We’re no different. With all the talk about the underwear bomber and other terrorists, is there any serious discussion about why terrorists want to attack us? Could it be things like taking their oil, having the CIA teach torture tactics to friendly tyrants, imposing our values, starting wars and so on?
The question we have to ask ourselves is this: If anybody treated us like we’re treating the people in Gaza, what would we do?
We don’t want to go there, do we? And because we don’t, we make it our business not to see, hear or think about how, indeed, we are treating the people in Gaza.
All these shocked dignitaries, all these reports, these details, these numbers – thousands of destroyed this and tens of thousands of destroyed that. Rubble, sewage, malnutrition, crying babies, humanitarian crises – who can keep up? Who cares? They did it to themselves. Where to for lunch?
IT’S NOT that we can’t imagine life in Gaza. It’s that we are determined not to try to imagine. If we did, we might not stop there. Next we might try to imagine what it would be like if our country were in the condition in which we left Gaza. And sooner or later we might try to imagine what we would do if we were living over here like they’re living over there.
Or not even what we would do, just what we would think – about the people, about the country, that did that to us and that wouldn’t even allow us to begin to recover after the war was over. That blockaded our borders and allowed in only enough supplies to keep us at subsistence level, to prevent starvation and mass epidemics.
#32 This sort of kumbayah policy only works if both sides want peace. The Palestinians have established that they do not want peace. If the Palestinians want a country of their own, they have to prove they can police their own people and stop terrorism.
The Palestinians thought they had a country of their own. And they think the Jews came in and took it. You may agree or disagree with that sentiment, but it explains why they act the way they act. Calling them primitive savages does nothing to address the problem.
And “terrorism” is a morally neutral term. Our founding fathers were “terrorists” to the British. It’s a tactic that can be used by anyone. The U.S. has welcomed the use of “terrorism” when it is practiced by groups we like.
And ya know, if not for the oil in the Middle East that we need, I’d be perfectly happy to let these two sects of the Angry Desert God fight it out, and let the last one standing claim that God is on his side.
I have been close enough to Gaza to hear Israeli bombs exploding. And with each explosion, I imagined people’s bodies being splashed about like waterballoons.
I have had a Palestinian rocket (no warhead) land close enough to me to feel the earth shake.
The arms of the Israelis are orders and orders of magnitude more deadly and destructive than the arms of the Palestinians.
Thomas, you are advocating genocide. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. If you are prepared to suffer genocide too, then let me know how that works out for you in 100 years.
I’m basically repeating what Phydeau stated (sorry for my lack of origionality).
Oh, the rocket that landed near me happened to kill and hurt no one.
I have read that Islam is expanding world wide.
If some method is not found to work out the troubles, I contend that Israel, and Judaism (and Christianity), is on a suicidal path.
Thomas and Dodd would have to have Muslims killed at a faster rate than they are reproducing and creating converts. Again, let me know how that works out for you all in 100 years.
#37 You make a good point about demographics there Father… from what I’ve read the non-Jews are breeding faster than the Jews in Israel. So unless they change to a South African style Apartheid system, where the Jewish minority rules over a much larger non-Jewish majority, the state of Israel will be bred out of existence.
It’s a solution of sorts, but cold comfort to those suffering and dying now.
I’m an Israeli, and I totally agree. Israelis have developed a blind spot: they just don’t see what’s wrong with the occupation. After 40 years it’s become a fact of life, something so natural it’s not worth thinking about. When thinking about the “situation” they only think about the recent negative actions of Palestinians (the almost complete lack of aggression from the west bank Palestinians in the last few years barely registered) and the fact that “Israel wants peace”. They can’t see how Israel’s actions are seen from an external vantage point. Whenever somebody outside Israel passes criticism on Israels’ actions they are automatically branded as antisemitic.
The “Palestinians” have never had a country. That formulation for that people didn’t even exist until the late 1960s. Before then they were called “Arabs in Israel.”
Taking the longer term view there were Jewish administrative units in the area long before anyone even heard of Islam. I wouldn’t take too much from the Bible on how to live today, but this is pretty clear basic history.
Look at the states around Israel and how they deal with dissent. I’m thinking specifically of Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. Syria literally flattened part of a city(Hamma) to stop the Muslim Brotherhood. Egypt and Jordan tend to do more with secret police than brazen violence, but I wouldn’t call them easy going.
A better question for the article’s author is what would the neighbors do? My read is that they would, and have, brutally put down organized and open dissent.
#40 The “Palestinians” have never had a country. That formulation for that people didn’t even exist until the late 1960s. Before then they were called “Arabs in Israel.”
