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.
Yeah, just fatten them up, herd them in a slaughter house, and make it quick. How was that hamburger bud? I guess though, you're the god for the ethical treatment of animals? No? Then don't try to pontificate about "kosher" eating.
"PLO documents can in no way be regarded as Islamic. The PLO leaders are a gang of criminals and thieves, and Arabs will be the main victims of any supposed "Palestinian State" under their leadership.
I do not believe that Islam is the factor preventing normalization between Arabs and the State of Israel. The real problem is that members of the ruling classes in Arab countries believe their authority and power would be threatned by democracy, modernization, and education in the Arab world. They use a distorted interpretation of Islam as a political tool, and unfortunately the majority of uneducated Arabs believe their poisonous propaganda.
Unfortunately, there are Arabs who believe that they must fight against Israel until they completely destroy it (a tragedy which I do not believe the God of Israel will ever permit to happen - Never again!).
Unfortunately, there are also naive and foolish Israelis who believe, incredibly to me, that they will achieve "peace" with their Arab neighbours by giving the murderer "Arafat" [el-Husseini] a State, an army, etc. This is insane. You Jews are supposedly famous for your intelligence. How can some of your "leaders" be so stupid?"
:
Shaykh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi is a Member of the International Council of the Root & Branch Association. Prof. Palazzi is
Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Association (AMI), an Imam of the Italian Islamic Community (ICCII) and Director of
the Community's Cultural Institute. Prof. Palazzi holds a Ph.D in Islamic Sciences by decree of the Grand Mufti of the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia. Prof. Palazzi is also Muslim Co-Chairman of the Islam-Israel Fellowship.
If you want to keep "Afghan Alumni" from being active in a given area, you'd better make damn sure you don't antagonize the local people.
Or, the "Afghan Alumni" be considered an outlaw organization and pursued to their eventual destruction.
Then this same person heaps never-ending verbal abuse over any Jewish researchers or historians who suggest the slightest aggressive traits associated with Zionism, or who deviate in the least from Israel's official Jews-can-do-no-wrong version of history.
Splendid. You guys up for a little rock climbing in the Hindu Kush? Should we wear Star of David patches along with our US flags, to make sure the non-Arabs get the right idea of who our "allies" are?
You leave the local people alone, and the "Afghan Alumni" won't show up in the first place. They're not a factor in the Balkans any more, if you'll notice.
Well, at least there are more than a couple anti-zionists out there. If you're not a pan Arab Islamic lover and you preach contrary to that doctrine your life will usually be very short indeed. Particularly if you reside in those loving Arab Islamic lands. So much for freedom of thought though in Islamic lands.
Tell you Pallies to get their sh*t together and have their rich Arab oil sheik brothers help them if need be. Stop imposing on Israel like a bunch of beggars and welfare addicts. Leave the 6 million Jews of Israel the hell alone.
Your poor little Pallie act don't play very well after the Muslim 911 attack on America.
Let's see if it works in Afghanistan first. If not successful in stopping the terrorist "Afghan alumni" then we'll consult you on how to kiss the feet of terrorists and act like good little dhimmi.
Whine incessantly (just like the Muslims do) about US aid to little Israel
Israel only gets 3 billions per year while $50 billion is spent by us on Gulf security and security for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We have troops stationed in those two nations. Bin Ladin wants the US out and so does Saddam Hussein
| source link Holding The Bag In the Gulf The New York Times, September 18, 1996 By Lawrence J. Korb, After the gulf war, the Navy created the Fifth Fleet, stationed permanently in the gulf. It consists of 21 ships manned by 15,000 sailors and marines, along with 12 more ships with equipment for ground forces and about 250 planes to protect the fleet and enforce the no-flight zones over Iraq. In addition, there are 10,000 people on the ground in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, along with enough equipment for another Army brigade. On various occasions since the gulf war, including this month, the United States has augmented this standing force by sending a second aircraft carrier, a squadron of stealth fighters and additional air defense groups and bombers. According to Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution, the total cost of maintaining the United States force in the gulf is at least $50 billion per year. The purpose of spending all this money is to insure that neither Iran nor Iraq threatens the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But the United States currently imports only about 10 percent of it's oil from the Persian Gulf — some $10 billion to $15 billion worth, depending upon world prices. |
You really don't know too much about Israel's population, do you, dumb-ass? That 6 million includes a couple million of your beloved "Pallies."
If we have an ounce of sense we will use pro-Western Afghans who will take their country back without a single US soldier being lost. But this time, America is going to stand by them instead of running out of there for fear of some whiny Zionists carping about giving assistance to "fundamenalists."
And I'll be the first to break the bad news to you. We goyims aren't going to wait for approval from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or New York when we do this either.
Many are complicit, some are hapless.
Your explanations and logic would leave the average Palestinian in the dust
Actually no. There is vast beautiful territory in those expansive Arab Islamic and Islamic lands. Full of oil and work for each of them. Well, as long as they can keep from choosing the wrong sides in conflicts (i.e., Gulf War and their support for Hussein- hence hundreds of thousands cleansed from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia or; the attempted coup d'etat of Hussein in 1970, or; starting a civil war in Lebanon, etc.)
In my view, an Israel that can do things like THIS to its subjugated Palestinians has no right to complain that it stands to be a victime and target of the Palestinians and whatever Arab allies thay have managed to scrape up
Well, that certainly is a "defence" for such actions as the Sbarro Pizza slaughter, Disco slaughter, etc.
Israel could have had all the security it needed with the 1968 Allon Plan, which would have minimized Palestinian
dispossession.
Nope. That's because the belligerent Arab States were not prepared to sign on to Resolution 242. The last time Israel did the land for peace swap, Israel gave up the oil fields it developed in the Sinai and the whole of the Sinai of course. What did it have to show for it? A dead Anwar Sadat, and Arab terrorism which has increased exponentially.
The $50 billion is for for our benefit, not theirs. We prop up unpopular regimes so we can get cheap gas to put in our SUV's.
We could care less about any of the people there, and they know it.
Alternatively, we could buy oil from the Jews and save ourselves $50 million.
Do you think Mark Rich can be of any assistance?
Good. We should encourage native populations to root out Islamic terrorism wherever it's found. Therefore the "Palestinians" should be encouraged to root out the Islamic Jihad, the Hamas, the Hezbullah, etc. Until that heppens the "Palestinians" can kiss a separate state goodbye.
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.