| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 7/9 |
| 2001/9/13 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Israel] UID:36295 Activity:nil |
9/12 So why do the western powers antagonize the Arabs the way they do?
\_ So who do Arabs antagonize westerners the way they do?
\_ So why do Arabs antagonize westerners the way they do?
a) why does Israel insist on creating "settlements" in Arab areas?
\_ Because God told them to.
b) why does Israel insist that Jerusalem must belong only to them?
\_ As opposed to say the PLO who will not let jews or christians
or any non-muslim into Jerusalem? Yeah let's just hand it over
to a bunch of inhuman thugs.
\_ This comment is idiotic. Non-Muslims go to Jerusalem all
the time.
\_ Because it is (or was) in Jewish hands. If turned over
to the PLO, all access to Jerusalem will be restricted
to muslims.
\_ Historically, when Jeruslam was in Arab or Muslim
hands, it was open to Christian pilgrims from around
the world.
c) why has Israel used live fire on rock-throwing Palestinian youths,
treated them like second hand citizens, subjected children to random
violent interrogations and searches and seizures?
\_ why does the media only show the rock throwing, and not
the molotovs and shots against the Israeli troups?
\_ Because the PLO employs children and youths as delivery
mechanisms for its bombs etc.
Oh yeah, let's not forget that the PLO also uses live fire,
its just that you don't see it on CNN.
\_ you do see it on CNN. but obviously these children are only
going to hate the more when all of them are treated with the
assumption of guilt. anyway Palestine is just one issue and
I think not the most important one to the rest of the Arabs;
palestinian terrorists seem mostly to target israel.
\_ Perhaps you should read this:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-horowitz091001.shtml
The PLO isn't kids who are feeling bad.
\_ written by a jew.
c) why has/does the United States prop up corrupt regimes in
South America, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc. etc... just to secure oil
and stop the "communist plot to take over the world"? CIA-assisted
coups all over the place supporting the same dictators we publicly
denounce.
Terrorists aren't crazy. They're incredibly desperate. If you think
about it, terrorism is the only deterrance to the western powers in
their conduct. If you were living under extreme oppression and the US
was the ultimate power behind your oppressors you'd cheer too when a
blow was made that actually meant something to them. There are so many
more issues here than people understand it's sickening. Of course the
tragedy is sickening too. But it's not like these muslims just randomly
hate the us for no reason, and blow themselves up for jollies.
\_ You should read this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14274-2001Sep11.html
\_ What oppression? Most of those Arab countries are prospering
with oil exports. I would make the exception with Iraq, who
invaded another country, Iran, who kidnapped US embassy workers
and has since sponsored terrorism, and the Palestinians who
may have some cause for rebellion but not to the point of
crashing planes into buildings.
\_ BTW Iran is *not* an Arab country. It's a Persian country.
http://www.freep.com/jobspage/arabs/arab2.html
\_ In Iraq, most of the people are dirt poor. Only a few control oil.
\_ I'd want to the police to shoot live rounds at rock throwers, too.
There's this silly misconception among people that they don't
deserve to be shot at if they throw fist-sized rocks at soldiers.
\_ at children? maybe that's because you're a sick fuck.
\_ a "child" with a handgrenade is still an enemy that needs
to be taken out.
\_ Too bad most motd bleeding hearts don't understand this.
\_ nah, it's usually kids intermingled with young adults
oh yeah, and calm down silly
\_ tell that to those advocating turning the middle east into
pavement and pointing to islam as the driving force here.
tell that to all the western leaders who spout predictable
crap about "terrorism will not stand" without any blip about
why we suffer terrorism. even the media has every fact you
might want to know...except in the faq there's no entry for
"why".
\_ nah, you can tell them that. I'm just making a single
point about rock throwing
\_ The PLO can lock up individuals in Palesitian radical factions
they suspect of planning suicide bombings.
The Israelis could stop building settlements.
Now, tell me why neither has occurred?
\_ Because the palestinians want more land, and Israel wants
all of their land back. You know, the land they had for
a long time, promised to them by God?
\_ You fucking idiot.
\_ Man, your ignorance is truly frightening.
\_ Your unfounded namecalling is truely frightening.
Are you incapable of logical refutation, then?
Display your "enlightenment" in the face of "ignorance"
\_ Why? Unfounded namecalling takes much less effort.
