Polls, Palestinians and the Path to Peace (short article)

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1) you said I suggested that Israel may have to do ethnic cleansing which I most certainly did not. I believe you (and even more so IrishHand) owe me an apology and retraction

2) My position not only isn't identical to that of Jewish extremists, it isn't even close.

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Again you misunderstand/misrepresent what I wrote.

I don't contend that diplomacy with the Palestinians is useless.

What I said was that Pipes made a vital point which should not be ignored. The conclusion he derives from that may be that diplomacy is useless, but that doesn't mean that's my conclusion also--it's not.

May I be allowed to stress the importance of one particular point an author makes without being presumed to agree with all of his conclusions, and without being misunderstood/misquoted?

Regarding the "nation" /"state" differentiation you bring up, you may have a point---but it doesn't invalidate my point, and it does tend to obfuscate the point I was making:

Reagan may well have viewed the governments of certain countries as having no right to exist, but that is far different from viewing those countries themselves as having no right to exist.

Again: saying the Iraqi government has no basis for legitimacy and should be dismantled is far different from saying the state of Iraq itself has no basis for legitimacy and must be dismantled.

Likewise, regarding Israel, I'm sure you can see why one view is at its core ultimately more intractable and extreme, less subject to compromise, than the other view.

[IrishHand]

Hey - I never said that you were a proponent of genocide. I only directed you to some of your statements which might allow someone to conclude that you were.

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1. I said "organized"--doesn't that modifer preclude the average person on the street in your mind? Just to make sure there was no misunderstanding, in my very next post I specified that I was referring only to groups such as al-Aqsa. Yet well after that post which should have clarified any doubt, you chose to post that it seemed I was advocating genocide, which is both totally false based on my posts and something I would never favor, let alone advocate. Your initial trolling post and subsequent refusal to acknowledge that your post was inappropriate and erroneous in its characterization of my views is malicious IMO

2. You apparently have no problem with misrepresenting for malicious purposes those who happen to disagree with you on other matters

3. You are abusing this forum and the spirit of genuine discussions by your low-down actions

4. Your actions are despicable. I hope we never meet. I believe Jimbo may have gotten it right when he suggested you slither back into your hole.

[adios]

Just put him on your ignore list.

[IrishHand]

Someone else suggests you share some extremist Israeli views, you get all indignant and say that's ridiculous, I direct you to a couple of your posts which vaguely support his suggestion, and now I'm Satan incarnate?

I'm thinking you drank too much coffee this morning. At any rate:

(1) I said "organized"--doesn't that modifer preclude the average person on the street in your mind?
Yes, it certainly does in my mind, but that doesn't mean that someone else couldn't package that statement with the "the majority of Palestinians oppose Israel's right to exist" and "there will never be peace while they think this" statments to reach a different conclusion.

(2) This has nothing to do with my positions - you clearly don't read even my short posts before responding to them. I stated that I didn't think you were in favor of genocide - which part of that confused you?

(3) ok - the next time I'll just let the original guy direct you to the posts which generated his suggestion that you were in favor of ethic cleansing. I just thought it was funny that you got all indignant when it was pretty obvious where his claim was coming from.

(4) Well, Jimbo is indeed a genius, so there's no arguing there.

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IrishHand: "Sounds an awful lot like genocide to me, especially since you've consistently argued that most Palestinians object to Israel's existence."

[IrishHand]

IrishHand: [M's] concept of wiping them out as a pre-emptive measure sounds an awful lot like genocide to me, especially since you've consistently argued that most Palestinians object to Israel's existence.

I am baffled that you can't see how someone reading your arguments, especially in this thread, might conclude that you align with Israeli extremists who think ethnic cleansing might solve some of their problems. Of course, this doesn't make it so, and again, I don't happen to think you believe that - I just understand how another might suggest it (as one did - and not me, despite the hate being directed my way) based on what you've written. I'll break it down again, since the first two times seem to have missed you:

M: The majority of Palestinians are opposed to Israel's existence.
M: There will never be peace while this is so.
M: I would seriously consider killing people who composed an organization which refused to acknowledge the right of my state to exist and was prepared to act in furtherance of their beliefs.

Ultimattely, I think the point that the above poster was trying to make is that many of your positions are in fact consistent with those of anti-Palestinian Israeli extremists. While that might not include the most extreme of their possible arguments, it's certainly something worth considering. I think that Chris in particular has done an excellent job explaining why your anti-Palestinian views are hardly more noble than the corresponding anti-Israeli views held by Palestinian extremists.

[Chris Alger]

Nothing in Pipe's article suggests that he's drawing the fine distinctions you are. Maybe a better example for you would be Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, claiming it to be the umpteenth province of Iraq. Had it succeeded, it probably would have been absorbed into Iraq and poof! -- no more Kuwait.

I'm not aware of any Palestinian movement to do the same to Israel, and make it, for example, part of Syria. Many Palestinians would like to "liberate" Israel and expunge the Jewish state. That doesn't mean they want to obliterate all traces of the country of Israel or the institutions that comprise that state, and it certainly doesn't imply that they want to expel Jews from Palestine. I think it's pretty obvious what their beef is, regardless of whether we agree with it.

"I'm sure you can see why one view is at its core ultimately more intractable and extreme, less subject to compromise, than the other view."

No, I don't see this at all. Consider the history of the respective positions. The Zionists have moved from acceptance, in principle (probably not in reality), of a fully sovereign Palestinian state toward their present position, which spans the spectrum from no state whatsoever to holing up the Arabs in a series of bantustan-like "cantons" surronded by Israeli settlements and the army to protect them -- and that's the extreme left-wing view of Barak. The Palestinians have moved from nearly unanimous consensus that no Jewish state should exist in Palestine toward the present position of the PLO and PA, which is Isreal remains secure within it's pre-1967 borders with a permanently disarmed Palestine, utterly dependent on Israel's economy, next door. This has been the stalemated position for more than a decade. Further, the Palestinians want to negotiate, and Israel refuses. I don't see how you can suggests that Palestinians are guilty of harboring the more "intractable" view.

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I didn't say that.

Take what I said literally and read nothing into it please--I don't see what should be hard about that. Don't paraphrase me because you get it wrong--significantly wrong--every time. Hint: I didn't say #1 or #2, nor do I agre with #1 and #2 fully--my point is that Pipes' point is important enough that it should not be ignored. ""Should not be ignored" is not identical to "is 100% right."

More importantly, #3: I didn't say "who were (merely) prepared to act in furtherance of their beliefs"--because that could take many forms, some peaceful--I was referring to organized people intent on "killing me..etc." There's a big difference here because of the word "kill": when your enemy is engaged to kill you, it would be prudent of you to consider all possible avenues of self-defense.