And before the state of Israel existed, what were they called?
Taking the longer term view there were Jewish administrative units in the area long before anyone even heard of Islam. I wouldn’t take too much from the Bible on how to live today, but this is pretty clear basic history.
And are you making conclusions from this information? Some people say that since the Jews lived there X hundreds or thousands of years ago, they were entitled to have their own country there now.
Dr. Dudd,
Gaza was not GIVEN to the Palestinians. They have lived there for centuries under first the Ottoman Empire and then the British Mandate.
After the British left, Gaza was ceded to Egypt. Egypt was not all that interested in the area as the inhabitants were not Egyptians so when Israel preemptively attacked in 1967, Egypt was content to allow Israel to keep it.
Many inhabitants had been forced off of land that was confiscated for Israeli settlements. Even today, there are Jewish settlements inside Gaza where Palestinians were displaced fore their land.
Erm, they did.
The biggest single terrorist bombing in Isreal was by the isreali terrorist/freedom-fighter organisation Irgun – it killed 96 people at the king David hotel.
#33
RE: asymmetrical warfare
Sorry that excuse doesn’t fly. How many school buses have Israelis intentionally targeted? Just because your weapons are inferior to your opponents does not mean there won’t be consequences for conducting warfare dishonorably. Targeting facilities used to conduct warfare for example is not at all the same as targeting civilians for no military benefit other than to scare the populace. It is akin to saying that criminals are free to stab cops because they don’t have guns.
#36
As I said earlier, the quality of the weapons is irrelevant. It is the way in which they are used. If you fire a bunch of rockets at military housing and they take you out with a maverick, it is disingenuous to claim that the military was in the wrong because they have better weapons.
> Thomas, you are advocating genocide.
A strawman. No one has ever advocated anything of the sort. It is the Muslims that are engaged in genocide not the reverse. Between the Muslims and the Jews, which side has claimed they wish to eradicate the other? Here’s a hint: it isn’t the Jews. Which side teaches in their schools to hate the other? Which side has denied the occurrence of a holocaust?
> He who lives by
> the sword shall die
> by the sword.
How many peace loving Christians died by the sword after having never lived by it? Even Jesus died by the hand of the Romans. Seems to me that sentiment is a good way of getting killed.
#37
> Thomas and Dodd would have
> to have Muslims killed at
> a faster rate than they
> are reproducing and
> creating converts.
Again with a strawman. No one has ever suggested such a thing. However, if we took a poll of all terrorist activity in the past 30 years, what do you suppose would be the most common background? It isn’t that they are Jewish. It isn’t that they are Christian or atheist. It is that they are Muslim. Not all predominantly Muslim nations are the same. Turkey for example. These countries in the Middle-East need to figure out how to join the 21st century and specifically, have to play ball in terms of rooting out terrorists in their country. They can either do that, or hope they don’t go the way of Saddam.
#4 I wish I could say I thought you computed but I’m not ignorant enough. Yes every times Hamas starts throwing rockets and killing Jews the Jews blow up the neighborhoods the rockets, etc, come from.
It works like cause and effect. I’ve watched it happen on the evening news countless times and most such instances don’t even make our news. If it doesn’t bother Hamas enough to stop them from doing something that will bring down destruction on their own communities I give up.
If they had wanted peace and prosperity they could have had that decades ago. What they want is to kill all the Jews and to bleep with peace and prosperity.
The population in the strip keeps going up so genocide is not at work.
There do seem to be a lot of booger brains around who expect the Jews to stand around and allow themselves to be used for target practice but that’s against human nature.
The Jews have also listened to Hamas and the Palestinians and they understand that when/if these people win there are going to be few to no live Jews left in Israel.
I’m sure you guys would maybe feel bad about all those Jews dieing for maybe fifteen minutes but I’m afraid that doesn’t raise the dead. That being the case the Jews are going to do whatever they think they need to do to go on living.
If this offends your delicate sensitive nature you need to stop watching the news out of that region. It isn’t going to change until after the Palestinians manage to kill all the Jews in the region.
Please note I think the Palestinians may eventually do it. They only have to win once and the Jews have to win every time or they all die.
“With all the talk about the underwear bomber and other terrorists, is there any serious discussion about why terrorists want to attack us?”
Anyone willing to do a web search or listen to what the Muslims have to say already knows why the Muslims are attacking us.
They are carrying on the Jihad begun by Mohamed the prophet against the infidel.
Since they’ve been saying and doing the same thing for over a thousand years now you’d think everybody in the West with a working brain would have figured this out by now but it appears their reason is to complex or emotionally unsatisfactory for many.