\_ I've got yer "logical refutation" right here pal.
\_ By your "logic", most of Europe should belong to Italy.
The US should be obliterated and the native Americans'
descendants given control. And I should own the world, since
mine are the Old Gods of Atlantis, who granted my people all
dominions of Earth. This was 20000 BC by the way.
\_ so what criteria do you propose to decide which
group owns the land? current possesion?
Okay, in that case Israel currently possesses a large
chunk of that land, so they should kick all the
self-professed palestinians out, and immediately built
settlements on every square inch of unsettled land.
When they surround a "palestinian" city, then they can
be considered as posessing the vicinity, so Israal should
be able to kick them out of those areas too.
You're missing the up-side of the biblical
interpretation. The bible has specific BOUNDARIES on
the land of Israel. Once they get that land, there will
be no further aggression from their side.
Unlike the palestinians, who just want as much land
as they can grab peacefully, and then as much on top
of that as they can get by force.
\_ dude, the bible is not a legal fucking document.
your obvious bias means this conversation can go nowhere.
the boundaries in the bible were an empire at its height,
in ancient times for a relatively brief period. a lot of
different peoples have lived there before and since. if
you don't understand compromise you're as vile as those
bombers.
\_ You cannot compromise with these people. To believe
that it is possible to do so foolish and ignorant.
The only "compromise" or "settlement" (pardon the pun)
that will appease the muslim race is the utter and
total destruction of the nation of israel, the jewish
race and anyone found to be sympathetic to zionism.
To any sane human being, these are unacceptable terms
which can never be accepted.
which can never be accepted. - ntop
\_ you learned your lessons well, sonny.
there is no muslim race.
secondly, building settlements in palestinian areas
is far from even attempting to compromise. sounds
like you're the one who is unable to compromise. |
| 7/9 |
|
| www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-horowitz091001.shtml Hardball, Mideast-Style Liquidation as a political tool. By Ami Horowitz, a freelance writer in New York. September 10, 2001 3:20 p.m. This past week five bombs exploded across population centers in Jerusalem. Israel responded by rocketing a convoy of known terrorists, killing two of the three intended targets. Israel has been attacked from nearly every quarter regarding this response to the savage terrorism which the Palestinians are perpetrating upon the Israeli populace. Even the United States, by every account Israel's best friend, has joined in the chorus, albeit not directly, by blindly repeating the same mantra of moral equivalence, "violence by both sides," and "cycle of violence." Such morally damaging phrases fail at capturing the truth of what is happening in Israel, which is that the Israeli response of targeting terrorists and destroying Palestinian military infrastructure (when they are empty) is laughable comparable to the Palestinian butchery on Israeli civilians using suicide bombers. The Israeli practice of liquidation, preemptive targeting, or assassination, call it what you will, is an effective tool against the Palestinian attacks. In fact it is an extremely moral response to a strategy that is anything but. Israel's goal is to eliminate the middle tier of Palestinian leaders, who are recruiting, training, and directing the cadre of suicide bombers that are essentially holding Israeli society hostage. It is important to unmask exactly who is being targeted by Israel and not to be led by the Palestinian propaganda machine, which exclaims that Israel is targeting political leaders. Politics and terrorism are inexorably intertwined in Palestinian society. Mahmoud Karmi, one of the targets, is personally responsible for the killing of six Israelis, of which two were peacenik restaurateurs from Tel Aviv who were kidnapped, tortured, and killed. The last Israeli targeted killing was PFLP commander in the West Bank and Gaza, Ali Zabri. Aside from being one of the most effective terrorist organizations in the 70's and 80's, when it was responsible for the killing of more than a dozen Americans, Zabri has been personally responsible for over half a dozen bombs in Israel this year alone. Israel has made the strategic choice to selectively target these criminals in polished surgical operations, which by and large kill only the intended targets, often time putting Israeli soldiers at risk in order to do so. This avoids the painful process of Israel gearing up its significantly larger and more powerful army and engaging in real combat, which would prove disastrous for the Palestinians. Israel rarely chooses the military option first. As in this case, Israel has implored Arafat for years to arrest the known terrorists and their handlers, but Arafat has steadfastly refused to make any meaningful effort. Let there be no mistake about it, Arafat has not only refused to take action against the terrorists — he gives them tacit approval. Arafat owns the military infrastructure of the Palestinian people, and he knows exactly who and where the terrorists are. If he possessed the will, he