The Evil Zionists strike again - this time at Chess

[Gamblor]

Anyone who doubted the Arabs are only interested in the great Pan-Arabian continent can read this. I don't know why any of you still listen to some of the guys on this forum.

Main point:
The Israeli team was willing to visit, despite safety hazards, as a sign that sport and goodwill was beyond politics. But the Arab world dashes any hopes of peace and understanding, once again.

Israeli Chess Officials Demand Contest Be Moved From Libya (http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/424575.html)

The Associated Press

Israeli chess officials demanded Thursday that this summer's world chess championships be moved, after host Libya said it would bar Israeli players.

Libya's announcement ended expectations that the chess tournament could help improve relations between the longtime Mideast enemies.

"We did not and will not invite the Zionist enemy to this championship," Mohammed Gadhafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, told a news conference Wednesday.

In response, the Israeli Chess Association demanded that the World Chess Federation, known as FIDE, move the championship from Libya, said spokesman Yerach Tal.

"We demand that it be held in a country that will accept every nation without discrimination," Tal said. "After he [Gadhafi] used those terms, calling us the Zionist enemy, it is another game entirely."

Tal noted that in Europe, Israel is ranked second in chess after Russia.

Mohammed Gadhafi, who also heads the Libyan Olympic Committee, wrote in a letter to FIDE last week that Libya "will pleasantly provide entry visas to all the qualified participants of this great championship."

Both Israel and FIDE took this to mean that Israeli players were also welcome, prompting FIDE to declare that the championship would be held entirely in Libya, and not split- with some games in nearby Malta - as originally planned.

The World Chess Championships are to be held in Tripoli from June 18 to July 13. Libya is putting up $1.5 million in prize money for the event.

On Wednesday, Mohammed Gadhafi said Libya was prepared to risk losing the championships to keep the Israelis out.

A FIDE official in Athens, Greece, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he did not know about Libya's change of mind. FIDE officials were not immediately available for comment Thursday.

Libya has been one of Israel's harshest critics in the Arab world, hosting military bases for radical Palestinian groups. In the mid-1990s, Libya expelled thousands of Palestinians in protest after Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat entered peace talks with Israel.

But in recent years, the Libyan leader toned down his anti-Israel rhetoric as part of a larger effort to rehabilitate his international image.

[ACPlayer]

They should move the Chess tournament and ban Libya from attending.

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone who doubted the Arabs are only interested in the great Pan-Arabian continent can read this. I don't know why any of you still listen to some of the guys on this forum

[/ QUOTE ]
BTW, I have not noticed anybody on this forum as being particularly pro-Arab. Unless of course this is your weak minded thinking that equates criticism of the Israeli state with support for the Arab states and/or their tactics. If so, you really should consider some therapy.

[ACPlayer]

They should move the Chess tournament and ban Libya from attending.

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone who doubted the Arabs are only interested in the great Pan-Arabian continent can read this. I don't know why any of you still listen to some of the guys on this forum

[/ QUOTE ]
BTW, I have not noticed anybody on this forum as being particularly pro-Arab. Unless of course this is your weak minded thinking that equates criticism of the Israeli state with support for the Arab states and/or their tactics. If so, you really should consider some therapy.

[Gamblor]

BTW, I have not noticed anybody on this forum as being particularly pro-Arab. Unless of course this is your weak minded thinking that equates criticism of the Israeli state with support for the Arab states and/or their tactics. If so, you really should consider some therapy.

I have never accused anyone of donning a keffiya.

But before one criticizes the Israeli state, one must understand the opponents with which it must conduct business. Ideally, we all sit down at the table and work out our differences. History continuously shows that turning the other cheek does not work with these regimes, who need a scapegoat like Israel to

a) blind world opinion to the real atrocities conducted every day in these nations

b) blind their own citizens to the realities of why life is as bad it is in Arab nations.

[mosta]

[ QUOTE ]

Tal noted that in Europe, Israel is ranked second in chess after Russia.

