This makes me think of a conversation I just had over dinner with a pretty eminent journalist who is teaching at the Columbia journalism school. He said he is tired of interviewing extremists because they are all the same regardless of their politics. He said that their psychology is essentially juvenile, that they all think like 15 year olds. They've just discovered abstract ideas and are using them to explain everything in the world. And when something doesn't fit with their explanation they simply ignore it. Except with a 15 year old it's kind of cute, but with a 50 year old it's really scary. Basically I'm saying that this board has the tone of a high-school cafeteria.
A defender of Zionism talking about abstract ideas? Oh the irony!
"Palestinians are little angels on clouds with harpsichords, and the Israeli ogres just want to kill them and eat them and piss in their eye sockets!"
"I heard that Israelis have horns and tails and murder Palestinian babies and use their blood in Jew rituals!"
"Yeah, and everyone else would realize how right we are if they weren't so brainwashed by reality!"
"Yeah, I hate reality! It's so complicated!"
This makes me think of a conversation I just had over dinner with a pretty eminent journalist who is teaching at the Columbia journalism school. He said he is tired of interviewing extremists because they are all the same regardless of their politics. He said that their psychology is essentially juvenile, that they all think like 15 year olds. They've just discovered abstract ideas and are using them to explain everything in the world. And when something doesn't fit with their explanation they simply ignore it. Except with a 15 year old it's kind of cute, but with a 50 year old it's really scary. Basically I'm saying that this board has the tone of a high-school cafeteria.
"Palestinians are little angels on clouds with harpsichords, and the Israeli ogres just want to kill them and eat them and piss in their eye sockets!"
"I heard that Israelis have horns and tails and murder Palestinian babies and use their blood in Jew rituals!"
"Yeah, and everyone else would realize how right we are if they weren't so brainwashed by reality!"
"Yeah, I hate reality! It's so complicated!"
+1
i challenge you to find where anyone on this board has ever said anything like that. it's like you go to the extremes to make jokes and try and take the focus away from Israels actual crimes.
you know, comment like this "I heard that Israelis have horns and tails and murder Palestinian babies and use their blood in Jew rituals!" really aren't necessary. no one has ever said that.
that's what you are doing yosi. trying to take the focus away from the actual crimes by creating this imaginary almost ridiculous scenario.
i challenge you to find where anyone on this board has ever said anything like that. it's like you go to the extremes to make jokes and try and take the focus away from Israels actual crimes.
you know, comment like this "I heard that Israelis have horns and tails and murder Palestinian babies and use their blood in Jew rituals!" really aren't necessary. no one has ever said that.
that's what you are doing yosi. trying to take the focus away from the actual crimes by creating this imaginary almost ridiculous scenario.
He's using hyperbole to make a point! Of course no one has gone on about pissing in eye sockets or Jew rituals. But the debate on this topic goes absolutely nowhere because the intent of all these Israel-Palestine posts seems to have little or nothing to do with learning about different perspectives ... When there's no real interest in viewing the situation from a nuanced perspective (which is the sort of view I feel this issue requires), one is basically left wondering if the point is just to demonize Israelis (which is the sort of argument that folks like Byrnzie hate, but how else to take it?). You can spread awareness about problematic Israeli actions but still concede that BOTH sides are comprised of human beings whose decisions have a huge impact on what the other side does.
i challenge you to find where anyone on this board has ever said anything like that. it's like you go to the extremes to make jokes and try and take the focus away from Israels actual crimes.
you know, comment like this "I heard that Israelis have horns and tails and murder Palestinian babies and use their blood in Jew rituals!" really aren't necessary. no one has ever said that.
that's what you are doing yosi. trying to take the focus away from the actual crimes by creating this imaginary almost ridiculous scenario.
He's using hyperbole to make a point! Of course no one has gone on about pissing in eye sockets or Jew rituals. But the debate on this topic goes absolutely nowhere because the intent of all these Israel-Palestine posts seems to have little or nothing to do with learning about different perspectives ... When there's no real interest in viewing the situation from a nuanced perspective (which is the sort of view I feel this issue requires), one is basically left wondering if the point is just to demonize Israelis (which is the sort of argument that folks like Byrnzie hate, but how else to take it?). You can spread awareness about problematic Israeli actions but still concede that BOTH sides are comprised of human beings whose decisions have a huge impact on what the other side does.
there are 1.5 million ordinary Palestinians illegally imprisoned as we speak.
what's to become of them. what do you think should happen to these people?
