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How To Talk To An Israel-Hater IV
Posted on: Thursday, September 30, 2004
Shalom, shalom!
Before I continue with the mesmerizing exchange between old Cliffy and me, a piece or two of good news. Remember my telling you about installing a WLAN myself for less than 10% of the quoted price? Well, a few days ago I rendered the last computer I had wireless-capable and amd happy to report the whole thing (one desktop and two laptops) are working flawlessly. There has been no degradation in bandwidth nor have I experienced any problem. In accordance, I can happily recommend NETGEAR products (routers and PCI adapters)--they are really top quality. Of course, if you do undertake this kind of endeavor yourselves, you'd be well advised to brush up on security standards and protocols. Wireless networks are notoriously insecure so you want to be sure yours is impervious to attacks. If you need advice, send me an e-mail.
Oh and I got my new desktop computer last week. It's just bitching: another Dell, this time a Precision workstation. Transferring the settings from the old computer to the new one wasn't as straightforward as I'd thought. I put the old HDD in the new computer as the slave drive, configured Boot.INI and you would've thought that would be it! But nooooooooooooo... - the damn thing wouldn't boot; "configuration error". My foot. And I couldn't access the files by booting into the new system because--being security-conscious as I am
--I had had them encrypted and made private (ie. I could only access them by logging into the system). Oy vey! I still managed to get to the files but it was a bitch of a process, especially porting various registry settings. And then last night I entered BIOS to fiddle with something and only by happenstance saw that the damn thing had the "second HDD" setting as "off" instead of "auto". Oy GEVALT!!! That's why I couldn't boot into the old system! And I had perused Boot.INI line by line, character by character; I opened the computer at least fifteen times messing with the IDE and jumper settings; and had all but given up... - and it was the damn BIOS all along. Son of a bitch!!
Anyway, the point: this only confirmed it but if you're buying a new computer, buy DELL. This is my fourth Dell computer and I can attest to their reliability, robustness, easy upgradability and everything else you look for in a computer.
On to the fourth (fifth?
) installment of the "How to talk to an Israel-hater?" series. Let's remind ourselves: I came across a photo I wanted to post here and e-mail the webmaster of the site in question to clarify any copyright restrictions, etc. He said he had no idea concerning that but that he found the sites quoted in my e-mail sig to be, get this, "racist". What were the sites in question? This site, my website, and a site encouraging trade with Israel. Oh yeah, "racist" indeed. Whatever... Hiw parents were reportedly killed in the King David Hotel bombing and our Cliffy hence has little time for what he terms "Zionist propaganda." I took exception to that, e-mailed him back saying he was tripping, and a rather protracted exchange of facts, factoids and mendacities ensued. Following my response--cited in the previous entry--to his broadside, came his reply:
Shit. I was hoping for a bit more constructive rebuttal of what I'd written than that! Doesn't this kind of reply give off the impression: yeah, you're getting into too much details debunking my postulates so let's forget all that and start anew with my restating the "truth"? The "truth". Geddit?
I could've let it slide and just finish the exchange. But that would be tantamount to defeat! After all, Cliff is not an intransigent dickhead--at least, not as explicitly instransigent a dickhead as the majority of those who espouse his views. With people like Cliff there IS an off chance that if you expose his "arguments" for the bullshit they are enough times, he may realize it himself. So I took the challenge and answered what he wrote above. But since this is already too long, I will post that answer here tomorrow. Till then try a little exercise: look at Cliff's specious points and see what reply you'd give him. Amusez-vous bien!
Kol tuv!
Posted on: Thursday, September 30, 2004
ב''ה
Shalom, shalom!
Before I continue with the mesmerizing exchange between old Cliffy and me, a piece or two of good news. Remember my telling you about installing a WLAN myself for less than 10% of the quoted price? Well, a few days ago I rendered the last computer I had wireless-capable and amd happy to report the whole thing (one desktop and two laptops) are working flawlessly. There has been no degradation in bandwidth nor have I experienced any problem. In accordance, I can happily recommend NETGEAR products (routers and PCI adapters)--they are really top quality. Of course, if you do undertake this kind of endeavor yourselves, you'd be well advised to brush up on security standards and protocols. Wireless networks are notoriously insecure so you want to be sure yours is impervious to attacks. If you need advice, send me an e-mail.