[/ QUOTE ]

And are there any on the "Israeli" team that didn't speak Russian as a first language?

Actually I thought this was post was going to be list of Jewish world champions. I tried to make that list with a friend at work (Russian Jew) a few years ago, and I wanted to double check our answers. I've been away from chess so long now the names have faded...Bronstein, was he one of the ones that took it from Botvinnik then gave it back. He was Jewish at least. (I could google it, but don't feel like bothering.) Tal I know did exactly that and was also Jewish. Hm. I thought we had a list, but Smyslov, Spassky, Petrosian...not Jewish I'm pretty sure. You could count Fischer, but then again... . I guess most interesting would be a list of world champion caliber players suppressed and persecuted by the Soviets--Korchnoi (remember the charming letter he received from Beckett, Camus, Duchamp (himself a master level player and author of perhaps the most esoteric chess book ever written), and Arrabal, "avec vous en coeur"), Gulko (who I'm guessing is probably on this Israeli team), ... . There was a story in Chess Life a few years back of another eastern grandmaster turning up in a tournament in Germany and the better players saying Who the hell is this guy! and where has he been? Another suppressed Soviet Jew. I wonder if the Tal quoted above is Tal's son, who another friend of mine (also Russian Jew) went to high school with in Latvia.

[andyfox]

Israel has rarely turned the other cheek. It has conducted itself as a militarized garrison state from its inception. The Zionists, rightly or wrongly, concluded in the 1930s that force was the only answer to reach their goals.

The main roadblock to reaching any kind of solution is the thinking that you correctly point out that uses Israel as a scapegoat and insistence by those like you that Israel is blameless in the tragedy, an innocent victim of complete irrationality on the other side.

[Gamblor]

d are there any on the "Israeli" team that didn't speak Russian as a first language?

That's besides the point /images/graemlins/grin.gif

There's big trouble between the Moroccan Israelis and the Russian Israelis - At a Rage Against the Machine Concert in Tel Aviv, the biggest fight I ever saw broke out between some Moroccans and some Russians.

Wild.

[Gamblor]

It has conducted itself as a militarized garrison state from its inception. The Zionists, rightly or wrongly, concluded in the 1930s that force was the only answer to reach their goals.

Close. The Zionists realized (rightly or wrongly) that strength was the only answer to their goals. DEFENCE. Not offence. It was not until after 1973's Yom Kippur War that Deterrence was decided upon as the military strategy of choice.

(To those of you that would bring up the 1967 pre-emptive strike, it should be noted that that strike was not a means of deterrence, but that Egypt had already declared a de facto war on Israel by closing up the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, thus all but destroying any Israeli economy. Nevermind the thousands of tanks massed in the Sinai desert). But not until the early tragedies of the Yom Kippur War (wow do those Arab states fight fair or what? [1]) did Israelis realize that there would be no honour in this war, and that deterrence was the only effective means of defence.

So, while Israel is opening up Research Centres for students with anyone who will semi-peacefully deal with her (i.e. Jordan), once again, an Arab state irrationally excludes Israel from an otherwise peaceful sporting competition. Those are the facts.

[1] In October 1973, with most Jews Fasting and unable to eat or drink, even Water, and most in synagogues praying all day, the Arab states of Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel - after severe early casualties, the IDF regrouped and pushed back the Syrians, recapturing the Golan Heights, Israel's main water source.

[andyfox]

Well, strength and force.

BTW, if you really want to know a ribd anti-semite from the world of chess, they don't come any uglier or stranger than the legendary Bobby Fischer:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/12/chun.htm

[andyfox]

"a ribd anti-semite"

Sorry, I typed rabid too rapidly. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[Gamblor]

Wow, fascinating article, especially having never seen "Searching for...".

[andyfox]

Searching for Bobby Fischer is a wonderful movie [it has nothing to do with Bobby Fischer other than using his name as the ultimate chess prodigy (like we see a smart person is an "Einstein.")] Great performances by Ben Kingsley, Joe Mantegna and Lawrence Fishburne.

[ACPlayer]

Sorry. One can and should examine one's actions independent of others. Doing so makes one stronger and not weaker.

I heard this yesterday during Rumsfield testimony where Liebermann, I think it was, took great pains to point out that no one apologized for 9/11, the four contractors, the hundreds of dead American soldiers etc. Those are all red herrings.

No one that I can think of who may have criticized Israel has been an apologist for Arab abuse of their own citizens or for any of the atrocities conducted in this country.

You on the other hand have trouble thinking straight about the difficulties that Israeli actions place on innocent human beings. Any thing that is done is justified either because a) the Book says this is how it should be or b) the other side is worse. Both arguments ring hollow to the rest of the world when trying to judge Israeli actions on the street every day.

[Gamblor]

One must necessarily judge a party in a conflict vis-a-vis the actions of its opponents.

Irregardless of the demands of the Arabs, terrorism necessitates a harsher response.

I don't doubt that many Arabs feel justified in what they demand, just as I feel justified in what I demand. The issue is to be solved through negotiations with a credible leader, something the Palestinians do not have.

Abbas himself was virtually denying the Holocaust (http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA9502).

Suppose a 9/11 were occuring on a weekly basis in NYC (or AC, for that matter). What actions would you expect the government to take on your behalf?

[jdl22]

[ QUOTE ]
One must necessarily judge a party in a conflict vis-a-vis the actions of its opponents.


[/ QUOTE ]

Here is the problem. You are wrong. Consider the war in Iraq the US is currently engaged in. The oppenents drug US soldiers bodies through the streets and hung them from a bridge. That's pretty awful. Surely the actions by US soldiers in abusing the prisoners was not this bad. However, that does not make it acceptable. Americans and our supporters in the war are disgusted by these actions and rightfully so. As my mother told me when I was a kid two wrongs don't make a right. It is ridiculous to say that because the arab terrorists are terrible people that use awful tactics in fighting the Israelis that gives the Israelis the right to use tactics that are also awful but not as bad. It's like playing in a game where people limp with literally everything and you limp with everything but 72o. Sure your play isn't as bad as the others but it is still pretty terrible. If you fight terrorism with terrorism at the end of the day you are still a terrorist and little better than your enemy.

Clearly you don't understand this. That's why we see a couple new posts a day where the topic may as well be "LOOK, THESE ARAB TERRORISTS ARE AWFUL, LOOK PEOPLE, LOOK AT THIS CRAZY SH*T THEY ARE DOING TO THE ISRAELIS NOW!!!" You don't need to tell us this, we agree on that. What most everybody disagrees with is the idea that this gives Israel carte blanche to do whatever it wants.

Furthermore your repeated notion that people can not demand Israel change these practices because we are not involved in the conflict is asinine. Just as other countries have a right to demand that the US stop treating its prisoners of war as seen in the photographs so to do we have a right to demand Israel use sensible humane policies.

[ QUOTE ]
Suppose a 9/11 were occuring on a weekly basis in NYC (or AC, for that matter). What actions would you expect the government to take on your behalf?

[/ QUOTE ]

You've brought this up a couple of times and it's equally ridiculous. The scale is completely different. If there was a single terrorist attack in Israel in which 3000 people died things would change quite a lot there. Sure these terrorist attacks are awful but to insinuate that Israel faces something vaguely similar to "a September 11 on a weekly basis" is laughable. Consider Spain. They have faced a constant terrorist threat from ETA since the 1970's. The attacks were neither as frequent nor devastating as in Israel but they were none the less very accustomed to terrorism. When they had the March 11 bombings and a couple hundred died the Spanish people were devastated. The same would happen to the Israeli people if there was a bombing that killed a couple thousand people. Even if more people are killed in terrorist attacks there than that (I don't know the statistics) the effects of that many killed at one time radically alters the way it is perceived.