powerclown

Sorry it was either that, or my head was going to explode.
I reflexively chose self-preservation.

Rekna, google Waziristan.
That's where you'll find OBL and the rest of al-Qaeda/Taliban leadership.
And there's no way of getting to him.
Has zilcherino to do with oil in Afghanistan.

willravel, the israelis have tried negotiating with the arabs for decades. Time after time after time after time after time after time after time, IT IS THE ISRAELIS - NEVER THE ARABS! - WHO EXTEND THE OLIVE BRANCH AND OFFER CONCESSIONS, only to receive death and destruction in return.

They've been forced, FORCED, into a defensive posture because they have no other choice. They have no. other. choice. The palestinean leaders, all of them, are like Bush minus the resources. As israeli prime minister, how would you deal with the palestinians and protect your people at the same time?

The israelis move one inch out of their defensive posture, and they are attacked. It happens every time. Do you know how many websites there are that provide information and social services to Israeli men, women & children that have to deal with living with the stress and psychologically damaging effects of having to live in fear of a terrorist attack on a daily basis? Dozens.

Willravel

Israel took over Palestine with the illegal backing of the UN. The negotiation that the Arab nations might be interested in would be, "Sorry about everything, we're moving back to Europe. Have a nice day." If someone came by your house with the police and they said, "So yeah, we're moving in." and there was nothing you could do about it, you'd be pissed too.
I'd hardly call what happened earlier this year in Lebanon a 'defensive posture'. They are aggressive, and a lot of innocent people died (thousands of Lebanese, and how many Israelis?). They stole Palestine, and they'll defend it by destroying Palestine's former neighbors.
How difficult it must be for them. Of course, their country isn't invaded, their homes bulldozed, their power shut off, their sewage running in the street, walls built around them with armed guards. Israel is quite similar to the US in that because they have military power they feel they can do anything, UN or international community be damned. The US ignored the warning about Iraq just as Israel ignored the UN about the human rights violations.

powerclown

The UN formalized the state of Israel, where jews and arabs have co-existed for thousands of years. The palestineans have been given the same opportunity for a state of their own, and they fuck it up every single time. To say the jews should go back to europe is the same thing as saying the palestineans should go back to jordan.

Sorry, but youre out of your gourd if you think the Israelis started the lebanese war over this past summer. You and I and the entire world know that civilians died in Lebanon because hizballah are chickenshit cowards who fight from behind women and children and other non-combatants. The only mistake the Israelis made was in not completely annhiliating hizballah south of the Litani river. The sad irony is that the bleeding hearts and terrorist sympathizers of the world wouldn't stand for it, so the problem continues as before.

As far as Israeli aggression in the territories: when you have a group of reckless suicidal maniacs who do nothing with their lives but plan attacks, build suicide belts, create bombs, dig tunnels to smuggle in weapons, kidnap israelis, establish rocket launching pads...you better damn well realize that israel has a right to go in and disrupt this kind of bullshit. They enter the territories with one intention only: to prevent attacks upon their citizens. If they wanted, they could level the entire west bank and build settlements but they don't. They do it to protect themselves.

highthief

Wasn't it Sadat who negotiated with Israel? Unfortunately, it got him assassinated as a result.

I tend to agree that the Palestinians have spurned several opportunities to make the Mid-East a more peaceful place, but that also does not excuse Israel's own excessive use of force.

__________________
Si vis pacem parabellum.

desal75

Willravel, why should Israelies return to Europe? Some have lived there for thousands of years. Many of them did go their after the formalization of the Jewish state after WW2 but that is because they no longer felt safe in Europe after the Holocaust which wasn't the first, but the was the largest organized effort to wipe them out.

__________________
The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.

dc_dux

Will....the partiian of Palestine by the UN was no more illegal that its partition of the Indian subcontinent at about the same time, creating the predominantly muslim nation of Pakistan. The action, in both cases, and others, by an internationally recognized organization was to propose solutions to century old disputes and counter-claims that had equal merit. The timing was certainly accelerated as a result of the millions of displaced Jews in post-WW II Europe.

At the time of the partian of Palestine into two states, the Jews were already a majority of the population in Jerusalem and the area provided for the state of Israel, 75% of which was in the Negev desert,with small Arab populations.

