Posted on 03/04/2002 4:01:26 PM PST by terilyn
Gunman Fires on Tel Aviv Restaurant
Mon Mar 4, 7:50 PM ET
JERUSALEM (AP) - A gunman opened fire at a Tel Aviv restaurant early Tuesday, wounding at least nine people, police and rescue workers said.
The identity of the gunman was not immediately known, but Israeli radio stations were calling it a terror attack.
" While I think Jews do tend to be more humane and self-critical, I think the biggest thing holding them back from responding is the fact that the "world community" is always looking for an excuse to condemn them - and excuse the Arabs."
All politics is local. It is Israeli domestic politics, not international politics, which is holding them back. The Israelis have their own Taliban and madrassas, and had them first. Osama bin Laden and his kind used the Israeli nutballs and their yeshivas as role models. That's right. The role model of the private Islamic religious schools, called "maddrassas", which are the secret recruiting ground for Muslim terrorists such as Al Qaeda, were the earlier created Jewish Israeli schools called "yeshivas".
Datums: Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews were, and probably still are, exempt from conscription while studying religion. And boy do they study religion - until they're too old to be drafted. At taxpayer expense in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools called "yeshivas". And, for some strange reason, those teach weird fanatic ideas about the other side and anyone on their "own" side not like them, such as secular Israeli Jews. Who, according to the nutballs, aren't really Jews. Even if Hitler disagreed.
And the Ultra-Orthodox cluster in and around Jerusalem, where they are demographically dominant in that area's Jewish population. Conversely, other areas of Israel, such as the Tel Aviv - Haifa megalopolis, are overwhelmingly dominated by non-orthodox & secular Israeli Jews.
And the non-orthodox/secular Israeli Jews have almost as low an opinion of the Ultra-Orthodox as the latter do of them. Israeli politics is tribal and fascinating.
And it has a major, major, effect on the Israeli govt.'s unwillingness to act effectively against Palestinian terrorism. As an example, the major driving factor behind Israel's insane settlements policy is the desire of the "settler" faction (which is different from the Ultra-Orthodox though there is some overlap) to steal the Arabs' land in the West Bank. Elimination of settlements and worse, effective partition of the Palestinians from Jewish areas, would prevent them from stealing the Arabs' land.
So the Palestinian terrorists are permitted access to Israeli civilians, to kill them. Otherwise the settler faction would be upset. The secular Israeli Jews know this and don't care that much about Palestinian terrorism as long as it hits the settlers and Ultra-Orthodox. Which upsets the latter - more proof that the seculars aren't really Jews, etc. And the Israeli political system gives everybody a veto power over the govt. doing anything.
Despite all this intra-mural activity amongst the Israeli Jews, the Palestinian Arabs are truly nutso - they've killed or driven out all their moderates (the Israeli settler/ultra-Orthodox factions had only a small role in that despite their best efforts) - and will never, ever, be satisfied.
So it's kill or be killed between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land. The Israelis can pretty much eliminate the Palestinians if they want to. They just don't want to enough yet. But the Europeans have little or nothing to do with that. It's really Israeli domestic politics at work.
IMO the Israelis will open up bigtime eventually. By that I mean hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead Palestinians, and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. and it won't be one big thing - it will entail spasms of increasing deadliness & body count. Pretty grim all around, and probably starting within no more than five years.
I saw the same report, by a Martin Fletcher. He emphasized the split heads of the Palestinian children, and romanticized their father, who will "risk assassination" to bury them, as a hero. Fletcher made a point of omitting the reason that the children and their mother were bombed -- because they were in the car of the murderous father, who was targeted for assassination.
Three killed in Israeli shooting
Three people die and about 25 are injured in a gun attack on a Tel Aviv restaurant, after a day of Israeli raids on Palestinian targets.
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That's a lie. Did you drop some LSD?
Sharon is already on very shaky ground, and he is hamstrung by the necessity to hold a majority of these various factions together, which must be like herding cats. Meanwhile, the Palestinians seem to be in total support of unequivocal, unrestrained, unpredictable terrorism. I think they have come to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, world opinion be damned, they'll resort to pure unequivocal evil and test the Israeli stomach for genocide and ethnic cleansing.
I am not as certain as you that Israeli victory is a foregone conclusion, however. Israeli self-destruction is definitely in the cards, as is WWIII, which scares the hell out of me.
As for the handling of settlements, I agree that they need to either stop building them, or give citizenship to the Palis that are there.
"I am not as certain as you that Israeli victory is a foregone conclusion, however. Israeli self-destruction is definitely in the cards, as is WWIII, which scares the hell out of me."
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RIGHT! Appeasing Muslim crazies and Jihadists is a sure formula for peace. How clever you are! I am in awe of such genius!
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