I think that they should recognize how they have contributed to their own situation through spurning opportunities for peace, refusing to accept the existence of Israel, and making the choice to turn to terrorism. At the same time Israel needs to go through a similar process of understanding its own role in the oppression of the Palestinians. When both sides can recognize how they have traumatized the other, how the other side is just as much a victim of this conflict as they are, perhaps we can have peace, and the Palestinians can have a state in which they would be responsible for their own well being.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Why Does The Times Recognize Israel's 'Right to Exist'?
by Saree Makdisi
'AS SOON AS certain topics are raised," George Orwell once wrote, "the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." Such a combination of vagueness and sheer incompetence in language, Orwell warned, leads to political conformity.
No issue better illustrates Orwell's point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians "recognize Israel" and its "right to exist." This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel's advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.
First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).
Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?
For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?
If none of these questions are easy to answer, why are such demands being made of the Palestinians? And why is nothing demanded of Israel in turn?
Orwell was right. It is much easier to recycle meaningless phrases than to ask — let alone to answer — difficult questions. But recycling these empty phrases serves a purpose. Endlessly repeating the mantra that the Palestinians don't recognize Israel helps paint Israel as an innocent victim, politely asking to be recognized but being rebuffed by its cruel enemies.
Actually, it asks even more. Israel wants the Palestinians, half of whom were driven from their homeland so that a Jewish state could be created in 1948, to recognize not merely that it exists (which is undeniable) but that it is "right" that it exists — that it was right for them to have been dispossessed of their homes, their property and their livelihoods so that a Jewish state could be created on their land. The Palestinians are not the world's first dispossessed people, but they are the first to be asked to legitimize what happened to them.
A just peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile and recognize each other's rights. It will not require that Palestinians give their moral seal of approval to the catastrophe that befell them. Meaningless at best, cynical and manipulative at worst, such a demand may suit Israel's purposes, but it does not serve The Times or its readers.
And yet The Times consistently adopts Israel's language and, hence, its point of view. For example, a recent article on Israel's Palestinian minority referred to that minority not as "Palestinian" but as generically "Arab," Israel's official term for a population whose full political and human rights it refuses to recognize. To fail to acknowledge the living Palestinian presence inside Israel (and its enduring continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people) is to elide the history at the heart of the conflict — and to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian claims and rights.
This is exactly what Israel wants. Indeed, its demand that its "right to exist" be recognized reflects its own anxiety, not about its existence but about its failure to successfully eliminate the Palestinians' presence inside their homeland — a failure for which verbal recognition would serve merely a palliative and therapeutic function.
In uncritically adopting Israel's own fraught terminology — a form of verbal erasure designed to extend the physical destruction of Palestine — The Times is taking sides.
I think that they should recognize how they have contributed to their own situation through spurning opportunities for peace, refusing to accept the existence of Israel, and making the choice to turn to terrorism. At the same time Israel needs to go through a similar process of understanding its own role in the oppression of the Palestinians. When both sides can recognize how they have traumatized the other, how the other side is just as much a victim of this conflict as they are, perhaps we can have peace, and the Palestinians can have a state in which they would be responsible for their own well being.
i see it much differently.
Israel is the only one with the power to bring about the two state solution. Hamas and the whole of the entire world has called for a two state solution on the 1967 borders which will halt all violence. Israel has so far refused, and they continually block all efforts of any hope of peace by not withdrawing to the 1967 borders.
perhaps if Israel stopped refusing to abide by international law, and recognize the rights of the Palestinians, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
One's man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, blah, blah, blah...this is the sort of relativistic nonsense that people come up with when they're confronted by the reality that the guys they are backing are actually sadistic maniacs. When you strap a bomb to yourself filled with ball bearing and nails, walk into a cafe full of people and blow yourself up you are a terrorist. Very simple, very clear cut.
