Name:     Michael L. S.   [E-Mail]
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Hi all!

Another great article in HaAretz yesterday regarding the termination of a Chamas bigshot in Damascus. The message was sent: terrorists have nowhere to hide. You can try to wrap yourselves in human blankets, you can try to hole yourself up abroad, you can lower your profile... - but we WILL find you, we WILL take you out and there is nothing you can do about it. And just as importantly, as the article says, HaMOSSAD IS BACK IN ACTION!

Back to Cliffy though and my response to his polemic. This is becoming a bit tricky to follow so I've tried to make the hierarchy easier to follow by coding my old comments in dark green, his in red and my fresh replies in green. Also, wherever there is an elipsis "[...]", it signifies that I snipped something. However, unlike in Cliff's case, this was done transparently, solely for the sake of brevity and nothing contentious was deleted--only items we had agreed on or parts of items not essential for the easy comprehension of the cited parts.

[MS:] I don't think the Palestinians SHOULD suffer at all because of the Britishers or us or anyone else! I think they must have a state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza but that's beside the point.

[CJ:] Why is this beside the point?

[MS:] Because your questions were (1) whether I thought the Palestinians deserved to suffer because of the Britishers' sins, (2) concerning refuged Arabs from the 1948 War of Independence, and (3) whether I thought blowing up as bus was more of a terrorist act than dropping a one-ton bomb in a civilian neighborhood. I wanted to keep to the point.



[MS:] Yes, at least 500,000 Arabs were left refugees following the 1948 war. But I strongly disagree that they were driven out by the Jewish forces, let alone in an act of ethnic cleansing. No doubt tales, real and imaginary, of massacres by Etzel and Lehi (Irgun and Stern) had something to do with it.

[CJ:] There is abundant evidence of a terror campaign deliberately designed to make the Palestinians flee from the land where thay had lived for generations.

[MS:] There is just as much evidence that they left for other, no less orchestrated, reasons which were contrived by others. There is just as much evidence that stories about such "campaigns" had in some cases been exaggerated, embellished or completely manufactured. Have you read eyewitness testimonies of Palestinian refugees or talked to them? I have. (And on a point of fact, not all Palestinians [at the time referred to as Arabs] had lived on that land for generations. A great number of them had arrived at the same time as most Jews, ie. during the Mandate period, from Syria, Egypt and Tunisia.) But anyway, look, we could argue about this till the end of time itself. Who and what made Arabs flee that land in 1948 is a moot point. There ARE today several million Palestinian refugees, they have to be compensated and their misery ended once and for all. All human beings have the right to a dignified life.



[MS:] But there is just as much evidence of Arab civil and military leaders inviting them to leave for this or that reason, and also there was a war going on and people sensibly didn't want to stay there. I accept that the vast majority of them left with a view to coming back at some point. I think they should all be adequately compensated.

[CJ:] And when will the compensation come?

[MS:] As far as I'm concerned, tomorrow morning.



[MS:] Another fact going against the ethnic cleansing theory is that, while 400-650,000 Arabs left what became Israel, 250,000 did not (they and their posterity are today citizens of Israel and commonly referred to as "Israeli Arabs"--they make 20% of Israeli citizens). I'm not trying to be funny here, but someone trying to ethnically cleanse an area wouldn't leave two out of every five "clients" behind.

[CJ:] Well, I could respond that the ethinic cleansing was not a complete success.

[MS:] Yes, you could. And I could say to that that Israel had 56 years to finish "the job" once it became clear that the "ethnic cleansing" had not been successful. But it didn't because the ethnic cleansing quite simply did not take place.



[CJ:] And do you really believe that the Arab Israelis have equal rights?

[MS:] They do just as do African Americans in the US or Arab-Europeans in France. Yes, in practice they are not as well off as Israeli Jews but there are lots of reasons for that (just as in the case of minorities in the US, Europe and pretty much anywhere else). There is no institutional discrimination in place--quite the contrary--as has been attested by international organizations and Israeli Arabs themselves.



[MS:] But also bear in mind that NO-ONE has abused the Palestinians, especially the refugees, more than Arab leaders who have cynically been exploiting them for propaganda gains. The refugee problem could've been resolved decades ago--remember the even greater number of Jews who were driven out of Arab countries at the roughly same time?

[CJ:] There is also evidence that Mossad created "incidents" to motivate the Jews to emigrate to Israel.

[MS:] Er, sure. Look, haMossad does know its stuff and has pulled off some stunts but the "fete" of getting almost a million Jews to "emigrate" from their homes in ten different countries thru covert operations is stretching it just a LITTLE bit, don't you think? HaMossad didn't organize mass anti-Semitic riots to intimidate Jews and force them to leave. Nor did haMossad issue orders for Jews to leave a country within X hours with only whatever they could carry.



