israeli precision strikes.
(The problem with you people is that you have no empathy at all for innocent civilians that get killed if they are not of Israeli nationality.)
compared to the empathy you have regarding the innocent civilians in Israel that get blown into bits from suicide bombers?
I'm concerned about civilians on both sides. Do Israelis have a right to defend themselves? Certainly. Do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? Very likely. I can't see how retaliatory strikes and indiscriminate bombing can help civilians on either side, though.
And I have a problem with people who condemn retaliatory strikes and indiscriminate bombing from the one side, while defending it when it comes from the other side.
In short: self defense - fine, indiscriminate killing - wrong. Goes for both sides.
...
The end to the Arab-Israeli conflict will not be achieved through American initiatives or intense involvement; it will be possible only when Arab leaders have the courage to follow the examples of Sadat and Hussein and resolve to live in peace with Israel.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf21.html
McGentrix wrote:<b>John Malkovich</b> wrote:I have no objection to taking in Palestinian civilians. Better than having them killed as "collateral damage" of those Israeli precision strikes.
(The problem with you people is that you have no empathy at all for innocent civilians that get killed if they are not of Israeli nationality.)
compared to the empathy you have regarding the innocent civilians in Israel that get blown into bits from suicide bombers?
I'm concerned about civilians on both sides. Do Israelis have a right to defend themselves? Certainly. Do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves? Very likely. I can't see how retaliatory strikes and indiscriminate bombing can help civilians on either side, though.
And I have a problem with people who condemn retaliatory strikes and indiscriminate bombing from the one side, while defending it when it comes from the other side.
In short: self defense - fine, indiscriminate killing - wrong. Goes for both sides.
There was no, and never has been, indiscriminate killing by Israel. For instance, in Lebanon (from which Israel was under attack for about 10 years), about 1,000 terrorist and civilian died. Israel could easily have killed a couple hundred thousand. The USA killed millions in Nam, and about 100,000 in Iraq.
So, Israel defends itself by killing the terrorists that build and distribute bombs that target Israeli civilians strictly. Precision strikes are certainly not "indiscriminate bombing". Building and exploding a bomb filled with nails and metal shards in a crowded marketplace, bus, shop, whatever, most certainly IS "indiscriminate bombing".
Can you not see the difference?
I think I proved my point. I am sorry that your logic, or lack thereof, precludes understanding.
<b>Wonder Woman</b> wrote:
...
The end to the Arab-Israeli conflict will not be achieved through American initiatives or intense involvement; it will be possible only when Arab leaders have the courage to follow the examples of Sadat and Hussein and resolve to live in peace with Israel.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf21.html
The end to the Arab-Israeli conflict will be achieved when either the Arabs totally defeat the Israelis or the Israelis totally defeat the Arabs. Not before then.
Despite the fact that neither the Jews of Israel or the Arabs of Palestine had a legal claim to Palestine prior to the UN 1947 Resolution partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jew states, the Arabs, perforce their religion, believe that all of Palestine rightfully belongs to them. Nothing short of a declaration to the contrary by Muhammad himself will change their belief.
Infra, you are spouting the big lie. When Israel was formed, the invading Arab armies asked the Pals in Israel to leave their country to make it easier to wipe out the remaining Israelis. Thus, Israel is right in not allowing these turncoats to return to the country they abandoned.
The Pals slaughtered and forced out any Jews in the Pal territory. In Hebron, the Pals slaughtered every last Jew.
Israel's land area is a little more than 7800 square miles. That's the equivalent of about 88 mi by 89 mi or the area of about 3 or 4 New Mexico counties or 3 or 4 Texas counties. New Mexico has a total of 33 counties; Texas has a total of 258 counties if memory serves me well. Both states have enough vacant land they wouldn't really miss 3-1/2 counties all that much.
When you look at Israel set into a map of the Middle East, that 7,800 square miles is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total and not enough land to be seriously missed by any Arabs.
Right or wrong, the United Nations, in cooperation with Great Britain who "owned" the land at the time, designated the State of Israel as a place where Jewish people could live and control their own destiny. This was deemed proper following the horrors of the Holocaust, the unconscionable pograms in Russia and elsewhere, and millenia of persecution and discrimnation and decimation suffered by the Jews. It wasn't Arab land that was given to the Jews, but rather British land.
The only reason the Arabs therefore would object to Israel is because it belongs to the Jews. It isn't Israel they hate, but it is the Jews.
Those who most strongly criticize Israel do not hold the Arabs to the same standards they require of the Jews. The Arabs aren't criticized for establishing and enforcing Sharia law or that there are separate areas for Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and one or more of these is generally dscriminated against by one or more of the others. The Arabs tolerate the Jews and Christians in their midst no better and usually less better than the Jews accommodate the law abiding Arabs in their midst and the Jews do not require that non Jews follow Jewish law.
It is understandable that questions of anti-semitism arise when there is such a double standard dictated for Jews vs Arabs. (The term is applied to Jews and rarely to Arabs though it would be accurate for both.)
