I don’t want to sound like a bleeding heart liberial, because I’m not one, but i think we should care. Sooner or later their problems will be ours. The conflict between the Israelies and Palestinians has to end. Good people are dying. I don’t know how to fix the middle east but we got to try something!!!
as long as you want to secure oil from the middle east, israel is a factor.
"The only comment i have is, why do we( the western hemisphere) care? Let them settle their porblems themselves.
Before 9/11, did anyone care that afghani women couldnt go to school?"
In fact i learnt of the taliban one and a half years ago and i hated everything the stood for. I hate that the news doesn’t like talking about the millions who die in
Africa. I guess they are not flavor of the month.
Horten, whats your source? I wouldn’t believe that report in a second.
I recall Foxnews this morning reporting
“…The IDF (Israeli Defense Force) gave us a tour of Jenin. We could not prove nor disprove the rumors…”
Note the “A tour” part. Iraq also gave weapons inspectors “a tour”. What the Israeli army shows you means nothing. Jenin is in ruins. You can see that even from the limited media coverage.
Heres another quote of mine, unfortunatly, I forget who it is from (I’ll try to remember it tomorrow, its late)
“It is the god given duty of those who have reached the top, to sometimes bend down and lift up those at the bottom”
I’m thinking John Kay but I’ll have to look it up.
Yanny, you prove my point. Where is the proof of mass killings and burrials? Where’s the beef? I have seen no pictures proving anything “eye whitnesses” were seeing. well guess what, israeli eye whitnesses say differently.
The truth is jenin is (or was) a terrorist center. documents were seized, and explosive manufacturing destroyed. IDF soldiers have gone overboard no doubt, they must be paranoid and hateful. but does that mean their are organized mass killings? i doubt. The holocaust killed the jews, i dobut they would want to emulate it.
Innocent people were caught in the crossfire…some wanted to be. some want the terrorism and the death of zionism. they openly say so. so how “innocent” were a lot of people?
killing is by no means righteous, but it is the palestinians feeding the flame. they didn’t make peace, they support and help terror, and they have “non-violent” protests with rock throwing and gun shots.
they started the second intifada.
I am not saying the Israelis should not be going after terrorists. It needs to be done, but the killing of innocent civilians is out of control.
There is no proof because Israel has not let proof surface. Do you think, if it happened would the Israelis pull out of Jenin and leave proof?
The answer is of course not. Until Israel unrestricts the media, we will never know.
Recall a few years ago in the Balkans and Kosovo. It was not proved that the Mass Genocide was going on until a Recon plain stumbed upon a grave by accident. If that accident had not occured, just days before we were ready to pull out, it would of gone unknown.
"The answer is of course not. Until Israel unrestricts the media, we will never know. "
no smart general wants the media videotaping what their army is doing. good example is vietnam. How about afghanistan? how much video footage did you see of operation anaconda? very very little. you know why? the US government has learnt from their former mistakes and no longer lets the media broadcast it to the world what the US troops are doing. it is called secrecy.
something might of happened in jenin…but most probably not.
A guy at another forum i go to sometimes ranted and said this:
"“Lordie, look a-here!” the prevailing notion goes. “These people in those refugee camps can’t go back to their HOMES! And what’s worse, they’ve got no homes anywhere else to go to!”
The most outrageous UNASKED question on earth has got to be “What in the hell are these people doing in refugee camps half a century later?”
History has always made refugees, as fire has always made smoke. And in every other case – 100 percent of the time since history began – refugees have moved on as quickly as possible to other countries willing and able to absorb them. And the overwhelming majority of those resettled refugees thereupon live happily ever after.
My four grandparents came to America as refugees from Czarist Russia. They wouldn’t have invoked any “right of return” if the Russian Embassy had offered to deliver it along with a million dollars. They sank roots and became ground-kissingly grateful Americans.
Their relatives and others from their villages were absorbed by Canada, South Africa, Holland, Finland, Norway and two dozen other countries, most of which had zero in common with them religiously, culturally, linguistically, gastronomically, athletically or in any other way.
History goes back a long way, so let’s jump straightaway to just a slim few examples of modern-day refugees who became stateless and homeless about the same time as the Palestinians.
In 1947, one year before the state of Israel won its war of independence, thereby generating “Palestinian refugees,” Britain surrendered the Indian subcontinent to its own independence, resulting in today’s Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.
