Posted on 04/03/2002 1:32:24 PM PST by RCW2001
Amazing. Barak offered Arafat 90% of Israeli territory and he turned it down. Had Arafat taken it Israel wouldn't even exist now, and Barak would be in some Palestinian prison. The Arabs don't want peace they want to push Israel into the sea. They won't rest until every Jew is dead. This is unbelievable. Sharon ought to arrest Barak and have him tried for treason.
Democrats and liberal Jews will be the death of freedom the world over.
At the risk of being self-promoting, I’d ask you to go back and look over my numerous posts since I've been here on FreeRepublic -- I think you’ll find that I am at least as objective as anyone else on this board (aside from an occasional/frequent lapse into sarcastic commentary!). The points I make below are not intended to make a case for the "moral equivalence" between Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli soldiers engaging in the legitimate defense of their own country (again, I think I’ve been objective enough to view this issue in a very evenhanded manner). I simply wish to point out that most of us here in the U.S. don’t understand the complex issues that are driving the Arab-Israeli conflict.
1. Your comment that "80% of Palestinians are in support of the suicide bombers" is exactly what I’m talking about when I suggest that we Americans do not fully comprehend what is going on over there. There aren’t too many people out there who will dispute that 80% figure, and yet I will repeat what I have said several times here over the last few days: These Palestinians are not "invading" Israel; they are crossing the border on a daily basis with the approval of the Israeli government. To an objective outsider, something doesn’t make sense here particularly in times of open conflict like this when the hostile attitudes of the Palestinians boil over. The Israeli government allows thousands of Palestinians to cross the border from the occupied territories on a daily basis despite knowing full well that there is an 8 in 10 chance that each one of them is bent on Israel’s destruction. Think about that the next time you read a tirade here on FreeRepublic against President Bush for his hypothetical support of a hypothetical "amnesty bill" for illegal Mexican immigrants, just because 8 out of every 10,000 of these immigrants might hold up a liquor store in Los Angeles.
2. The case of Adam Shapiro is particularly amusing because of the outrage it has generated in the United States. His family in New York has received numerous threats from people who call their son a "traitor," and yet by definition he cannot be a "traitor" because he is not a citizen of Israel. From Israel’s perspective he may be either an unwelcome, meddling interloper (at best) or an enemy of the state (at worst), but I would say he is neither because the Israeli government has not seen fit to shoot him or even to simply detain him (in fact, he continues his crusade, however misguided we think it may be, to this very day). The accusation among American Jews that Shapiro is a traitor smacks of pure idiocy (i.e., that all Jews, even those who don’t specifically practice their faith, must think the same way when it comes to supporting Israel). This kind of attitude has been justifiably ridiculed by intelligent people when used by so-called "civil rights leaders" here in America.
3. What really should be an eye-opener for us in the United States is the growing support in Israel for a group of conscientious objectors in the Israeli military that now exceeds 400 in number. These people are not just a bunch of kids who are afraid to serve, either -- a substantial number of them are decorated veterans who are perfectly willing to defend Israel itself but who sincerely believe that their own government has no business maintaining any kind of military presence in the occupied territories. Again, this puts these Israeli soldiers directly at odds with many Americans who are not Jewish and have never set foot in Israel. One more reason why I am not easily persuaded by any of the media reports or commentary from American sources about the conflict.
4. The settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are the root of the Arab-Israeli conflict no matter how you look at it, and the evidence for this is clear, particularly from Israel’s perspective. When you consider the four geographic areas that have been the source of contention over the last 35 years, you find that two of them have either been resolved (southern Lebanon, which Israel hurriedly abandoned a few years ago) or will eventually be resolved (the Golan Heights, which Israel is willing to cede back to Syria over a period of time with a series of conditions). The other two (the West Bank and Gaza) will probably never be resolved. If you look closely at these four areas, you’ll notice that the first two were easy for Israel to give up from a political standpoint because they had few settlements, if any (ironically, from a military standpoint the Golan Heights is probably the most important of the four because it borders on Syria, Israel’s strongest and most hostile neighbor). The dispute in the latter two areas will be difficult to resolve because the Israeli citizens who live there have a voice in their own democratic government.
5. It is on the issue of the settlements more than any other issue that many Americans have a very confusing (and apparently misguided) attitude. The pro-Israeli comments on numerous threads here range from reasonable (Israel has a legitimate right to defend itself, terrorism must be stopped, etc.) to rabid (Israel has a historical claim on the area, Israel "won" the occupied territories in the 1967 war, all Palestinians must leave them now, etc.), which mirrors the internal conflict among the Israeli people themselves. While outsiders view this conflict as an Arab-Israeli dispute, the truth is that it is also a dispute between various factions in Israel. I just find it amusing whenever I read or hear comments from some Americans, firmly ensconced here in front of our televisions and computers, which are more militant than the views of most Israelis.
6. This, in fact, raises a very interesting point that is not often mentioned in the media these days. Like the broader Arab-Israeli conflict, the internal dispute among Israelis is also being contested on religious lines. The people who have settled on the West Bank over the last few decades are not Israelis who suddenly had an irrational urge to get up and move their families out onto a hostile frontier. They are primarily immigrants from outside Israel, including exiles from Russia and Hasidic Jews from various sects in New York (Lubavitchers from Brooklyn, Satmars from upstate, etc.). These settlers are more religious and militant than the general Israeli public, and many secular Jews in Israel quietly regard them as an enormous pain in the @ss. This kind of attitude is understandable when you see the bizarre results of the inordinate political influence that these religious Jews wield in the Israeli government. For example, they are exempt from the mandatory military service requirements that all Israeli citizens must meet. As a result, Israeli families often despise the fact than their kids are being sent out to the occupied territories to defend a bunch of settlers who never serve in the military.
7. What makes the dispute in the Middle East so difficult to resolve is that both sides have chosen (maybe by necessity) to adopt a hard-line stance that will simply perpetuate the problem. While the Israeli government has correctly pointed out that Arafat has been negotiating in bad faith since Day 1 in Oslo (for reasons -- not recognized by most outsiders -- that would require an entirely new thread for me to explain), it should also be pointed out that Israel has also been negotiating terms that it could never back up with any real substance (despite their willingness to recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, the construction of settlements has never ceased -- again, for reasons that would require an entire thread to explain).
I hope these points have been interesting and objective. I would appreciate any comments or criticism from other Freepers.
Not really worth spending too many words on, this post, but I'll choose a word that describes both the post and poster.
"pathetic"
Pathetic, laughable, and ignorant. What Arab society values freedom? What Arab nation promotes freedom? What Arab government allows freedom?
This satanic cult of suicide bombers don't want freedom; they want to build a homeland on the ruins of the nation of Israel.
Excellent post!
Thanks for the frank and honest admission. I truly believe that one of the real quandaries Israelis face these days is that they are, for the first time in their history, in a position where they can lose some "moral superiority." For better or worse, Jews have historically taken upon themselves the mantle of a people who served as a sort of "conscience" in the nations where they resided (primarily the U.S. and Europe). This is one reason why modern Jews have tended to be more liberal politically than their non-Jewish counterparts.
Israelis today find themselves in the lamentable position where (again, rightly or wrongly) a group of "outsiders" is pointing the finger at them and accusing them of failing to live up to certain standards.
To be honest with you, I never thought I was terribly smart. I think I just have a very good memory for certain things and a different way of looking at things.
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