It is also understandable that Israel resists the judgmentalism of those who presume to tell Israel what it should and should not do re the Palestinians. Israel has good reason to believe that Israel's critics do not have the best interests of Israel in mind.
Brzezinski: Avoid disaster with Iran
BY RAY GRONBERG : The Herald-Sun
[email protected]
Mar 30, 2007 : 12:02 am ET
DURHAM -- In the remaining 20 months of the Bush administration, America's leaders have to avoid the sort of "spontaneous combustion" that could produce a disastrous escalation of the country's Middle East military conflicts, a former national security adviser said at Duke University on Wednesday.
Specifically, the country has to avoid getting into an armed conflict with longtime nemesis Iran, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's top adviser on foreign affairs throughout Carter's four years in office, including the 444-day Iranian hostage crisis.
"If the war is enlarged in the next 20 months to include Iran -- if that happens -- for the next 20 years the United States is going to be bogged down in a war which spans Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then you can forget about American global leadership," he said.
Brzezinski was in town Thursday to address an audience of students, faculty and community members at Duke's Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy. The appearance was tied to his latest book, "Second Chance," an assessment of the foreign policy of the two Bush administrations and the intervening Clinton administration.
The former Carter adviser made it clear he thought the country's three most recent presidents had handled things "badly."
But Brzezinski reserved his harshest criticism for the current president, George W. Bush, saying he'd helped cultivate "a self-paralyzing culture of fear" after the Sept. 11 attacks, squandered the government's credibility and fed anti-Americanism in many parts of the world by failing to recognize "it is absolutely futile for the United States to be waging what is in essence a colonial war in a post-colonial age."
In response to a question, Brzezinski compared Bush's post-Sept. 11 leadership unfavorably to President Dwight Eisenhower's calming influence at the height of the Cold War.
"Both he and [President John F.] Kennedy infused confidence in America," Brzezinski said. "I would have thought that's what presidents are for. Today the opposite is the case, and that I find very, very troubling because I think that weakens us and makes us more susceptible. In fact, I think it increases the temptation to commit terrorist acts in America. The case for a little more maturity and a little more responsibility is very strong."
Neither Brzezinski nor anyone in the audience who asked questions alluded to criticism Carter received for his leadership style. The former president's 1979 "crisis of confidence" speech -- more commonly but inaccurately called the "malaise" speech -- was widely credited with damaging public morale when it was already shaky because of economic stagnation and the country's defeat in Vietnam.
Brzezinski's prescriptions for the Middle East included an effort to tamp down the present confrontation between Britain and Iran over Iran's seizure last week of 15 British sailors. He said it's "quite conceivable" both sides are in the wrong, and maintained that they should back off and let an "international study" assign blame.
As for Iraq, he argued that a "jointly set date of departure" for U.S. forces, agreed to by the American and Iraqi governments, would put pressure on Iraq's various factions to reach an accommodation. U.S. diplomats should also try to pull Iraq's neighbors into a discussion about that country's security, as they all would be harmed if the situation there explodes.
Brzezinski said there's no reason to think a bloodbath would necessarily follow a U.S. withdrawal.
"We expected that the U.S. leaving Vietnam would result in massive killings and genocide and so forth, and collapse of the dominoes in Southeast Asia," he said. "It didn't happen. How certain are we of the horror scenarios that have been mentioned in what will take place in Iraq?"
History does record that a bloodbath that claimed millions of lives occurred in neighboring Cambodia, the so-called "killing fields," and that millions more people left Vietnam as refugees after the two countries fell in 1975.
As for the broader issue of terrorism, Brzezinski counseled a case-by-case attack on al-Qaida and similar groups, in cooperation with many other countries, rather than trying to spread democracy abroad with bayonets and stoke the sort of fear at home that's led to intrusive security measures in every major building in New York and Washington.
"Since 9/11, which killed 3,000 Americans, 200,000 Americans have died violently -- in car accidents," Brzezinski said. "We accept that as a necessary aspect of our way of life. But I'm sad to say that perhaps terrorism may be a necessary aspect of our way for life for some time to come. It shouldn't affect the totality of the national culture."
foxfyre wrote:Israel's land area is a little more than 7800 square miles. That's the equivalent of about 88 mi by 89 mi or the area of about 3 or 4 New Mexico counties or 3 or 4 Texas counties. New Mexico has a total of 33 counties; Texas has a total of 258 counties if memory serves me well. Both states have enough vacant land they wouldn't really miss 3-1/2 counties all that much.
When you look at Israel set into a map of the Middle East, that 7,800 square miles is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total and not enough land to be seriously missed by any Arabs.
Yours is a gross assumption about any land being seriously missed. Go talk to the Palestinians to relieve yourself of your ignorance thereof.
Quote:Right or wrong, the United Nations, in cooperation with Great Britain who "owned" the land at the time, designated the State of Israel as a place where Jewish people could live and control their own destiny. This was deemed proper following the horrors of the Holocaust, the unconscionable pograms in Russia and elsewhere, and millenia of persecution and discrimnation and decimation suffered by the Jews. It wasn't Arab land that was given to the Jews, but rather British land.