Oh and I got my new desktop computer last week. It's just bitching: another Dell, this time a Precision workstation. Transferring the settings from the old computer to the new one wasn't as straightforward as I'd thought. I put the old HDD in the new computer as the slave drive, configured Boot.INI and you would've thought that would be it! But nooooooooooooo... - the damn thing wouldn't boot; "configuration error". My foot. And I couldn't access the files by booting into the new system because--being security-conscious as I am
--I had had them encrypted and made private (ie. I could only access them by logging into the system). Oy vey! I still managed to get to the files but it was a bitch of a process, especially porting various registry settings. And then last night I entered BIOS to fiddle with something and only by happenstance saw that the damn thing had the "second HDD" setting as "off" instead of "auto". Oy GEVALT!!! That's why I couldn't boot into the old system! And I had perused Boot.INI line by line, character by character; I opened the computer at least fifteen times messing with the IDE and jumper settings; and had all but given up... - and it was the damn BIOS all along. Son of a bitch!!
Anyway, the point: this only confirmed it but if you're buying a new computer, buy DELL. This is my fourth Dell computer and I can attest to their reliability, robustness, easy upgradability and everything else you look for in a computer.
On to the fourth (fifth?
) installment of the "How to talk to an Israel-hater?" series. Let's remind ourselves: I came across a photo I wanted to post here and e-mail the webmaster of the site in question to clarify any copyright restrictions, etc. He said he had no idea concerning that but that he found the sites quoted in my e-mail sig to be, get this, "racist". What were the sites in question? This site, my website, and a site encouraging trade with Israel. Oh yeah, "racist" indeed. Whatever... Hiw parents were reportedly killed in the King David Hotel bombing and our Cliffy hence has little time for what he terms "Zionist propaganda." I took exception to that, e-mailed him back saying he was tripping, and a rather protracted exchange of facts, factoids and mendacities ensued. Following my response--cited in the previous entry--to his broadside, came his reply:
Dear Michael,
This correspondence is starting to get out of control.
There's some truth in a lot of what you say. My experience in Israel was around 1985 when I was 3 1/2 months in the country. I went there with an open mind but was disturbed by the open racist attitutudes and the exploitation of non-Jews. It was a relief to go to the Sinai (Egyptian at that time) and talk to the Bedouins and Egyptians. After spending a lot of time traveling I feel I can communicate with most people. It's with Americans and Israelis that I have the most problems (with some exceptions, of course). Is it because both groups believe that they're God's chosen people?
Might I suggest you read a few articles on my site?
1. About the deliberate use of terror tactics to expel the Palestinians: www.doublestandards.org/pilger2.html and Palestine Remembered at http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story674.html which quotes the Israeli historian Benny Morris.
2. About the "equality" of the Arab Israelis: Human Rights Watch at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/ISRAEL0901-01.htm, www.doublestandards.org/levy2.html, www.doublestandards.org/palchron1.html.
3. You may find the section on Some Jewish Voices at http://www.doublestandards.org/pales.html#voices also interesting.
4. You may like to take the quiz at www.doublestandards.org/quiz2.html.
The memri and pmw sites are notorious for translating mainly extreme articles. It's like translating articles from British neo-Nazi newspapers into Arabic to give the impression that this is the way the British think.
I understand what you are saying about the difference in motivation being important. But I do think it's splitting hairs. If country A invades country B and in the process kills lots of civilians, a consequence that was obviously known before, how is this morally better than a suicide bomber deliberately targetting civilians? (BTW, nearly all Israelis are technically in the military until their 55th birthday, so there is not always a clear line between "civilian" and "military" targets).
I certainly do not defend the killing of Israeli civilians by suicide bombers, but unless you believe that the Arabs are subhuman, ask yourself what depths of despair and hopelessness would drive a human being to such extremes. There are two sides to most problems, but the fact does remain that the Israelis are free to travel abroad and live at a level not far from that in Europe, while the Palestinians are kept in the world's largest open Prison (Gaza), soon to be the second largest when the West Bank wall is completed, in squalor and abject poverty, and liable to get killed in the "cross-fire" or by bombs dropped from F16-s or Apache attack helicopters. What would you do if you had been born there? It's been 37 years now. Isn't it up to Israel as the occupying power to make the first move?
Kind regards,
Cliff
Shit. I was hoping for a bit more constructive rebuttal of what I'd written than that! Doesn't this kind of reply give off the impression: yeah, you're getting into too much details debunking my postulates so let's forget all that and start anew with my restating the "truth"? The "truth". Geddit?
I could've let it slide and just finish the exchange. But that would be tantamount to defeat! After all, Cliff is not an intransigent dickhead--at least, not as explicitly instransigent a dickhead as the majority of those who espouse his views. With people like Cliff there IS an off chance that if you expose his "arguments" for the bullshit they are enough times, he may realize it himself. So I took the challenge and answered what he wrote above. But since this is already too long, I will post that answer here tomorrow. Till then try a little exercise: look at Cliff's specious points and see what reply you'd give him. Amusez-vous bien!
Kol tuv!
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