It's amazing how people never learn lessons from history. For example, a story I just heard from an Austrian journalist friend...the first time he went to San Francisco he visited the Castro. He came away absolutely astounded by the fact that the community in the Castro were lionizing Fidel and Che as symbols of revolution, even though these were guys that were rounding up gays and throwing them in camps. The lessen being that the left has an unnerving ability to ignore the reality of evil when it suits them. Stalin for example, and now Hamas...
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
there is only one oppressing country in this tragic affair and it's not palestine ... one can decry the horrors of suicide bombers all day but yet not see the horrors of denying people land, food, water and medicine ... how is that possible? :(
there is only one oppressing country in this tragic affair and it's not palestine ... one can decry the horrors of suicide bombers all day but yet not see the horrors of denying people land, food, water and medicine ... how is that possible? :(
I don't know, does anyone in this thread think that the Palestinians don't have legitimate reasons to be upset?
I don't deny any of what the Palestinians suffer. I'm just not so foolish as to think that there are easy solutions to this conflict, nor am I so foolish or so malicious as to think that Israel WANTS to be oppressing the Palestinians. Objectively true or not, Israel feels that the measures it has taken are necessary and defensive. I do not agree with this in every case, but I recognize the nuance of the situation.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
there is only one oppressing country in this tragic affair and it's not palestine ... one can decry the horrors of suicide bombers all day but yet not see the horrors of denying people land, food, water and medicine ... how is that possible? :(
I don't know, does anyone in this thread think that the Palestinians don't have legitimate reasons to be upset?
you tell me ... maybe ask the person who thinks palestinians are to blame for spurning peace ...
I don't deny any of what the Palestinians suffer. I'm just not so foolish as to think that there are easy solutions to this conflict, nor am I so foolish or so malicious as to think that Israel WANTS to be oppressing the Palestinians. Objectively true or not, Israel feels that the measures it has taken are necessary and defensive. I do not agree with this in every case, but I recognize the nuance of the situation.
so ... what you are in fact saying is that it is OK to oppress the palestinians because it is necessary for Israel - in essence rationalizing their behaviour as appropriate ...
you tell me ... maybe ask the person who thinks palestinians are to blame for spurning peace ...
He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I've read enough of yosi's posts to know that he does feel that Israel bears part of the blame here. He doesn't ignore the role Israel plays. He just doesn't feel that one side holds every single card here, and I happen to agree with him. Suicide bombings and cross-border raids don't put food in the bellies of kids.
I don't deny any of what the Palestinians suffer. I'm just not so foolish as to think that there are easy solutions to this conflict, nor am I so foolish or so malicious as to think that Israel WANTS to be oppressing the Palestinians. Objectively true or not, Israel feels that the measures it has taken are necessary and defensive. I do not agree with this in every case, but I recognize the nuance of the situation.
so ... what you are in fact saying is that it is OK to oppress the palestinians because it is necessary for Israel - in essence rationalizing their behaviour as appropriate ...
I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying it's reality, and reality sucks, and it's tragic. But pretending that the Palestinians don't have a history of attacking and killing Israelis is stupid and false. From what I know of Israel, which is quite a lot having lived there, most Israelis would want nothing more than to end the occupation and have nothing more to do with the Palestinians for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, they are also convinced that the Palestinians have never reconciled themselves to Israel's existence and that the minute the occupation ends violence will jump right back up to the worst levels of the second intifada. So they support the occupation because they believe they must for their security, even as they hate the occupation for all the reasons that should be obvious plus a few that are all their own.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I've read enough of yosi's posts to know that he does feel that Israel bears part of the blame here. He doesn't ignore the role Israel plays. He just doesn't feel that one side holds every single card here, and I happen to agree with him. Suicide bombings and cross-border raids don't put food in the bellies of kids.
how many suicide bombings have happened in the past decade? ... it's all anyone points at when clearly the problem is the daily crime against humanity israel sujects palestinians to ... the casualty rate is one-sided ... rationalizing their behaviour as if they are somehow an equal in any way makes no sense to me ...
what can the palestinians do that they haven't done in the last 40+ years? ... they've done ceasefires, they've done negotiations ... all the while, illegal settlements pop up ... land is taken away ... food, medicine, clean water, etc ...