One thing is an apologetic for early 20th century European imperialism in the Middle East, another thing is ridiculous statements made in the name thereof. The British did not "own" any of the land at the time. It took control over that land after WWI, after the Allies had defeated the the Ottoman Empire and the other Axis powers.The absurd idea that "it wasn't Arab land that was given to the Jews, but rather British land" is flatly wrong. No land was given to the Jews. Jews were allowed to migrate from Europe to Palestine after Britain's infamous promise to the Zionist Federation through Arthur James Balfour's Declaration to them on the second of November in 1917, stipulating that, "it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
The horrors of the Holocaust and the pogroms in Eastern Europe do not justify the Zionists discrimination and oppression of the Palestinian people.
The British along with the UN were abettors and complicit in the tort committed against the Palestinian people by the Zionist.
Quote:The only reason the Arabs therefore would object to Israel is because it belongs to the Jews. It isn't Israel they hate, but it is the Jews.
The reason the Palestinians object to Israel is because Israel's very existence is necessarily predicated on the discrimination against, and oppression of the Palestinian people, plain and simple. The Palestinians would have objected to Israel had it been imposed upon them by loopy New Mexicans instead of ethnocentrist Ashkenazim.
Quote:Those who most strongly criticize Israel do not hold the Arabs to the same standards they require of the Jews. The Arabs aren't criticized for establishing and enforcing Sharia law or that there are separate areas for Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and one or more of these is generally dscriminated against by one or more of the others. The Arabs tolerate the Jews and Christians in their midst no better and usually less better than the Jews accommodate the law abiding Arabs in their midst and the Jews do not require that non Jews follow Jewish law.
That there is discrimination within the Arab states does not negate the discrimination and oppression perpetrated by the Zionists against the Palestinians, nor does the discrimination within the Arab states justify the Zionists' discrimination against, and oppression of, the Palestinian people.
Quote:It is understandable that questions of anti-semitism arise when there is such a double standard dictated for Jews vs Arabs. (The term is applied to Jews and rarely to Arabs though it would be accurate for both.)
The salient double standard concerning Israel is that Zionists and Zionophiles emphatically point out discrimination and oppression against Jews, but are themselves oblivious to Zionist discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people
Quote:It is also understandable that Israel resists the judgmentalism of those who presume to tell Israel what it should and should not do re the Palestinians. Israel has good reason to believe that Israel's critics do not have the best interests of Israel in mind.
Israel is discriminating against, and oppressing the Palestinian people. Their tort against them is the crux of the conflict between the Middle East and the West. For there to be any progress in this conflict Israel will have to recompense the Palestinian people. Ironically, the best interests for Israel ultimately would be to give up it's ethnocentric raison d'etre that has necessarily discriminated against, and oppressed the Palestinian people.
You are completely omitting the UN invovement and also ignoring the fact that the lands in Middle East have changed hands many many times over the millenia and no current occupants control any land that was not conquered by their own imperialistic ancestors. If you want to use history as the defense for the present reality, use ALL the history, not just that which is most convenient.
Foxfyre wrote:You are completely omitting the UN invovement and also ignoring the fact that the lands in Middle East have changed hands many many times over the millenia and no current occupants control any land that was not conquered by their own imperialistic ancestors. If you want to use history as the defense for the present reality, use ALL the history, not just that which is most convenient.
Do you really want to use that argument? After all the Israelites, following their flight from Egypt, themselves seized the land from its previous inhabitants, starting with Joshua's massacre at Jericho. Indeed your argument would invalidate the territorial claims of virtually every nation on earth.
The essential points here are that Israel, by its own self-definition is a country for Jews, either by maternal ancestry or by religion. It will not accept anything other than a "managed minority" of other citizens. This policy has led it to a rather terrible and prolonged suppression of the political, property and basic human rights of the non Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank territory it conquered in 1967. It has used the pretext of "protection" of Zionist settlers who with government help established settlements on the seized property of Palestinians in the West Bank for systematic ethnic cleansing of large areas of this region, now enclosed behind a wall.
This attitude and policy is an anachronism in the modern world. Israel is certainly not alone in such practices, nor is it the worst of such practicioners. However. in this essential aspect of its self-concept, Israel violates the basic principles on which this country was founded. Our own adherence to this principle is far from perfect, but we do recognize that our lapses were wrong and require remedy. We have no business continuing our unquestioning support for such a regime.
[Would you advocate the USA simply give Israel a time certain when we would cease all support of that regime and let the chips fall where they may?
Foxfyre wrote:[Would you advocate the USA simply give Israel a time certain when we would cease all support of that regime and let the chips fall where they may?
No. But I would like to see some public pressure from this country on Israel to recignize the political, property and human rights of the Palestinians who live under their control. In addition, I would like to see the U.S. renounce Israel's narrow Zionist definition of itself - the source of the systematic injustice it has inflicted on others. Ultimately I would like to see us make our security guarantees for Israel conditional on a change in that definition.