could wipe out the terror cells, particularly because he has no judicial restraints. Arafat chooses not to because the terrorists play a very useful purpose for him. In fact after he makes weak condemnations in English soon after a particularly horrendous attack (almost always done so with pressure from Colin Powell), he follows that with praise for the murderers in Arabic, a very important distinction. The terrorists allow Arafat to inflict an enormous amount of pain on Israel, while giving him the illusion of deniability. The reality is that his address is where the final accountability lies. He bore that responsibility when he shrewdly negotiated quasi-sovereignty over much of the West Bank. He has now forced Israel's hand when it comes to how they can deal with the terrorist threat. When the State Department attacks Israel's action as being provocative one can not help but wonder at the hypocrisy. The United States has engaged in far more confrontational operations, such as lobbing dozens of cruise missiles into Afghanistan, killing Osama bin Laden's terrorists in training. One of the more morally dubious examples was when U.S helicopters attempted to assassinate Muhammad Adid, and in the process inadvertently killed hundreds of Somali citizens. Even more laughable is the Palestinian claim that the explicit targeting of these terrorists is "extra judicial." This coming from an entity that cultivates the "judicially appropriate" terrorist organizations. Further, the Palestinians have engaged in a systematic "cleansing" of its own population, by arresting and executing hundreds of "collaborators." These collaborators are rounded up by the Palestinian police force and put on show trials, which can last as little as half an hour, with no real defense council. They are then put in jail or summarily publicly executed; it makes the Soviet judicial system look like the Peoples' Court. That is if they are lucky enough to avoid Arafat's roving gangs that simply shoot dead suspected collaborators where they stand. It is important to understand the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis as a state of war. From Israel's side it is a defensive war, all violence would end the day the Palestinians put down their arms and return to the negotiating table. The Palestinians are not in the least bit interested in this option and they are using whatever weapon they have at their disposal in this fight. The most effective weapon that they possess is the suicide bomber attacking its civilian targets. If they had a military that could rival Israel's they would use such power without an afterthought. Israel is on the other hand morally self-constrained; it chooses not to fight fire with fire. It has therefore devised a very practical and highly ethical way to battle such insidious combat. They simply target the masterminds behind the bombers. Instead of being vilified by the international community Israel should be lauded for its restraint. |
| www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14274-2001Sep11.html The End of Our Holiday From History By George F. Will Wednesday, September 12, 2001; Page A31 The acrid and unexpungeable odor of terrorism, which has hung over Israel for many years, is now a fact of American life. Yesterday morning Americans were drawn into the world that Israelis live in every day. Just at the moment when American political debate had reached a nadir of frivolousness, with wrangling about nonexistent "lockboxes" and the like, the nation's decade-long holiday from history came to a shattering end. After about a half-century of war and Cold War, Americans came to feel, understandably, that the world was too much with them, and they turned away from it. What happened Tuesday morning, and can happen again, underscored the abnormality of the decade. Terrorism is usually a compound of the tangible and the intangible -- of physical violence and political symbolism. The terrorists' targets yesterday were symbols not just of American power but also its virtues. The twin towers of the World Trade Center are, like Manhattan itself, architectural expressions of the vigor of American civilization. The Pentagon is a symbol of America's ability and determination to project and defend democratic values. These targets have drawn, like gathered lightning, the anger of the enemies of civilization. Those enemies are always out there. At times like this, confused thought breeds confused action. The American mind must not be cluttered with two familiar cliches. One is that terrorists are "desperate" people. Yesterday's terrorists probably were akin to soldiers, disciplined and motivated but not desperate. The second cliche is that terrorism is "senseless." Terrorism would not be such a plague if either cliche were true. Far from being senseless, much terrorism is sensible in that it is "cost-efficient." Or, to borrow the language of the stock exchange, terrorism is "highly leveraged." Even sporadic terrorism can necessitate the constant costly deployment of defense against it. Furthermore, the effectiveness of terrorism is strengthened by instant and mass communication, especially graphic journalism. One purpose is to deprive a government of respect and legitimacy by demonstrating that it is unable to guarantee public safety, the prerequisite of all