I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying it's reality, and reality sucks, and it's tragic. But pretending that the Palestinians don't have a history of attacking and killing Israelis is stupid and false. From what I know of Israel, which is quite a lot having lived there, most Israelis would want nothing more than to end the occupation and have nothing more to do with the Palestinians for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, they are also convinced that the Palestinians have never reconciled themselves to Israel's existence and that the minute the occupation ends violence will jump right back up to the worst levels of the second intifada. So they support the occupation because they believe they must for their security, even as they hate the occupation for all the reasons that should be obvious plus a few that are all their own.
reality sucks!? ... if i kick you in the head every day and one day you decide to kick back - does it make it ok for me to continue to kick you? ...
i don't doubt that many israelis would love peace but what israelis fail to recognize is that their actions aren't leading to peace ... they are just making a bad situation worse every single day ...
The same could (and should) be said about the Palestinians who fire rockets at Israeli towns, and continue to attempt bombings and kidnappings (now almost universally unsuccessful due to Israel's draconian security actions). Actions have consequences.
As for casualty numbers, they don't tell the whole story. Sometimes they don't even tell the truth. To begin with a frivolous example that nonetheless proves a point, I would imagine that during all of the second world war the number of American civilians killed by the Germans was virtually zero, while America killed thousands upon thousands of German civilians. If we are judging oppression based on numbers alone than America has some explaining to do to the descendants of the Nazis.
Israel is the more powerful actor, for sure. That doesn't mean it is in the wrong. Besides which power is a matter of perspective. If you look just at Israel and the Palestinians Israel is a goliath. However if you view the same situation the way an Israeli might, within the context of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel is a tiny country surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
One's man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, blah, blah, blah...this is the sort of relativistic nonsense that people come up with when they're confronted by the reality that the guys they are backing are actually sadistic maniacs. When you strap a bomb to yourself filled with ball bearing and nails, walk into a cafe full of people and blow yourself up you are a terrorist. Very simple, very clear cut.
It's amazing how people never learn lessons from history. For example, a story I just heard from an Austrian journalist friend...the first time he went to San Francisco he visited the Castro. He came away absolutely astounded by the fact that the community in the Castro were lionizing Fidel and Che as symbols of revolution, even though these were guys that were rounding up gays and throwing them in camps. The lessen being that the left has an unnerving ability to ignore the reality of evil when it suits them. Stalin for example, and now Hamas...
actually i was referring to the USA and Israel being just as easily terrorists (if you go by one of the USA's definitions of terrorism, anyways) than people who fly themselves into buildings or strap bombs to their chest.
I know what you were referring to, and I think it's nonsensical moral relativism cynically used to obscure the reality of the situation, which is that there are those who would kill innocents intentionally and with malicious glee (terrorists), and those who who seek to defend themselves against such people, and in the process do unwitting harm. I don't deny that there is such a thing as state terrorism. Stalin practiced it. Hitler practiced it. Every petty dictator with a secret police has practiced it. But that isn't what you are talking about.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
Were you not the one that asked people to quit with the hyperbole because it "adds nothing to the discussion"? Only when it suits you ay
Probably. You didn't think that what you said was hyperbole, though. Truthfully, I felt kinda bad after we had that exchange because I know that you are indeed capable of listening to other people's arguments. Peace and all that shite.
One's man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, blah, blah, blah...this is the sort of relativistic nonsense that people come up with when they're confronted by the reality that the guys they are backing are actually sadistic maniacs. When you strap a bomb to yourself filled with ball bearing and nails, walk into a cafe full of people and blow yourself up you are a terrorist. Very simple, very clear cut.
Book Review: The Case Against Israel
Raymond Deane, The Electronic Intifada, 9 May 2006
'...As for "terrorism", which he defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?
"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."
I don't deny any of what the Palestinians suffer. I'm just not so foolish as to think that there are easy solutions to this conflict, nor am I so foolish or so malicious as to think that Israel WANTS to be oppressing the Palestinians.
I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying it's reality, and reality sucks, and it's tragic. But pretending that the Palestinians don't have a history of attacking and killing Israelis is stupid and false. From what I know of Israel, which is quite a lot having lived there, most Israelis would want nothing more than to end the occupation and have nothing more to do with the Palestinians for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, they are also convinced that the Palestinians have never reconciled themselves to Israel's existence and that the minute the occupation ends violence will jump right back up to the worst levels of the second intifada. So they support the occupation because they believe they must for their security, even as they hate the occupation for all the reasons that should be obvious plus a few that are all their own.
The occupation has nothing to do with Israels security. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Once again you try turning reality on it's head in order to justify Israel's land grab.
And as for the second Intifada that you love to keep harping on about:
Origins of the 2nd Intifada:
'The underlying reason is the continuous 30-year Israeli military occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo Accords) signed in 1993 had raised hope. Palestinians anticipated a state and the end of occupation, but it was constantly delayed while the situation on the ground worsened. Israel expanded settlements and by-pass roads and confiscated more Palestinian property. Israelis continued to demolish homes and to uproot or burn olive and fruit trees, leaving people without sources of income. Checkpoints, closures and other signs of a tighter occupation were imposed; Israeli soldiers detained or turned ambulances back from checkpoints and Israel constantly reduced the number of permits to enter Israel to work. Israeli soldiers humiliated Palestinians at the checkpoints. Frustration, rage and despair mounted as Palestinians' human rights were infringed and their dignity ignored. Many Palestinians became disillusioned with the Oslo Accords and felt betrayed by them.
When Mr. Sharon with about 1000 armed soldiers and police visited the Noble Sanctuary (Haram ash-Sharif), a site sacred to Muslims, on September 28, 2000, it was like throwing a match into a pile of dry tinder. The following day, Palestinians protested and seven were killed by the IDF. This was the immediate reason for the intifada. The underlying conditions that caused the uprising still exist and have been made worse by a siege imposed in early March 2001 isolating cities, towns and villages and by the building of the "Security Fence."
Comments
+1
you know, comment like this "I heard that Israelis have horns and tails and murder Palestinian babies and use their blood in Jew rituals!" really aren't necessary. no one has ever said that.
that's what you are doing yosi. trying to take the focus away from the actual crimes by creating this imaginary almost ridiculous scenario.
He's using hyperbole to make a point! Of course no one has gone on about pissing in eye sockets or Jew rituals. But the debate on this topic goes absolutely nowhere because the intent of all these Israel-Palestine posts seems to have little or nothing to do with learning about different perspectives ... When there's no real interest in viewing the situation from a nuanced perspective (which is the sort of view I feel this issue requires), one is basically left wondering if the point is just to demonize Israelis (which is the sort of argument that folks like Byrnzie hate, but how else to take it?). You can spread awareness about problematic Israeli actions but still concede that BOTH sides are comprised of human beings whose decisions have a huge impact on what the other side does.
there are 1.5 million ordinary Palestinians illegally imprisoned as we speak.
what's to become of them. what do you think should happen to these people?
Such as?
Why doesn't Israel accept the existence of Palestine?
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0311-26.htm
March 11, 2007 by the Los Angeles Times
Why Does The Times Recognize Israel's 'Right to Exist'?
by Saree Makdisi
'AS SOON AS certain topics are raised," George Orwell once wrote, "the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." Such a combination of vagueness and sheer incompetence in language, Orwell warned, leads to political conformity.
No issue better illustrates Orwell's point than coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the United States. Consider, for example, the editorial in The Times on Feb. 9 demanding that the Palestinians "recognize Israel" and its "right to exist." This is a common enough sentiment — even a cliche. Yet many observers (most recently the international lawyer John Whitbeck) have pointed out that this proposition, assiduously propagated by Israel's advocates and uncritically reiterated by American politicians and journalists, is — at best — utterly nonsensical.
First, the formal diplomatic language of "recognition" is traditionally used by one state with respect to another state. It is literally meaningless for a non-state to "recognize" a state. Moreover, in diplomacy, such recognition is supposed to be mutual. In order to earn its own recognition, Israel would have to simultaneously recognize the state of Palestine. This it steadfastly refuses to do (and for some reason, there are no high-minded newspaper editorials demanding that it do so).
Second, which Israel, precisely, are the Palestinians being asked to "recognize?" Israel has stubbornly refused to declare its own borders. So, territorially speaking, "Israel" is an open-ended concept. Are the Palestinians to recognize the Israel that ends at the lines proposed by the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan? Or the one that extends to the 1949 Armistice Line (the de facto border that resulted from the 1948 war)? Or does Israel include the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which it has occupied in violation of international law for 40 years — and which maps in its school textbooks show as part of "Israel"?
For that matter, why should the Palestinians recognize an Israel that refuses to accept international law, submit to U.N. resolutions or readmit the Palestinians wrongfully expelled from their homes in 1948 and barred from returning ever since?
If none of these questions are easy to answer, why are such demands being made of the Palestinians? And why is nothing demanded of Israel in turn?
Orwell was right. It is much easier to recycle meaningless phrases than to ask — let alone to answer — difficult questions. But recycling these empty phrases serves a purpose. Endlessly repeating the mantra that the Palestinians don't recognize Israel helps paint Israel as an innocent victim, politely asking to be recognized but being rebuffed by its cruel enemies.
Actually, it asks even more. Israel wants the Palestinians, half of whom were driven from their homeland so that a Jewish state could be created in 1948, to recognize not merely that it exists (which is undeniable) but that it is "right" that it exists — that it was right for them to have been dispossessed of their homes, their property and their livelihoods so that a Jewish state could be created on their land. The Palestinians are not the world's first dispossessed people, but they are the first to be asked to legitimize what happened to them.
A just peace will require Israelis and Palestinians to reconcile and recognize each other's rights. It will not require that Palestinians give their moral seal of approval to the catastrophe that befell them. Meaningless at best, cynical and manipulative at worst, such a demand may suit Israel's purposes, but it does not serve The Times or its readers.
And yet The Times consistently adopts Israel's language and, hence, its point of view. For example, a recent article on Israel's Palestinian minority referred to that minority not as "Palestinian" but as generically "Arab," Israel's official term for a population whose full political and human rights it refuses to recognize. To fail to acknowledge the living Palestinian presence inside Israel (and its enduring continuity with the rest of the Palestinian people) is to elide the history at the heart of the conflict — and to deny the legitimacy of Palestinian claims and rights.
This is exactly what Israel wants. Indeed, its demand that its "right to exist" be recognized reflects its own anxiety, not about its existence but about its failure to successfully eliminate the Palestinians' presence inside their homeland — a failure for which verbal recognition would serve merely a palliative and therapeutic function.
In uncritically adopting Israel's own fraught terminology — a form of verbal erasure designed to extend the physical destruction of Palestine — The Times is taking sides.
Why doesn't Israel relinquish terrorism?
So you think the Israelis are just as much victims in this conflict as the Palestinians? Why do you constantly try to turn reality on it's head?
Israel is the only one with the power to bring about the two state solution. Hamas and the whole of the entire world has called for a two state solution on the 1967 borders which will halt all violence. Israel has so far refused, and they continually block all efforts of any hope of peace by not withdrawing to the 1967 borders.
perhaps if Israel stopped refusing to abide by international law, and recognize the rights of the Palestinians, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
It's amazing how people never learn lessons from history. For example, a story I just heard from an Austrian journalist friend...the first time he went to San Francisco he visited the Castro. He came away absolutely astounded by the fact that the community in the Castro were lionizing Fidel and Che as symbols of revolution, even though these were guys that were rounding up gays and throwing them in camps. The lessen being that the left has an unnerving ability to ignore the reality of evil when it suits them. Stalin for example, and now Hamas...
I don't know, does anyone in this thread think that the Palestinians don't have legitimate reasons to be upset?
you tell me ... maybe ask the person who thinks palestinians are to blame for spurning peace ...
so ... what you are in fact saying is that it is OK to oppress the palestinians because it is necessary for Israel - in essence rationalizing their behaviour as appropriate ...
He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I've read enough of yosi's posts to know that he does feel that Israel bears part of the blame here. He doesn't ignore the role Israel plays. He just doesn't feel that one side holds every single card here, and I happen to agree with him. Suicide bombings and cross-border raids don't put food in the bellies of kids.
I'm not saying it's ok, I'm saying it's reality, and reality sucks, and it's tragic. But pretending that the Palestinians don't have a history of attacking and killing Israelis is stupid and false. From what I know of Israel, which is quite a lot having lived there, most Israelis would want nothing more than to end the occupation and have nothing more to do with the Palestinians for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, they are also convinced that the Palestinians have never reconciled themselves to Israel's existence and that the minute the occupation ends violence will jump right back up to the worst levels of the second intifada. So they support the occupation because they believe they must for their security, even as they hate the occupation for all the reasons that should be obvious plus a few that are all their own.
how many suicide bombings have happened in the past decade? ... it's all anyone points at when clearly the problem is the daily crime against humanity israel sujects palestinians to ... the casualty rate is one-sided ... rationalizing their behaviour as if they are somehow an equal in any way makes no sense to me ...
what can the palestinians do that they haven't done in the last 40+ years? ... they've done ceasefires, they've done negotiations ... all the while, illegal settlements pop up ... land is taken away ... food, medicine, clean water, etc ...
reality sucks!? ... if i kick you in the head every day and one day you decide to kick back - does it make it ok for me to continue to kick you? ...
i don't doubt that many israelis would love peace but what israelis fail to recognize is that their actions aren't leading to peace ... they are just making a bad situation worse every single day ...
As for casualty numbers, they don't tell the whole story. Sometimes they don't even tell the truth. To begin with a frivolous example that nonetheless proves a point, I would imagine that during all of the second world war the number of American civilians killed by the Germans was virtually zero, while America killed thousands upon thousands of German civilians. If we are judging oppression based on numbers alone than America has some explaining to do to the descendants of the Nazis.
Israel is the more powerful actor, for sure. That doesn't mean it is in the wrong. Besides which power is a matter of perspective. If you look just at Israel and the Palestinians Israel is a goliath. However if you view the same situation the way an Israeli might, within the context of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict, Israel is a tiny country surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors.
Were you not the one that asked people to quit with the hyperbole because it "adds nothing to the discussion"? Only when it suits you ay
Probably.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4690.shtml
Book Review: The Case Against Israel
Raymond Deane, The Electronic Intifada, 9 May 2006
'...As for "terrorism", which he defines as "random violence against non-combatants", he distinguishes it from "collateral damage" with the assertion that the latter "involves knowingly killing innocent civilians" while "Terrorism involves intentionally killing innocent civilians", concluding that "the moral difference is too academic even for an academic." Why, then, is "terrorism" considered to be particularly morally repugnant, while "collateral damage" tends to be taken in our moral stride?
"Imagine trying to make such a claim. You say: 'To achieve my objectives, I would certainly drop bombs with the knowledge that they would blow the arms off some children. But to achieve those same objectives, I would not plant or set off a bomb on the ground with the knowledge that it would have that same effect. After all, I have planes to do that, I don't need to plant bombs.' As a claim of moral superiority, this needs a little work."
No, you'd prefer that they just disappear.
The occupation has nothing to do with Israels security. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Once again you try turning reality on it's head in order to justify Israel's land grab.
And as for the second Intifada that you love to keep harping on about:
Origins of the 2nd Intifada:
'The underlying reason is the continuous 30-year Israeli military occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo Accords) signed in 1993 had raised hope. Palestinians anticipated a state and the end of occupation, but it was constantly delayed while the situation on the ground worsened. Israel expanded settlements and by-pass roads and confiscated more Palestinian property. Israelis continued to demolish homes and to uproot or burn olive and fruit trees, leaving people without sources of income. Checkpoints, closures and other signs of a tighter occupation were imposed; Israeli soldiers detained or turned ambulances back from checkpoints and Israel constantly reduced the number of permits to enter Israel to work. Israeli soldiers humiliated Palestinians at the checkpoints. Frustration, rage and despair mounted as Palestinians' human rights were infringed and their dignity ignored. Many Palestinians became disillusioned with the Oslo Accords and felt betrayed by them.
When Mr. Sharon with about 1000 armed soldiers and police visited the Noble Sanctuary (Haram ash-Sharif), a site sacred to Muslims, on September 28, 2000, it was like throwing a match into a pile of dry tinder. The following day, Palestinians protested and seven were killed by the IDF. This was the immediate reason for the intifada. The underlying conditions that caused the uprising still exist and have been made worse by a siege imposed in early March 2001 isolating cities, towns and villages and by the building of the "Security Fence."