Idealistic youth and the Middle-East

A true Middle-East solution would probably result if the Palestinian Authority would adopt non-violent methods of protest similar to what Ghandi used to defeat the British in India.


Clinton gave the PA a true chance in December, 2000.Ghandi had to accept the partition of India.

The Palestinians will also have to accept compromises.


As long as the PA permits Hamas, Al Queda, Iranian, and Iraqi influence in their guerilla campaign, no peace will follow.


The supporters of Islamic terrorism on this board

seem to believe that Israel will give in to violence. They remind me of idiotic rich kids

whose parents sent them to Ivy League schools. They use to parade around shouting that Che Guevara was the messiah. Of course Che Guevara's Marxist-Leninist line would have put them and their parents in concentration camps.


Those same rich kids grew into conservative upper class landowners that whole heartedly support the Republican right wing.


Of course the more serious adults that post here and advocate terrorism should be considered true radicals. The FBI demonstrated to the Symbionese Libertion Army how to deal with them.

"A true Middle-East solution would probably result if the Palestinian Authority would adopt non-violent methods of protest similar to what Ghandi used to defeat the British in India."


Your statement might be tactically sound but it is devoid of principle: Israel is and will remain in the wrong regardless of whatever tactics the Palestinians use, just as if Jim Crow was wrong even if Martin Luther King had been a terrorist. Otherwise, if it weren't for successful nonviolent resistance, it absurdly follows from your statement that the British should still be in India and that the South should remain white-supremacist. Those that facilitate Israel's occupation (e.g., Americans), just like those that facilitated these other evils, have higher duties than to pass judgment on the morality of the victims' response, just as Palestinian terrorists (as opposed to non-terrorists) have little right to complain about disproportionate retalliation.


Statements like yours reflect a typical bias regarding the rights of the competing nations to sovereignty in former Palestine: while Jews have this right automatically, regardless of the tactics their leaders employ (I tend to agree), Palestinians first must suffer occupation for 25 years and then demonstrate Ghandi-like restraint, as if, unique among the peoples of the world, the ticket price for Palestinian self-determination amounts to history's most noble cases of humility and self-sacrifice to achieve political change.


Apart from principles, the notion that Palestinians have tried (and don't continue ot try) peaceful protest is a myth. As noted by Israeli historian Benny Morris, (in Righteous Victims, pp. 340-41), although "the overwhelming majority of West Bank and Gaza Arabs from the first hated the occupation," their initial reaction was often non-violent. The sent petitions; Israeli exiled signatories. The started general strikes; Israel "cracked down with a series of collective punishments," including indefinite curfews, shutting tow public transport, shutting down phone service, sealing businesses, revoking business licenses, limiting travel. "There was a clear lesson for the inhabitants of the territories and the Palestinian diaspora in these events: Israel intended to stay in the West Bank, and its rule would not be overthrown or ended through civili disobendience and civil resistence, which were easily crushed. The only real option was armed struggle." Peaceful demonstrators nowadays meet Israeli stun grenades, truncheons and bullets.


"Clinton gave the PA a true chance in December, 2000. Ghandi had to accept the partition of India.

The Palestinians will also have to accept compromises."


The Palestinians have for more than generation (quite officially by their leadership in 1988) accepted both partition and have made all the compromises in this lopsided game, such as (1) surrender of any claim to 78% of their historic homeland; (2) acceptance of permanent second-class citizen status for over a million Palestinians in Israel; (3) renunciation of armed struggle in exchange for statehood; and (4) unequivocal acceptance of Israel's right to exist within secure borders. Israel refuses to reciprocate, and still has not determined its own borders or recognized the right of any Palestinian state "to exist."


What Clinton and Barak offered at Camp David was this: (1) the additional loss of 10-20% of the occupied territories to Israeli settlements (implying grave permanent loss of water rights); (2) the cutting of the West Bank into northern and southern halves with Israeli sovereignty over the middle; (3) the permanent loss of Jerusalem, the Palestinians' historic cultural center; (4) permanent exile for the families of the 700,000 Palestinians made refugees by force and intimidation in 1947-48 (no "right of return"). Morris: "For the refugee communities, especially in the camps of the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, [no right of return] spelled ideological death. The vision of a return is what had kept them going, the be-all and end-all of their political existence, a major part of their identity, during the previous half century." The hysterical nature of pro-Israeli propaganda in this country is shown by the nearly ubiquitous description of this proposal and its response: Arafat was offered 94% of the occupied territories, and by implication nearly all he claimed to want. His rejection proves that he wants to conquer Israel.


Arafat (apparently speaking only for himself), is now willing to accept even this. But since he has no trustworthy party with whom to negotiate, no such deal remains on the table, if it ever truly was there (note that it is described as "Clinton's," not "Israel's"). Israel continues it's scheme of conquest, colonization and cantonization, with the apparent long-term goal of carving the rest of Palestine into isolated pockets of deprivation and misery. For which we all pay and will continue for many years to pay, in more ways than one.

Israel is and will remain in the wrong regardless of whatever tactics the Palestinians use


At leat you are now being honest about your racist, antisemitic views. One side blows up buses filled with innocent people, including babies, and the other side is in the wrong regardless.