Tens of millions – Do you hear me? TENS OF MILLIONS – of Moslems living in India became refugees in Pakistan, and tens of millions of Hindus living in Pakistan became refugees in India.
After World War II, Poland was literally forced to “move over.” (Imagine a whole country moving over the way we all do to make room for somebody on a bus.) The Soviet Union took the entire eastern third of Poland and, in turn, gave Poland the entire eastern third of Germany.
Millions of Poles had to move west and took the place of millions of Germans, who had to move even farther west.
Has history ever even once heard the cry of “right of return” in either Hindi, Urdu, Polish or German? I don’t think so. Refugees have always made out better turning to their new homes and working than turning to their old ones and cursing.
The Jews of Europe whom Hitler failed to kill became grateful refugees in at least three dozen different countries.
Israel claims the Palestinians (who were “Arabs” then) fled in 1948 during the war because their leaders urged them to “get out of the way. Our armies will chase the Jews into the sea and you will then have your homes and their homes, too.”
The Arabs deny this vehemently, though the Israelis claim to have a recording of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem making that pronouncement. I have first-hand reason to believe the Israeli claim (friends who were there and heard the Arab broadcasts), but nothing I advance in this article depends upon where truth lies in that particular argument.
Israel accorded those Arabs who remained in Israel citizenship with every right of Jewish Israelis except one. The Arab Israelis were not allowed to serve in the armed forces. Israel didn’t feel it proper to ask them to fight other Arabs.
Meanwhile, what was happening to the Jews in Arab countries after Israel won its war of independence? The Jewish communities, once large and thriving in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, feared the volcanic hatred against Israel and the Jews that was foaming over their homelands.
Almost all wanted to get out and go to the new Jewish state. They were allowed to leave only after handing over all of their wealth and property.
Refugees of too many nations have been pushed out of or fled from oppressive regimes with no place to go, no possibility of return and not so much as a sympathetic whimper from a watching world. Instead of screaming “Justice for the Palestinian refugees!” the world SHOULD be screaming, “Shame on all who have kept the Palestinian refugees in unnecessary misery for 50 years for the shabbiest of political reasons.”
Consider, please, the Hungarian refugees in 1956 and 1957. There was a foreign occupier in Hungary – the Soviet Union. There was an “intifada,” the famous Hungarian Revolution of Oct. 23, 1956. There was a brutal military repression of the Hungarian rebellion.
Those who view Israel’s campaign in Jenin and elsewhere on the West Bank as excessive should reflect upon the 2,000 tanks and 200,000 Soviet troops who swarmed over every inch of Hungary and killed 35,000 Hungarian “martyrs.”
Unlike the case of the Palestinians, who were always free to go anywhere, the Hungarians were never able to leave their communist prison. During the early days of their doomed uprising, however, the Iron Curtain was torn down and over the next four months over 200,000 Hungarian refugees fled through Austria to the west seeking freedom and resettlement.
Study the contrast. There are 22 Arab countries that could have absorbed the Palestinian refugees and made them feel at H home – religiously, linguistically, culturally, etc. Except for religion (Roman Catholic), there is no other country in the world remotely like Hungary!
A fussbudget might say, “Ah, the Finnish language is related to Hungarian.” Nice try. Those two languages are GRAMMATICALLY equally idiosyncratic, but there aren’t five important words similar in the two languages. There is NO OTHER COUNTRY in the world where a Hungarian could feel at home. There are, again, 22 countries where Palestinians could feel at home.
Nonetheless, in the case of the Hungarians, the absorption process began. Hungarians fanned out across the world to America, Canada, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Peru – you name it. And what became of them?
They may have wasted some little bit of time shaking fists at the Soviets, but, judging from their accomplishments, they spent most of their time accommodating, assimilating, learning, working, building new lives and – in the case of George Soros – becoming one of the richest people in the world.
Don’t blame the Palestinian refugees themselves for not measuring up to the flexibility and success of every single other refugee outpouring in history.
Rather than assist these homeless people to go to accepting havens of absorption AS EVERY OTHER REFUGEE GROUP IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD HAS DONE, their Arab masters cynically concentrated them in squalid, odoriferous camps – whenever possible, on the main road between the airport and the capital or somewhere else where foreign visitors could see them and recoil from their squalor.