[MS:] They haven't been languishing in squalid camps for 56 years sending bombers to Cairo pizzerias and Damascus buses but were immediately absorbed by Israel and they're now living there very happily.

[CJ:] From my experience in Israel I didn't find many happy people.

[MS:] Irrelevant; they've not turned into terrorists, and they're not even demanding compensation for their property confiscated by Arab governments. And if I may ask, your experience of life in Israel would be...?



[CJ:] [...]
[MS:] Blowing up a bus is a premeditated act designed very deliberately to take down as many Jews (or whoever else happens to be riding on there) as possible. It is not done out of despair nor is it done because actual soldiers or other military/strategic targets are nowhere else to be found. They are acts whereby maximum firepower available is used against places with the highest concentration of people (civilians). That's not warfare and that's not guerilla.

[CJ:] But blowing up the King David hotel where there were many civilians is warfare?

[MS:] King David Hotel, as I had said previously, was the military and police HQ of the Britishers for the entire Cisjordan. The civil service was also stationed there. I concede: Etzel could have found purely military targets and attacked them but to equate an attack on such a site with a deliberate mass murder of civilians in purely civilian areas is, to say the very least, unreasonable and betrays, shall we say, double standards.



[MS:] [...] But of course, doing that would undermine the whole culture of war and hatred that's been carefully cultivated by the PA so it's not going to happen. ...

[CJ:] I don't think that the PA has to cultivate hatred. An occupied people will often resist.

[MS:] We are not talking about resistence. We are talking about the MANNER of "resistence". There are several nations/peoples in the world who have been occupied and/or oppressed for just as long and much more brutally than the Palestinians but they quite frankly never attempted to use the tactics used by Palestinian terrorist outfits (Tibet, Mauritania, Sudan, Kashmir [pick your side there], nations and tribes all over Africa, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, etc., etc.). And nor did their plight merit the establishment of "doublestandards.org" websites.

And if you have any doubts about the very calculated cultivation of hatred on the part of the PA and its minions, have a look at websites like http://www.pmw.org.il/ or http://www.memri.org/ . What they do is look at Palestinian and Arab media and translate them into English, no more, no less. Pay particular notice to TV programs aimed at children.



[CJ:] Or do you blame the leaders of the Warsaw uprising for cultivating hatred against the Nazi occupiers?

[MS:] No, but that's not the point. The point is that not they, not the French Resistance, not the Partisans, not anyone with a grievance against the Nazis (QUITE a few people, I would think) thought to strap explosives around their waists, find a place with a very high concentration of German civilians and blow them to smithereens. Look for whatever excuses you want, but what Palestinian (and external) terrorists do is inexcusable.



[MS:] Dropping a bomb on civilian Palestinian areas is not acceptable. Don't forget though that such actions do NOT have as their aim killing as many civilians as possible and they are done because the legitimate target IS actually hiding/present in that area constantly.

[CJ:] So you have no problem with "collateral damage"? Are you saying that if I kill innocent people when trying to arrest a criminal then it's okay? Would you like to explain that to the mother of a baby who had been "caught in the crossfire"?

[MS:] Did I say I had no problem with it?!? A life is a life, even that of a terrorist. My point was that such Army operations are not done with the explicit aim of murdering as many Palestinian civilians as possible whereas that is PRECISELY the aim of Palestinian terrorists vis-a-vis Israeli civilians. If you cannot discern the difference between the two, then I do feel sorry for you. (Oh, and don't forget that you're not trying to arrest a criminal in a leafy Dutch suburb but in the middle of a war zone, in "enemy territory" where the armed perp's armed friends lurk behind every corner among a multitude of civilians.)



[CJ:] [...]
[MS:] And lastly, don't just listen to the media. The media don't tell you about operations that were aborted because there was a risk of civilian casualties; they don't tell you about trials of soldiers when an operation goes wrong and civilians are killed (thru negligence, false intelligence and similar); and it DOES happen, a lot.

[CJ:] Could you tell me how many IDF soldiers have actually been punished for crimes against civilians?

[MS:] Punished? Quite a few. Do a search. Punished ADEQUATELY? Shamefully few if any.



[CJ:] Or are the IDF an exception and there is not a single member of the IDF who has ever killed an innocent civilian? They're all angels?

[MS:] You know, for someone affecting to seek truth, justice and fairness, you display an inordinate amout of prejudice which you then project on me. I don't know what gave you the idea that I would think all IDF soldiers are "angels". Perhaps the fact that I DO see the difference between an accidental killing or even one caused by negligence/recklessness and a killing which is premeditated and cold-blooded?



[MS:] I don't want to justify nasty deeds by the IDF--I don't think they CAN be justified. Believe it or not, I am aware of how the soldiers can and do behave and what the Palestinians have to go thru, and I am VERY bothered by it.

[CJ:] Are you bothered enough to do something about it?

[MS:] And how much do you know about me or about what I'm doing, exactly, if I may ask? Are you bothered enough about the Palestinian's misfortune to get them to extricate themselves the culture of hatred and terror and thus not give the lunatic element in Israel any remote cause for existence?



[CJ:] The fact is that Israel has maybe 200 atom bombs, 650,000 soldiers, nearly 4000 tanks, more than 500 fighter aircraft, 200 plus helicopters and spends nearly 9 billion dollars per annum for military purposes. All this in self-defence?

[MS:] Er, no. Maybe in order to kill 5,000 Palestinians in four years? Or to attack Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Sudan as, of course, it has been doing for the past 56 years?



[CJ:] Who in their right mind would attack Israel?

[MS:] Maybe the "brave" (or is it, "desperate"?) terrorists who blew up two buses packed with civilians in Beer-Sheva last week? Yes, so Israel spends a lot on defense; can you blame it? It's been attacked four, five times with terrorist attacks going on thruout; Iran is about the get the bomb; Itbakh al Yahud is being chanted from Morocco to Mindanao; weapons are being smuggled into the PA from all over the place; Qassam rockets are raining daily on Sderot and all over haNegev; a homicide bombing is thwarted several times every week; Jews are being attacked and our property vandalized all over Europe... After numerous opportunities to reach a settlement, all fell thru and the outlook for peace is probably just as bleak as it was in 1949. And this time, Israel has the world to contend with, too; the world which relies on dogma (hey, we hate America so we gotta hate Israel, too) and distorted media (which, paradoxically, we are also constantly accused of controlling--go figure) to form its opinions about the conflict in the Middle East. You, even though your knowledge appears to be much deeper than that of a regular punter, try to reduce the history, circumstance, incidence and cause-and-consequence of the ME conflict to one-liners. And also, as I said, there are many infinitely more pressing human tragedies unfolding the world over. Only in Sudan 1,500 innocent people are killed DAILY. And yet, the world is not interested. Is it because terrorists have exported this conflict outside the ME and bombs are going off now in places they "shouldn't"? And Israel is to be blamed for that?! Or is it something else in question? I mean hey, even Russia--whose soldiers have bombed, robbed and raped the Chechens senseless--is not pilloried by the world. Care to guess what the situation would be if, by some chance, the Russians were Jewish?



[MS:] I'm someone who was abused and humiliated because of my ethnicity and I could never (want to) justify the same happening to another human being.

[CJ:] Then don't justify it.

[MS:] I do not. I believe I am even-handed in my attitudes: I condemn what is wrong and advocate what is right. If you reckon I have deviated from that anywhere, please show me where. OTOH, you are the one seeking to justify what is to any moral and objective person a clearly reprehensible deed: conscious and cold-blooded masss murder of innocent civilians.



[CJ:] [...]
I don't think it's so complicated:

The Israelis have oppressed and occupied the land of the Arabs living in Palestine and justify it because:
* "God" promised the land to the Jews 4.000 / 6.000 years ago. Yeah, sure.

[MS:] That argument holds no water with me and I consequently do not use it. Nor did the international community which recognized Israel use it. In fact, no-one but the crackpot Gush Emunim--who think Jews have the right to the WHOLE of Cisjordan--use this argument so I don't see why you've even listed it here, never mind in the top spot.



[CJ:] * The UN allotted 50% of Palestine to the Jews. (Strange that the Israelis support the UN in this, but ignore the many UN resolutions since 1948.) Israel proper (1967 border) consists of 78% of Palestine plus the settlements. Not much left for the Palestinians.

[MS:] That's a very unfortunate argument you used there. If you recall, it were actually the Arabs (governments, not people) who rejected the Partition Plan out of hand and elected to start the 1948 war (which, of course, is responsible for creating the refugees and the consequent refugee problem). And by the same token, the Arabs, including the Palestinians, suddenly started supporting the UN after they had rejected its plan for peace and lost all subsequent wars.

And no, Israel proper consists of the pre-1967 land which is recognized as the State of Israel. The wretched settlements do not form part of it.



[CJ:] * They have suffered terribly at the hands of the Germans. And how are the Palestinians to blame for this?

[MS:] Er, they are not; who said or suggested they were? Projecting again?

Take care,

Michael

It's getting interesting, huh!

B'shalom...

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