The Palestinians have... made all the compromises in this lopsided game, such as (1) surrender of any claim to 78% of their historic homeland; (2) acceptance of permanent second-class citizen status for over a million Palestinians in Israel; (3) renunciation of armed struggle in exchange for statehood; and (4) unequivocal acceptance of Israel's right to exist within secure borders.


Do you expect anyone to believe these lies? I guess you do, since you continue to post this kind of crap. I've got news for you Chris, renouncing violence doesn't mean anything if you continue to commit and support terrorism. I would also love to see where Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the other terrorists recognized Israel's right to exist within secure borders. The goal of these groups is the destruction of Israel, not to see that it has secure borders.

I won't attempt to answer the entirety of your lengthy post and myriad points (as usual, too many for me to attempt to address all at once) but I will now question one of your statements.


Point 3) in which you claim Palestinians renounced armed struggle in exchange for statehood. If they allow organizations such as Hamas to flourish within them, your statement appears to be contradictory with the facts. A government or people which allows major organized groups from within to continue waging real war, has not renounced armed struggle, but rather condones and may even support it. Hamas' long and loudly proclaimed aim is nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel, and the sabotage of any peace process. If Palestinians have indeed renounced armed struggle, they must prevent factions from within from waging war (especially on innocent civilians). And there are more than merely Hamas doing this. Lip service to a desire for peace doesn't cut it when attacks routinely occur. No, the Palestinians have certainly not renounced armed struggle--their attacks have been going on for years. This statement of your simply appears to not hold any water.

He's an obvious radical. He's committed to violence.


Ghandi was imprisoned, beaten, and watched his people exploited and massacred at times. Ghandi's commitment to non-violence never flinched. Ghandi, therefore, triumphed.


The Palestinians have legitimate complaints.They will never triumph, however, while they fund murder through outside radical Islamic fundamentalists that do not accept the existence of Israel.

Chris seems to have an incredible knack for distorting the facts-: watch him now argue how legally speaking, the Palestinians have done all he said above, and they can't stop Hamas, etc. Well if they can't stop Hamas and if they really want them stopped, they could request outside assistance for that purpose.


These organizations should be W-I-P-E-D OUT if they can't otherwise be stopped.


If I were President of a country which was being subjected to such attacks regularly, the attackers would pretty much all be dead by now--even if it meant taking them out along with many of their human shields. I think perhaps Israel should serve notice that further attacks will be met by severe bombing or shelling of the area which originated the attacks. In other words tell the Palestinians they'd better stop Hamas themselves somehow, because if the attacks continue it will just get a lot uglier as Hamas and the other terrorist groups get wiped out en masse.


Go ahead, call ME a Fascist or whatever, but if I were President of a country enduring such attacks regularly, there would have been much quicker escalation and a lot more dead terrorists a lot faster. In other words such attacks, if regular and repeated, would have been deemed intolerable and would have been dealt with as such, and while collateral damage would certainly not have been preferred, neither would it have stood too much in the way of wiping out the terrorist enclaves either.

I agree with you M, but unfortunately, there are too many people in power in Europe and the U.N. that are biased against Israel and will never allow it, politically, to take the self-defensive actions it is entitled to (and which the U.S. would most certainly take if we were in Israel's shoes; See Afghanistan, 2001...). We've seen the double standard time and again, silence or muted criticism of homicide bombings which slaughter innocents, and outrage at Israel's responses (aimed of course at terrorists, not civilians, in contract to the Palestinians, who specifically target women and babies).

"If they allow organizations such as Hamas to flourish within them, your statement appears to be contradictory with the facts. A government or people which allows major organized groups from within to continue waging real war,"


Hamas doesn't "wage war," the Qassam brigades does. So where's your evidence that the PA "allows" the Qassam brigades to "flourish?" If the PA allows it, then doesn't Israel also allow it, given that Israel has at least as good intelligence as you do, and much greater ability to destroy it? Aren't you altogether eliminating by assumption the obvious possibility that there are underground terrorist units in the occupied territories?


"Hamas' long and loudly proclaimed aim is nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel"


In other words, Hamas is the equivalent, in this regard, of the Israeli government, which is loudly not only proclaimed but absolutely prevented the creation of any Palestinian government.


If the PA has to eliminate every political group that refuses to recognize Israel, then the counterpart for Israel would be to eliminate virtually the entire right-wing spectrum of it's political parties, who are no less committed to the destruction of Palestinian nationalism.

If the PA has to eliminate every political group that refuses to recognize Israel, then the counterpart for Israel would be to eliminate virtually the entire right-wing spectrum of it's political parties, who are no less committed to the destruction of Palestinian nationalism.


That might be true if the right-wing groups in Israel were killing babies, blowing up buses and marketplaces, and slaughtering civilians on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza. Of course, they aren't. But the Palestinians commit such acts and then celebrate in the street by handing out candy.


I can not even believe that you are questioning that the P.A. has a responsibility to crack down on the terrorist groups. Are you serious? How many times has Arafat agreed to do that? I guess his promises are as empty to you as they are to the rest of the world.

i would agree with you from a strategical standpoint if i had a strong enough military to withstand the retaliation, which could come from more than just palestine. it is not clear to me if israel does have a strong enough army, they might or they might not i just dont know enough about it. obviously if you dont have a strong enough army then you cant pursue a strategy based on war.


but philosophically i agree with you 100%.


pat