justice. The United States, no fragile thing, is invulnerable to that purpose. However, many years ago a Chinese theorist said: "Kill one, frighten 10,000." A modern student of terrorism has correctly said that in the age of terrorism, the axiom should be: "Kill one, frighten 10 million." In thinking about terrorism, democracies are sometimes plagued by bad sociology and bad philosophy feeding upon each other. From the false idea that extreme action must have justification in the social environment, it is but a short intellectual stagger to the equally false idea that such acts can and should be eliminated by appeasement tarted up as reasonableness. The real aim of terrorism is not to destroy people or physical assets, still less to score anything remotely resembling military victories. Rather, its purpose is to demoralize. Terrorism acquires its power from the special horror of its randomness and from the magnification of it by modern media, which make the perpetrators seem the one thing they are not -- powerful. Terrorism is the tactic of the weak. To keep all this in perspective, Americans should focus on the fact that such acts as yesterday's do not threaten America's social well-being or even its physical strength. However, weapons of mass destruction are proliferating. Some of them, such as nuclear weapons, can be delivered to their targets in shipping containers or suitcases or the ubiquitous automobile. Imagine a car driving down Fifth Avenue spewing anthrax. The complexities of urban industrial societies make them inherently vulnerable to well-targeted attacks that disrupt the flows and interconnectedness of such societies. The new dependence on information technologies multiplies the vulnerabilities. The grim paradox is that terrorism, a particularly primitive act, has a symbiotic relationship with the sophistication of its targets. And opportunities for macro-terrorism directed against urban populations and their water, food-handling and information systems multiply as societies become more sophisticated. There can be no immunity from these vulnerabilities, but that is not a reason for fatalism. A proactive policy begins with anticipation. Therefore the first U.S. policy response must be to reevaluate and strengthen the national intelligence assets, particularly the CIA and FBI, which are the sine qua non of counterterrorism. Americans are slow to anger but mighty when angry, and their proper anger now should be alloyed with pride. They are targets because of their virtues -- principally democracy, and loyalty to those nations that, like Israel, are embattled salients of our virtues in a still-dangerous world. |
| www.freep.com/jobspage/arabs/arab2.html Credits 9 To which places do Arab Americans trace their ancestry? Arab Americans trace their roots to many places, including parts or all of Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Historically, Palestine was a country east of the Mediterranean Sea that includes Israel and parts of Jordan. As a distinct region, Palestine was under Ottoman control (a Turkish empire) and then British control until 1948, when the nation of Israel was created. Today, Palestinians share a collective national identity and are moving toward independence and self-rule as a country. The Palestinian National Council acts as the government. Although Iran borders Iraq, it is descended from the Persian empire and has a different language and cultural history than the Arab countries. The dominant language in Iran is Farsi, not Arabic, although other languages are spoken there as well. Persian is sometimes used to describe either the language or the ethnicity, but Farsi and Iranian are not interchangeable. Iran's location, the fact that it is an Islamic country and the similarity of its name to Iraq may confuse people. The four main language groups in the Middle East are Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish. Other significant language groups are Kurdish and Berber. Arabs are largest in terms of population and land holdings, and this handbook focuses on people who have emigrated from or who are descended from people in those areas. Assyrians, Berbers, Chaldeans and Kurds have languages rooted in pre-Arabic times. The Chaldeans are the largest of these groups in the United States. A religious and ethnic minority there, Chaldeans have some large communities in the United States, the largest in Detroit. The Chaldean Catholic Church has had connections with the Roman Catholic Church since 1551, and has been affiliated since 1830. The Chaldean Diocese of the Catholic Church in the United States has parishes in Michigan, California, Chicago and Arizona. Chaldeans and Assyrians, along with Arabs, are Semite people. The cultural foundation is similar, but the religious affiliation is different. Chaldeans and Arabs share some issues, but they have different identities. The Chaldean language is different from Arabic and, in Iraq, Chaldeans are religiously distinct from the Muslim majority. While Chaldeans foster a separate identity, they also have an Iraqi nationality and some shared concerns with Arabs. These nuances are lost by federal classifications, which sometimes reclassify Chaldeans as Arab or Iraqi. It is best to ask people how they would like to be identified, to be specific and, when relevant, to explain. |