If the world wants to continue to lament that “These Palestinian refugees can’t go back to their HOMES!” the world is free to do so. Doesn’t the world owe us, however, some slight explanation as to why their anguish at dispossession is limited to Palestinian refugees alone?
Ignorance is the sperm of apathy. If you don’t know, you can’t care. The VIP lounge of refugees whose plights trigger perpetual global anguish is apparently quite small.
Only the Palestinians are admitted."
"
I think it is a good alternate point of view…though it doesn’t conflict with mine :smile: it is biased, don’t get me wrong, but i think it makes good points.
A, Your Hungary approach is irrelavent, it was a different world in a different time. The cold war was a horrible thing, the atrocities commited on both sides have been admitted and apologized for.
B, How do you expect Israel to prove nothing is happening then? They shoot at the Media. The one, just one, unrestricted (because they ran away) video, which the Israeli soldiers had not edited, showed crying families, dead children, homes destroyed, and soldier brutality.
C, Ever been to Israel? I have a second hand account (by a dead man) about life in both Israel and the Westbank/Gaza. In Gaza, palestinians cannot even cross into Israel. They are surrounded by a virtual fence. In the West Bank, Palestinians have to be humiliated 3 or 4 times to even cross into East Jerusalem.
D, You use the Hungary arguement, does this justify the Soviet occupation?
Ignorance and arrogance is a bad combination to possess.
But the outcome can be highly entertaining…
:smile:
"crying families, dead children, homes destroyed, and soldier brutality. "
How about the suicide bombers? I cannot justify every action the IDF has done, but there is no way that acts of brutality made by a few justifies the second intifada, and the terrorism created to totally dissolve israel.
Suicide bombers are not one bit just. But do you punish everyone for them? People with their own agendas command these things.
Personally, I would get a whole lot done by continueing the Suicide attacks, since they are out of control, but only targetting military targets. They’d make a better statement, improve the conditions for their people, and give the Palestinian leaders some slack. Hell, they might cause Israel to pull out :wink:
"But do you punish everyone for them? People with their own agendas command these things. "
Hell, no! but sadly, jenin was a enter of explosives and rocket manufacturing! They don’t randomly select targets and decimate them!
Another thing is that any suiide attacks, even against military targets, will provoke israeli attaks. They should just pull a Gahndi.
Pull another India? Problem is, groups like HAMAS and Islaamic Jihad won’t stop fighting. And Israel can’t go after them because they aren’t based in Palestine.
Maybe the role the US can play in this is to force the countries supporting HAMAS and IJ (islaamic Jihad) to give up the terrorists. Would be a damn good excuse to take out Sadam.
"Pull another India? Problem is, groups like HAMAS and Islaamic Jihad won’t stop fighting. And Israel can’t go after them because they aren’t based in Palestine. "
So because “they are violent bastards”, they can’t stop being violent? The leader of hamas was arrested by the israelis! Now here’s the problem…some people, with the same pro-palestinian point of view are quicker to hop on israel and condemn them than the terrorists in control of organizations like Hamas. they justify their evil deeds to fufill their bloody deeds. The justification of the right for the palestinians to resist violently is needed for any long term peace before both parties.
Suicide bombers? Why go through all the death and despair? If it were my decision, the fate of Palestine independence would be decided in a simple duel. Arafat and Sharon would shake hands, walk ten paces, and open fire. The outcome would decide the fate of the war. It’s too bad jousting when out of style…
I see terrorism, against military targets, as a form of military action. The American Revolution started because of terrorism. Terrorism against civilians is non-beneficial for both sides.
Leader of Hamas arrested? Someone else, probably more violent, takes over.
On 2002-04-23 11:26, Yanny wrote:
I see terrorism, against military targets, as a form of military action. The American Revolution started because of terrorism. Terrorism against civilians is non-beneficial for both sides.Leader of Hamas arrested? Someone else, probably more violent, takes over.
“Maybe”! That didn’t happen in egypt…and it is better to put them in dissarray temporarily.
And stop mentioning the american revolution! Sadly we were terrorists!
Here’s a good article:
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/04/23/News/News.47523.html
I mention the American Revolution because I think it is the most interesting war I’ve ever read about. That, and WWII, I can consider myself an expert on.
You should meet my brother TG then. He’s a real expert on the American Revolution. :smile:
