Posted on 10/06/2001 10:02:00 AM PDT by Masada
Disaster doesn't always bring out the best in us.
Sometimes, tragically, it brings out the worst. A case in point: the finger-pointing in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, seeking to blame the atrocities on America's supposedly misguided support for Israel — and on Jewish Americans who supposedly manipulate the system to tilt our policy the wrong way.
No, it's not a national groundswell. You hear it mainly on the margins, and if past experience is a guide, it will stay there. Still, the variety and persistence of the finger-pointers is startling: left-wing professors in California, right-wing fanatics in Idaho, Arab-American activists in Michigan, smart-alec journalists in New York. There's enough of it to be worrying.
In reply, important voices are being raised from within the Jewish community, declaring that the attacks and the hatred behind them have nothing to do with America's support for Israel. Osama bin Laden and his ilk are motivated, we are reminded, by larger, more global issues: suspicion of modernity, secularism, democracy and the Western civilization that champions them. On the policy plane, his passion is driving American troops off the holy soil of Arabia. Israel isn't on his screen, except perhaps tangentially, as one more example of the West's corrupting influence.
The fact is, things are a bit more complicated than that. Bin Laden and his allies are driven, above all, by an extremist version of fundamentalist Islam. And Islam, as many of those same defenders of Israel have noted countless times, regards the mere existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East as a cardinal theological challenge. Indeed, pessimists in the pro-Israel community have been pointing for decades to the power of Islam's territorial imperative as a reason to dismiss Israel-Arab peacemaking as impossibly naïve. It's hard to see how that reading squares with the notion that the world's most dangerously fanatical Islamist just isn't interested in Israel.
But we needn't search the theology texts to divine bin Laden's motives. He's spelled them out repeatedly in various public statements. He's on a self-declared holy war against "Crusaders and Jews," with a three-fold goal: "liberating" Mecca and the rest of Arabia from American "occupation," "liberating" Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem from Jewish "occupation" and lifting the Western embargo on Iraq. They're always stated in that three-fold form, and usually in that order.
The fact is, Israel is one of the issues, though not the only one, driving bin Laden and his cohorts. It is foolish to deny it; that merely undermines the credibility of Israel's defenders at a time when Israel sorely needs defending. The best defense is always the truth.
And the truth is that America and Israel are allies, not because of some cabal of Jewish lobbyists, but because their two peoples demand it. America's support for Israel is not misguided, but profoundly moral. America and Israel share a deep community of values. They are partners in the democratic enterprise, cities on a hill devoted to something larger than themselves. Both are imperfect, at times painfully so. Both become impatient when their imperfections are pointed out. Still, both are societies striving to represent the better nature of humankind, and for that reason they deserve defending.
If America's defense of her values sometimes puts her on the firing line, then that's the right place to be. That's not a hard case to make. Most Americans, like most Israelis, understand it instinctively.
If it is true that Israel is the apple of God's Eye, how, then, can it also be true that, "All People are created equal".
If it is true that God has a favorite group then this Nation's founding premise is false.
Where should I place my allegiance?
Forgive me, but what is "Israel"? Is it the Jews, wheresoever they may be found? Is it the Zionist polity, which already numbers more than a million Arab citizens? If the present demographic trend continues, and Jews one day become a minority within the Zionist state, will we still be required to subscribe to the idea that this majority-Muslim political entity is the apple of God's eye?
I ask only for information.
Bad analogy and more rhetorical statements.
Now compare the Mylai incident with IDF actions that have killed many multiples more noncombatants than Calley's units did. The number of Vietnamese women, children and elderly gunned down in cold blood at Mylai is far less than just the number of Palestinian KIDS shot down in cold blood in just 12 months by IDF soldiers firing "rubber" and live bullets at them -- firing at KIDS, mind you -- at point-blank range.
Your analogy is false and it doesn't matter how you play it out. But with respect to Israel and the Arabs. Israel's fought three main wars. All of them started by the Arabs. Yes, even the one in 1967 (the Arabs declared a de facto war by Nasser's ordering the UNEF out of the Sinai and moving his forces there; Egypt closing the Straits of Tiran (Johnson as much stated this was an act of war and it is by any international standard), Syrian congregating its forces in the Golan Heights; and other assorted provocative acts by the Arabs). Israel has since contended with Jihads, Intifadas, terrorism, etc. Arabs start wars and Intifadas. They then hide behind the skirts of women and the cribs of children and when there are civilian casualities they cry and whine and have people such as you use false analogies and fallacious historical arguments.
but this is Israel, of course, where Palestinians in the occupied territories have been so demonized and bestialized that Israelis
Last I checked the "Palestinians" were making Sbarro Pizza type monuments and filling their children with the vilest anti-Jew propaganda possible. For example, having their children dress up with fake body-bombs to prepare them mentally and spiritually for sacrifice to their false god allah.
These sickos always argue that these kids provide cover for gunmen, etc., and so are legitimate targets for lethal fire.
It's a fact that the terrorists use civilian areas as shields. This is an unequivocal fact. All your comments about warfare, etc. are mostly if not completely irrelevant and amount to nothing more than excess verbiage.
There are no war crimes committed by the Israelis as they are entitled as any nation state to defend their territorial integrity. If you think there is a war crime then go to the Hague and lay an indictment. I haven't seen one yet. There aren't any war crimes commited by Israel just rhetorical gamesmenship by you.
Now, after all that excess verbiage I'm waiting for you to start arguing for the REAL war criminals. Those Arabs and Islamics who slaughter each other - Hussein in Iraq gassing 300,000 Kurds for example. Too late about these though (not even a posthumus argument from you) like Assad in Syria who slaughtered wholesale dissidents in his won country and sponsoring various excursions against the Christians in Lebanon like in the Chuf and Aley areas where THOUSANDS of Christians were slaughtered under Assad's watchful eye. Or, King Hussein of Jordan who slaughtered thousands of Palestinians in Black September. These were likely your heroes though.
I, Goy-boy, have only one safe option - to condemn the stone throwers. To do otherwise is anti-Semitic.
This Goy American wonders, "Is one of the founding principles of my country false? Does God have a favorite?" Is this question, by itself, anti-Semitic?
http://www.terrorism.com/terrorism/Groups2.shtml
Take a look how many terrorist groups exist by Jews: 1 - KahaneChai/Kach. NO terrorism ascribable to them even though the ISRAELI government has outlawed them. And who killed its founder in the U.S. by the way?
Now. Here are the terrorist groups which are part of the pan Arab Islamic fascist cabal (including the "Palestinians"):
Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)
Abu Sayyaf Group
Al-'Asifa
Al-Fatah
Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya
al-Jihad
Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB)
Arab Revolutionary Brigades
Arab Revolutionary Council
Armed Islamic Group
Black September
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)
Fatah Revolutionary Council
15 May Organization
Force 17
HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
HAMAS Special Profile
Hizballah (Party of God)
Hizballah Special Profile
The Islamic Group (IG)
Islamic Jihad
Jihad Group
New iihad Group
Organization of the Oppressed on Earth
Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Special Profile
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Command (PFLP-SC)
Popular Struggle Front (PSF)
Revolutionary Justice Organization
Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims
Talaa'al-Fateh
Vanguards of Conquest
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Really looks like the "Palestinians" and the rest of the pan Arab Islamic and Islamic fascist cabal are peace loving and certainly not "war criminals". Only Jews are "war criminals". Right?
Denisw's page even says something about how boring it is to live here in thge U.S.. Well now his feuds have made Americans victims. For what? To be abused as "anti-semites" when they suggest that a little reasonableness might be in order?
Funny thing is, I wasn't raised here and yet this country commands my total loyalty. Denisw WAS born here, and he flies the flag of foreign nation as his first allegiance.
After the U.S. deals with Mr. Osama, we should all do some serious thinking about what constitutes a friend.
I, for one, can't buy Masada's assertion that the United States was brought into being solely to support Israel with money, muscle and blood.
Eh, denisw, one last question: What's the deal about carrying the bride and groom on a chair? We almost jammed their heads through the ceiling tonight.
My American flag flies outside ya retard.
Hope that clears it up for you hot shot.
Really? With a glorious name like "Masada" how can you doubt? How could a person take the name, "Masada", and then blaspheme that inspirational history with lies?
Nah!
We were established expressly to bleed for Israel - right or wrong.
You are either:
1) in the wrong forum
2) a shit disturber
3) brave
4) articulate but stupid
5) A Vulcan
6) drunk
Nice rant!
When you grow up, you'll have to earn one, too. Fat chance you'll ever actually go to Israel and live with the consequences of your grade-school bellicosity. Better to let other people get killed, eh. Snot-nosed cowardly little schmuck.
the bit in bold speaks for itself, no?
As Masada said, serving Israel's interests is the only reason the U.S. was created.
the bit in bold speaks for itself, no?
As Masada said, serving Israel's interests is the only reason the U.S. was created.
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