They do not call us the Great Satan for secular reasons nor would they expect to go to Paradise if they died fighting over water rights, land or loot.
It is only people like the person who posted the question that refuses to accept that orthodox Muslims are acting for the reasons they give because it goes against their “liberal” view of the cosmos that feel the need to discuss the obvious.
If not genocide, then what is the final solution you support?
Continued fighting is slow genocide (as someone else observed #5?), and one side is out reproducing the other.
If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
#41 Names are important, so I looked a bit more at it. The word Palestinian was used for about 2500 years, but to refer to the entire population of the area. Obviously Islam did not exist at that time, so modern Arabs in the area are misusing the term. It is purely modern conceit for them to claim the land as theirs.
The Jews have been ejected from most of the rest of the Middle East, where exactly should they go?
Palestinians, in the incorrect usage, don’t accept Israel’s existence and never will. Tough for them.
What I see is that Arabs were on the other side of every major battle in the 20th century WWI, WWII and the Cold War. I don’t like American empire, but the alternative in all of those fights was worse.
Turkey, Egypt and Syria are actual civilizations that periodically controlled the area at different points in history. Palestine was an area that got squeezed between these larger powers.
Israel is the first proper nation-state that has made an attempt at governing that space. It’s messy, but look at the modern history of any of the neighbors and you’ll see worse things.
#48
> If not genocide, then
> what is the final solution
> you support?
Such a statement implies that genocide must be part of the solution.
The end result is for predominantly Muslim countries to demonstrate that they are willing to root out terrorism in their countries. If Palestine wants to be a country, they have to show the world and especially Israel that they are willing to bring down terrorist groups even if they might agree with the terrorist group’s agenda. Such a demonstration means they are going to have to be very strict, almost overly strict with anti-Jew terrorist groups much like the Germans were after WWII with the Nazis.
> Continued fighting is slow
> genocide (as someone else
> observed #5?), and one side
> is out reproducing the other.
You do realize you are saying genocide for the Jews and not the Muslims right?
> If you’re not part
> of the solution, you
> are part of the problem.
That’s what George Bush said. In effect, if you are not actively working against terrorism, then you are supporting it. If the Palestinians ever want a country of their own, they are going to have to demonstrate that they can control their own people.
Chris,
“Israel” is the land of Canaan. As Thomas pointed out, in the Ben Stein post, there were other peoples there before and after the Canaanites.
The word “Palestein” has nothing to do with the religion of the Arabs. Your association of the two could be considered inflamitory, and is intellectually dishonest. Up until the creation of Israel ~60 years ago, the Western and Arab term for the area was one form or another of Palestein (the land of the Philistines). Now were are left with calling the nonJewish residents of the area either Arab Israelis (which clearly the Arabs living on the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not) or some other uncomfortable name, such as Gaza Strippers?
Some Israeli researchers think the archaeological evidence indicates that the Jews were actually repressed Canaanites. If you don’t accept their arguments, then you must agree with the Tora’s view that the Jews were invaders? Are you saying the Jews that left Palestein have a manifest destiny to return, and behave in any way they see fit to the previous inhabitents?
Your contention that the Israeli government is the first to properly govern the area ignores millenia of history which you just said you’ve just reviewed? Have you studied any history of the region? I’m sure Mr. Fusion could give you a brief overview.
I contend that anyone who wishes to live there should sign an agreement to get along. Perhaps anyone who does not live to the letter of their responsibilites should be expelled, and have to apply for the privilege to emigrate somewhere else or be imprisioned.
I also contend that until the borders are removed, and reintegration begins (and is called for by those involved) that the continuing slow genocide (as observed by Bus Driver in #4) will eventally result in the extinction of the Jews.
As I am not in this battle, any longer, and as I only have a little Jewish DNA swimming around in my blood, I leave it to you to decide your own fate.
Thomas,
I appreciate your direct answer. My response is: you could be correct, though I see conflict being sustained until the Israelis and Arabs can get along together.
As the American South proved, separate but equal does not work.
Father,
Some well reasoned, tempered, and literate posts.
The only thing I would add is that Thomas, and others, should research the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. While Europe was wallowing through the Dark Ages, mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences were being explored.
Besides the “South” and equal but separate, a better example might be South Africa where the laws were similar. If you were not part of the ruling minority, you were not allowed to live certain places, own land, vote, get an education, etc. Although land was set aside for the oppressed majority, it was under the supervision and control of the minority. Dissent was cracked down upon ferociously and jailed with no recourse to appeal.
