Response to Cyrus

I wrote in response to the Meanwhile in the Middle East... thread below, but I thought I'd post it up here. Something about the attitude behind the post bothered me when I first read it, but I couldn't figure out what. In my response, I'm trying to express what it is that I found disagreeable about Cyrus' post. Sorry about the length, comments appreciated.


***The Palestinian Authority issued a protestation for the attacks and called on the European countries and the U.S. once again to send neutral military observers in the area to establish peace. There was no response to the pleas, once again.***


Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority planned strikes of its own against the elected goverment of its country.


When the PA puts children in front of armed fighters and attacks Isreali soldiers, then complains about children being shot at by Isrealis, who is to blame?


I understand that Isreal's tactics are not the most admirable, but you certainly can't claim that the PA is an innocent victim. You refer to the Palestinians as people defending their homeland, but that homeland is Israeli territory. How many Mexicans were attempting to fight off the US in new mexico or california in 1870? What about Germans attacking in West Germany in 1970? How can Israel give up its land, especially its most important city, to a band of terrorists, regardless of the current living conditions, religion, or historical presence of those terrorists? You should not be arguing that Israel is dealing with them in an unreasonable way. You should be arguing that Israel needs to find a way to enfranchise and aid the Palestinians living in its country. Or you could argue that the Palestinians who don't want to be a part of the same country as the Jewish population of Israel should find a different place to live.


In our country, we support the right of people to hold different points of view. We believe this is the only logical way to run a country, and it is this freedom which we are most fervent about defending. Not all of the world agrees with us. Our own forefathers didn't entirely agree with us. We believe that the responsibility of a government is to provide for the livelihood and safety of all its citizens regardless of their background. Israel does not currently do this, but just like in this country, where we are able to make provisions for minority groups and to focus on the protection of those people who are part of a minority, Israel should be capable of working out a similar system, if its people are willing. There has been so much hatred in that part of the world, and the religious conflict is so deeply ingrained, that this may not be possible.


Simply pointing out some attack made by the Israeli government, which is engaged in a process of fighting rebels within its borders, does not make any point. Saying that because we support Israel, we shouldn't be surprised that Palestinians cheer at our death, is simply wrong. If you think the US has not been trying to peacefully end the conflict in the Middle East, you apparently haven't been paying any attention to the situation. If you think that we should stop sending foreign aid to Israel, you should realize that we send to foreign aid to countries as a reward for supporting the process of diplomacy and making efforts to help their people. That money may be used to train soldiers or buy weapons, or it may be used to pay for the things that money which is used on the military would have payed for. It doesn't matter. We don't give aid to countries which refuse to engage in diplomacy or which insist upon violating the human rights of their people. We also don't give aid to rebels unless they are fighting countries which we are opposed to, thus aiding us in our own fight.


Killing people whom you believe are engaged in the process of killing others, and who do not care to engage in the political process cannot be compared to killing people who have done nothing, merely to make some sort of point. The military action you refered to in Israel was aimed at eliminating the leaders of a rebel organization. The attack on the WTC was aimed at killing as many people as possible.


You say that they want to have some influence on our lives, because we have been influencing theirs, but is a completely unreasonable goal. They should be more concerned with figuring out how to improve their lives. We do not influence people's lives for the sake of doing so. We influence people's lives either by accident or in order to help them. And we respond to people who bring their concerns to us in a peaceful way and sit down to talk things over and arrive at a reasonable solution. We do not respond to people who refuse to compromise and instead to use violence to attempt to achieve their goals.


You act as if the US goes around arbitrarily taking sides in various conflicts and funnelling heaps of money into the side they support. We do not take sides arbitrarily. We do not take sides purely out of some monetary interest. We do not attack peaceful countries or support attacks against them. If we were only interested in money, we would have been on the side of the OPEC nations in every conflict they've entered. We would not support Israel at the risk of alienating countries which supply us with oil. However, we have experienced hostile reactions from the OPEC nations, and have thus supported Israel, which was friendly to us. We have continued to support Israel, which has a democratically elected government, and which has been attacked openly on many occasions, as well as being constantly under pressure from terrorists the last few years. We do this because they have been involved in attempts to find peaceful solutions to problems consistently over the last half century.


Critically evaluating the actions of our government and then voicing our opinions is something which Americans have to do to keep our country true to itself. The right to disagree with the actions of our government is what makes us a free country. But there is a difference between propagandizing and engaging in debate. If you want to examine our position in the Middle East you cannot look only at acts commited by Israelis, or only at acts commited by Palestinians, you have to look at the actions of both, as well as the actions of the neighboring states and the rest of the world.


Finally, I want to say that the following thought process is not likely to be the one which went on in the celebrators heads:


Israel is occupying our country; the US has supported Israel; the support the US has given Israel has been used to make our lives miserable; the US was just attacked; therefore we are happy.


I'd like to submit the following as a more likely thought process:


I've been told over and over during my life that the West is evil; the US is the symbol of the West; the US was just attacked; therefore we are happy.


