GOOD, damn it!
I want maximum "rage" so Israel's enemies makes themselves known. Like these guys...
So the IDF can deal with them like this...
Posted on 04/20/2002 10:06:54 PM PDT by LarryLied
It's a good thing Israel did not kill Marwan Barghouti; but it's a shame that it arrested him. Following dozens of assassinations, the Israel Defense Forces suddenly proved that when it wants to arrest someone instead of assassinating him, it knows how to do it quite well. If Israel had only adopted the same approach with Fatah activist Dr. Thabet Thabet, or the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Ali Mustafa, plus a long list of other targeted Palestinians, the intifada's flames would be a lot lower and a lot of blood would have been spared on both sides.
Regrettably, however, Israel did not take the wiser course of action and allow the Tanzim leader to remain in hiding, the way it has done with some of the other leaders of the Palestinian security services whom, Israel says, have been involved in terror attacks. Arresting Barghouti may have been just, but it is not wise. Now he'll become the Palestinian Nelson Mandela.
Now that Barghouti is under arrest, Israel must put him on trial in a civilian court, as befits a political leader suspected of serious crimes. As for the difference between civilian courts and military ones, it has already been said that it's about the same as the difference between a philharmonic orchestra and a military band - the same instruments, but with different results.
Barghouti has a much greater chance of getting a fair trial - to which, like any suspect, he is entitled - in a civilian court in Jerusalem than in the military tribunals of Beit El. The court hearings should be open to the public, so that the representatives of the Shin Bet security service and the State Prosecution are required to display the evidence against the man to the entire world. And do we still need to point out that Barghouti should not be tortured, as happened the last time he was arrested? Humiliating him will also fan the fames of rage in the Palestinian and Arab street.
Of no less importance is to listen to the accused. Not only could the Shin Bet learn quite a bit from him, all Israelis should take heed as well. Look at Barghouti and you'll understand the entire story. The path he took was the only one we showed the Palestinians - a path on which we tripped and pushed them deeper and deeper into despair and ultimately to violence.
Barghouti may be responsible for ruthless terror attacks, but Israel is likely to long for leaders like him, because his heirs will be much, much worse. Full of vengeance and hate, they will not be partners to a compromise like he would be. "You think tomorrow they'll find someone more moderate than me, someone to make [Chief of Staff Shaul] Mofaz coffee in the morning?" he quipped to me a few months ago when he feared he was on Israel's death list.
Barghouti did not begin by killing. As a politician, who apparently turned into a terrorist, it cannot be said of him that he did not try the path of negotiations. He was a peace activist. Few Palestinians were as active as he in promoting peace. He was deeply involved in contacts with many Israelis - and not only ones from the left - and never hid his admiration for certain elements of Israeli life. "I wake up in the morning and look West, not East," he once told me. In those days, he marched in peace demonstrations, his arms locked with those of Meretz lawmakers Dedi Zucker and Zahava Gal-On.
That image may be surreal now, just like the days when he used to take his children to the Safari animal park in Ramat Gan. He would visit the political parties' central committees and MKs, making friends with some of them on joint delegations overseas, never missing a meeting and believing all the time in the purpose of the dialogue. "When will you finally understand that nothing frightens the Palestinians the way the settlements do?" he asked me on Land Day in 1997, while we drove around burning tires in his little car.
A few months ago, while already in hiding, he still called himself "the Palestinian peace camp." An alumnus of Israeli prisons, Barghouti is practically the last vestige of those Palestinians who knew Israelis well and even admired some of their characteristics. "I tell myself how patient we were," he said recently. "I was ready to meet with Shas and the Likud - with everyone. To talk. To persuade. But the Israelis don't want to understand." Now, the beloved has become an enemy. "I know how I've changed," he admits.
More than anything else - and he should be believed on this - he wanted an end to the occupation, not the killing of Israelis and the destruction of their state. But the path grew longer and longer, until, as far as he was concerned, it was never-ending. As in any criminal case, pay attention to the motive for the crime: Barghouti's motive was politically justified, even if his actions cannot be. The politician became the leader of a violent organization that chose terror. At first, he limited his organization to actions only inside the occupied territories, apparently escalating its efforts until he eventually sent suicide bombers to Tel Aviv. "Why should you feel safe in Tel Aviv when we don't feel secure in Ramallah?" he asked.
The image of Barghouti shackled by Israeli soldiers is also a picture that goes back terribly far in time. The former prisoner and deportee, who became a leader and a legitimate partner for dialogue, is once again in irons. Israeli tanks are in the casbahs, soldiers are in the refugee camps, the Ketziot Prison has reopened, and Barghouti is under arrest once again. The long path Israelis and Palestinians walked together seems to have vanished, as if it had never existed at all. When Barghouti is released again from prison, he'll be even more extreme. Maybe by then, there will be nobody to talk with.
"This is our gift for Independence Day," one IDF officer so arrogantly defined his arrest. No gift could be more depressing.
>
>
>
Sabra and Shatila
Frequently Asked Questions:
- What is 'Sabra & Shatila?
- Who killed the Arabs in the town?
- But didn't Israel knowingly allow the Christians into the town in order to perpetrate the massacre?
- How many were killed? Were women and children targeted?
- Why did the Christians kill those Arabs?
- Doesn't Israel have any remorse or regrets over what happened?
- Did Ariel Sharon allow the massacre to happen?
What is 'Sabra & Shatila?
- Sabra & Shatila are Arab "refugee camps" located in Lebanon. It is in fact a town used for terrorist training, and targeting of Christian communities, and ultimately Israel. A massacre was perpetrated on its residents in 1982, which, like Deir Yassin in Jerusalem, and Qana in southern Lebanon, is blamed on Israel by the anti-Zionists, and held up as an example of Israel's "brutality".
Who killed the Arabs in the town?
- The Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia was responsible for the massacres that occurred at the two Beirut-area refugee camps on September 16-17, 1982.
But didn't Israel knowingly allow the Christians into the town in order to perpetrate the massacre?
- Israeli troops allowed the Phalangists to enter Sabra and Shatila to root out terrorist cells believed located there. It had been estimated that there may have been up to 200 armed men in the camps working out of the countless bunkers built by the PLO over the years, and stocked with generous reserves of ammunition.
Israel had allowed the Phalange to enter the camps as part of a plan to transfer authority to the Lebanese, and accepted responsibility for that decision.
How many were killed? Were women and children targeted?
- When Israeli soldiers ordered the Phalangists out, they found hundreds dead (estimates range from 460 according to the Lebanese police, to 700-800 calculated by Israeli intelligence). The dead, according to the Lebanese account, included 35 women and children. The rest were men: Palestinians, Lebanese, Pakistanis, Iranians, Syrians and Algerians. The killings came on top of an estimated 95,000 deaths that had occurred during the civil war in Lebanon from 1975-1982.
Why did the Christians kill those Arabs?
- The killings were perpetrated to avenge the murders of Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel and 25 of his followers, killed in a bomb attack earlier that week.
Doesn't Israel have any remorse or regrets over what happened?
The Kahan Commission of Inquiry, formed by the Israeli government in response to public outrage and grief, found that Israel was indirectly responsible for not anticipating the possibility of Phalangist violence. Israel instituted the panel's recommendations, including the dismissal of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Gen. Raful Eitan, the Army Chief of Staff.
The Kahan Commission, declared former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, was "a great tribute to Israeli democracy....There are very few governments in the world that one can imagine making such a public investigation of such a difficult and shameful episode."
Ironically, while 300,000 Israelis demonstrated in Israel to protest the killings, little or no reaction occurred in the Arab world. Outside the Middle East, a major international outcry against Israel erupted over the massacres. The Phalangists, who perpetrated the crime, were spared the brunt of the condemnations for it.
By contrast, few voices were raised in May 1985, when Muslim militiamen attacked the Shatila and Burj-el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camps. According to UN officials, 635 were killed and 2,500 wounded. During a two-year battle between the Syrian-backed Shiite Amal militia and the PLO, more than 2,000, including many civilians, were reportedly killed. No outcry was directed at the PLO or the Syrians and their allies over the slaughter. International reaction was also muted in October 1990 when Syrian forces overran Christian-controlled areas of Lebanon. In the eight-hour clash, 700 Christians were killed-the worst single battle of Lebanon's Civil War.
Now hold on isn't assassination the way democracies handle thugs, they don't arrest them or anything do they? No they assassinate them. That's the ticket right?
If I have created the impression that, "It's Sharon" then of coarse the present "predicate" is the result of each side's difficulty with facing up to what WILL HAVE TO BE DONE.
The Oslo process was the victim of negotiations in bad faith. The five year time frame was negotiated to death. On the Israeli side a major culprit was the right (Women In Green etc) who realized that at the end of a successful negotiation would be the end of settlements and an armed Palestine (insane in their opinion).
The Palestinians could never swallow the impossibility of "return".
BiBi was elected and did much to appease the Right while "proving" to Arafat that Oslo was a negotiation in bad faith.
Toss in Clinton & Barak . . .
Toss in Sharon's election - and all that followed.