#51 (sorry, not going to address you as father)
My contention is that the common usage of the word Palestinian, to refer only to Islam practicing ethnic Arabs, is in error. “Palestinian” when used before that was to refer to the entire regional population.
The common use of the word was, to pun, hijacked in the late 1960s. We seem to agree on that so I will ignore the “intellectually dishonest” remark.
I understand that the real estate has been administered by many other peoples. Israel, the state, is STILL the only modern nation-state to run the area.
The Turks have a rich tradition, but their empires existed in an entirely different time. Modern states are tightly coupled to their territories. Empires, in the old sense, meant that the local leader would kick upstairs but ran local affairs as he saw fit.
The regional transition from Ottoman(feudal) to modern states has been. What we’re looking at now is an extended conflict between tribe, hierarchical religion, and the state. In Europe this process took a very long time. I doubt seriously the Middle East even is half done with this process.
Sadly this transition, which eventually results in someone *owning* land, causes a lot of hurt feelings. A great deal of this happened as endgame to WWI. Terrible stuff, but it forms the state structure for huge parts of the world.
Contrary to your advice for the Israelis, I would suggest expanding the settlements at the maximum rate that world opinion will allow.
It’s better to be a winner with a guilty conscience than noted in a history book as being overrun.
Since you mentioned it first: I’m not Jewish, so I’m only commenting as an outside observer.
Anyone who thinks that Israel can simply get along is foolish. The Islamic world’s transition to being the post-Islamic world(government-wise) will happen with time. Israel needs to stay sharp and careful until it does.
Sorry for the long post at #54.
… The regional transition from Ottoman(feudal) to modern states has been [add]rough[/add]…
Nothing new, some Israelis have been asking these type of questions for years…
For instance.
Chris, I agree that the Islamic world will probably eventually join the modern largely-secular world. That is a good point. The Iranians are trying to do this now (some part of their population anyway).
However, in many countries, this transistion may not begin until the oil is effectively gone, and those societies then have to interact cooperatively with members of the larger world to maintain their of standard of living. I realize there are Muslims in western Asia that already participate with nonmuslims in business, as there also Islamic isolationists that are at war in that region too.
Like I said before, in 100 years we’ll see who “wins”. You know my position, cooperation will be less costly than hostility.
I have believed for the last ~8 years that by the end of the century every nation will have access to nuclear weapons, through domestic production or trade (legal or illegal).
Thank you Mr. Fusion.
#53
The comparison to the American South is not analogous to Israel. The South was not defending its right to possess territory in which citizens of the North had previously been displaced. It was defending its right to withdraw from the Union and thereby gain self-determination.
South Africa is a closer analogy but even that fails. If it were the case that the blacks now wanted South Africa for themselves and wanted to depose all whites from the country, that would be a direct correlation.
This notion that the Jews are segregating the Muslims purely based on racial hatred is naive. From their perspective, there is a very real security risk. Because Muslims are taught at a very young age to hate Jews, there is a serious threat to them snapping and killing people.
No matter how you look at the problem, someone is not going to get what they want. It all comes down to the same issue: Muslims in the Middle-East have not established themselves as wanting peace. To do that, they have to cooperate with the rest of the nations of the world in fighting terrorists and they have to demonstrate that they have the power and will to root out terrorists in their own countries and communities.
The palestinians best weapons is the uterus. They have the ability to overpopulate a region and spawn new armies that way. look at the disaster in lebanon caused by palestinians. thats why arab states hate them.
Nobody answered my question in #11. Why is that? Too inconvenient I suppose…
What makes this a taboo question, given that it keeps getting asked, and highlighted on this blog?
Lefties love to attack Israel for some reason.
How many people here support native peoples in other cases where they have been displaced? Any of you support giving land in the USA back to the natives who originally occupied them?
Arguments over who was there first are idiotic, regardless of your position.
Here’s where we disagree Phydeau. The Jews didn’t take anything. The area was populated by all manner of semitic peoples (including jews and palestinians as we know them today) at the start of this century. They banded together to drive out the British “colonists.” The former British colonies were divied up into their own states after World War II, based on ethnic and religious populations. Pakistan was split from India in this same way. The original plan called for a Palestinian homeland right next to Israel with shared possession of Jerusalem.
Whether the map lines were drawn right is pretty irrelevant at this point, and what has happened since is a tradgedy on both sides. But “the Jews took their land” isn’t really true looking back and doesn’t help anything going forward.
Phydeau please take the above with care – I misread you post in 34. I misread that you were explaining the Palestinian position, not necessarily your own.
I believe we are in agreement here, or very nearly so.