Cutting our aid to Israel, giving the Palestinians a homeland, sending peacekeepers into Jerusalem, and providing for the use of that city's holy sites by anyone who wants, will not be possible, nor would it solve any of the problems. Merely understanding the point of view of the terrorists and those who support will certainly not solve the problem, nor will it necessarily present a course of action which would solve the problem. We can do what is possible to help other countries work through their problems and solve them peacefully. We can also do what is possible to replace violence with diplomacy. We cannot, however, use respect for another point of view as an excuse for violence commited by the holders of that point of view. Attacking innocent civilians to make a political point, or as a method of achieving political aims, is not acceptable. Destroying an organization which exists to attack innocent civilians in lieu of political discourse is not only acceptable, but necessary.

I won't respond to all this because its nothing more than a paraphrase of remembered propaganda that's so inaccurate and chauvinistic it would make most Israelis blush. And while I believe it's racist to deny Palestinians homeland rights in the former Palestine while awarding them to Jewish immigrants from the United States and elsewhere, I realize this morality is not generally shared by many Americans. However, labeling four million Palestinians and their leadership a "band of terrorists" is straightforwardly racist, which I think virtually everyone -- including most Israelis -- would acknowledge, in my experience it's simply a waste of time trying to argue with white supremacists and their ilk.


But let me pose a hypothetical. The following was reported yesterday by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza:


On Thursday, August 30, 2001, an Israeli combat helicopter opened fired with heavy machine guns on Palestinian residential areas in Tulkarm refugee camp. A Palestinian street sweeper on duty at the time, Daoud Saleh 'Abdel-Nabi Fahmawi, 32, was killed by a live bullet in the chest. Three other Palestinian civilians were wounded. Also on Thrusday, Mousa Safi Qudeihat, 50, a physician from Kharas village near Hebron, was killed by a heavy caliber bullet that entered the abdomen and exited the back. Qudeihat was crossing a street on his way to the offices of Ministry of Health when he was shot dead by Israeli occupation soldiers, during heavy shelling of Hebron. Additionally, 17 Palestinians, including 16 civilians, were wounded. One of the wounded, a 10-year-old child, Bilal Ismail El-'Amassi, was seriously wounded by a live bullet that entered the back and exited the chest. The child was shopping with his family in preparation for the new school year when he was shot by Israeli occupation soldiers.


[Quoted with minor paraphrasing from electronicintifada.org]


Do you think the families of the people killed above were "terrorized" by this incident? If the attackers in the above account were Palestinian were Israeli, would you call this terrorism? If a foreign country provided the weaponry for such Palestinian attacks, knowing full well the purpose for which it would be used, would you say that country supported terrorism? Would you then question that country's moral right to generally condemn terrorism?


Lenny, can you name a single book or article that puts forth the case for a Palestinian state or Palestinian resistence to the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza? If not, don't you think you should at least consider what the other side has to say before publishing condemnations of it?

"If a foreign country provided the weaponry for such Palestinian attacks, knowing full well the purpose for which it would be used, would you say that country supported terrorism? "


If you are saying that the U.S. provided weapons to Israel "knowing full well" that the Israeli's purpose is to terrorize the Palestinians then you are just plain wrong. I am not naive enough to believe that the U.S government has clean hands in our handling of the situation in the mid east. But we support Israel to help them with the self defense of their country.


What is being said here is that there are countries in the world that are supporting Terrorist groups "knowing full well" that their sole purpose is to terrorize the populace of certain countries. What is being said here is that because of this act of murder against United States citizens the perpertrators have declared war on the United States or a crime has been committed against the United States. In either case, a War or a crime the U.S. believes it has the right to seek retribution against the perpertrators and their supporters, allies and accomplices in this act. This is not about Israel or Palestine. This is about 5,000 Americans killed at the Word Trade Center, the Pentagon and a plane crash in Pennsylvania. When McVeigh was found to be the perpertrator of Oklahoma City the U.S. went after anyone else that may have been involved or supported McVeigh. The same will happen here.


Vince

"If you are saying that the U.S. provided weapons to Israel "knowing full well" that the Israeli's purpose is to terrorize the Palestinians then you are just plain wrong. I am not naive enough to believe that the U.S government has clean hands in our handling of the situation in the mid east. But we support Israel to help them with the self defense of their country."


Then aren't the Palestinians that shoot soldiers of occupying forces in the West Bank and Gaza also defending "their country?" And isn't this what Israel and the U.S. includes in their definition of terrorism?

If Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Gaza would there be peace?

The country of Israel is defined according to international law. The Palestinians are not defending a country. Maybe they should have a country, but they don't. The two issues, while interrelated, are not the same.

"The country of Israel is defined according to international law."


That's right, and under international law the West Bank and Gaza are not part of the country of Israel, and it's army is one of foreign occupation.


"The Palestinians are not defending a country."


Defined as a land on which a nation lives, they most certainly are. But assuming you're right, does that make the violence they inflict in order to create a country terrorists? Does this mean that those that used violence to create the present state of Israel, including it's present Prime Minister, are subject to condemnation as terrorists, or is "terrorist" just a convenient label we use to demonize those we oppose?