Look, nachum, neither side is "clean". But defining the calamity in black and white - good/evil - isn't getting it.
It would also mean that the left wing in Israel; the communists, unionists, hardcore socialists, and Arabs sitting in the Knesset all were negotiating in good faith?
Also, since you are assuming some sort of equality of blame, you are saying that the Arabs also negotiated in bad faith. That Arafat knew that he could not contain or speak for Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Mullahs in their madrassas and mosques. Right? That he knew that he could never have any sort of concensus of his groups because of the impossible combined demands of all of them.
For instance, Arafat knew that the Jews would not give up Jerusalem or the Judean hills that were used as Arab rocket launch pads and sniper nests in the 1960's. Arafat (in your world) probably realized that the Jews, having fresh memories of 1967 and Lebanon, would not give away sensitive strategic locations won in desparate wars. So knowing this, he stored food, military, supplies, and trained an aggressive army for war when the negotians would have to fail.
And- in your world of bad faith, the Jews reactively strategized for the response to the brutal attacks that would necessarily come when everything finally came to a standstill? All before the negotiations began-
Sorry Phil, I just do not buy it. No we do not live in a perfect world, but the Israelis gave all they could reasonable give and it was never enough for the Arabs. I do not think that there was bad faith at all. I feel, just as I have always felt that any negotiations of land for peace was doomed at the start. By the very premise of the negotiation, it was doomed to failure. It is the history of the region and of the Arabs themselves. I won't use the term bad faith, I would use the term fate.
Your statements are the essence of the past and, more than likely, the future . . . extermination/transfer/annexation - as you and the influential segment of Israel reject introspection and the accompanying first question of therapy, "What is my part?"
There actually was not as large a difference in policy between them as is commonly believed. Rabin was not Perez. It seems to me that what makes Rabin a 'good Jew' in your estimation is that he is a 'dead Jew'.
You come up with the most interesting terms to describe things. I like that- therapy.
So, despite everything I said in my last post, you are saying that the Jews who went to Oslo, actually did so planning to annex Judea and Samaria? In addition to that, they must be in need of therapy because you envision the Jews holding themselves blameless? And- because they hold themselves blameless, they cannot negotiate in good faith? And, you hold me personally responsible for your sense of trajedy along with any Jew who believes in the Torah, along with (obviously) with the Muslims who beleive in the Koran.
That must be the case as we are stating that both sides are the same. -And that we, the right wing reactionary Jews and mind numbed robot-like Arabs must all sit down and think "what is my part" in order to resolve matters.
An interesting fantasy Phil.
If I was vindictive, I might also hold you responsible for matters. I could say that you and other "Peace Now" types were responsible for the death of Jews. You and others like you were responsible for empowering a thug (Arafat), and arming his mercenaries. You and others like sat and made apologies for murder and mayhem while scolding the victims for defending themselves.
I could say that the Jews were forced by the US to go to Madrid, were forced to go to Oslo, that even Barak was shoved down their throats by good intentioned peace now types with Bill Clinton as their titular head. I could say that all of the recent violence we have witnessed was caused by you Phil. You and a legion of people who are like you. No different than Neville Chamberlain, with much the same result.
Gideon Levy is an example of the Israeli that I had always admired, intelligent, wise, and with a humanity that is amongst the most noble I have encountered. I hope the present problems bring forth MORE not LESS Gideon Levys.
Good. Bring it on already.
GOOD, damn it!
I want maximum "rage" so Israel's enemies makes themselves known. Like these guys...
So the IDF can deal with them like this...
Yes. You do appear to side with and admire Leftwingers. :) I have noticed that. After all you have linked (and seem to admire) the British anti-Bush Leftie, Robert Fisk.
You still 'pro-Israel', Mr. Lied? Just checking. ;-o
Well there are tons of reasons why America cannot and should not ever trust Israel, you know those reasons from 'art students' to Pollard to tech transfers to our enemies to the Liberty assault in 1967 to:
China-Israel ties worry US
One element of the diplomatic crisis that erupted between Washington and Beijing this spring, after a US surveillance aircraft narrowly survived a close encounter with a Chinese warplane, went almost unnoticed in the drama surrounding the fate of the American crew.
Photographs released by the Pentagon of two Chinese jets that had shadowed the EP-3E Aries II on April 1 showed they were armed with Israeli-made Python air-to-air missiles. It was the first public proof of what had for years been an open secret in the defence community – that Israel is a supplier of sophisticated modern weaponry to the Chinese military.
'We People of Faith Stand Firmly With Israel', Ralph Reed
Looks like you are out off step with the GOP.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.