Within a year or two of partition, Egypt and Jordan annexed portions of the area delineated for the Palestinian state, creating the first real Palestinian refugee problem.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Willravel

I didn't say they should return to Europe, I said that would bring a lot of Arab countries to the peace table.

Hitler tries to wipe Jews off the planet, so everyone fights them. Israelis try to destroy what's left of the Palestinians, and...nothing? Outcry? The US is still giving them weapons. Yeesh.

desal75

I've never heard of instances where the Israelies have rounded up entire families of Palestinians and slaughtered them en masse.

Also, WW2 itself had little to do with stopping the holocaust

__________________
The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.

Willravel

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...articleId=3826
WWII was about stopping Germany from growing more powerful first, and stopping the holocaust second, but I'd hardly call it...wait, I've had this conversation like a dozen times on TFP. Do you think the holocaust was bad? Do you think it was important for the Allies to stop the holocaust? Then there you go.

roachboy

you cant even start to talk about "terrorism" without a detailed understanding of context.

the idea that it originates with the attempts to suppress it is the kind of plotline you see on tv, and that only because it allows for narratives that are internally consistent but nothing else to unfold within a limited amount of time without posing problems that are too complex for viewers, who might in response be too depressed to take in the vital advertising material for which the infotainment you are watching is a delivery system.

"terrorism" is a political response to particular political situations.
fema, an arm of the american state, operating within the ideological bubble characteristic of the american system, the one that is characterized by the absolute refusal to co-ordinate what "we" think is happening in the world as a function of the maintenance of "the amurican way of life" with what is in fact happening in the world as a function of the maintenance of the "amurican way of life." if you are going to eliminate many (not all) of the factors that might actually explain "terrorism" a priori, you will end up cooking up all kinds of arbitrary "explanations."


shifting the notion of "terrorism" onto a "logical" level that would equate it with genocide is idiotic.
that a response to "terrorism" could plausibly be a repeat of kurtz's journal entry--you know, "exterminate the brutes"----shows the problems with such logic as there is in this american phantasm "the terrorist"

these problems are all the more evident when this bizarre-o narrative is processed through the politics of the american militia set. you would think that fantasies of genocide would be enough to marginalize the speaker, not derail a thread.

ah well.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

desal75

The causes of death for nearly everyone on that page was rocket shrapnel. Rockets launched in response to indiscriminate shelling of civilians from across the Lebanon border. It is horrible that those people died but I would hardly call that genocide. Some of them are males in their early 20's who were killed by gunfire. We don't know if they were soldiers of some kind or not.

Of course I think the Holocaust was bad. It was the worst thing human beings have ever done. I don't think that the Red Army rolled through Poland and most of Germany to stop the Death Camps. You have to remember that most of Europe was anti semetic at the time and that many of the countries occupied by the Germans employed local people to aid in the slaughter of Jews.

__________________
The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.

Willravel

I'm going to ask you a question I already know the answer to:
Did the Hezbollah fire on Israel before Israel fired on Lebanon in the conflict last year?

Spoiler: No. Israel attacked first in response to the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers (not an attack). The Hezbollah immediately responded with rocket fire. This is a fact that most western news outlets glazed by. While five civilians were injured during the kidnapping, the conflict began when Israel opened fire and invaded Lebanon.

powerclown

Right, like pedophilia is a behavioral response to particular psychological situations.
Doesn't necessarily follow that we should approve of NAMBLA.

Willravel

No, 'terrorism' is war made by those unable to make war.

roachboy

i can see the appeal of such simple-minded thinking about this, powerclown.

if you think "terrorists" are somehow intrisically Evil, it is all the easier to watch them die on television--and not just them, but their families: destroy them all--bulldoze their houses, divert their water, you know the drill....

television is key here: on television, there is no systematic oppression--there can't be because the nature of video footage doesnt allow for it. if you want to give a sense of systematic oppression, you wedge a sequence of stock footage referencing some past in between footage of people talking as they stand near various buildings. television does not enable you to even start thinking about cause, about structural features, about systems, about the relation between social, economic political oppression, the lack of a sense of viable political mechanisms that would enable a redress of these, and a possible turn to "terrorism" as a response.

television shows you things.
you confuse a sequence of things with reality.

on the other hand, the assumption that context is not important makes you a good television viewer--the conclusions you draw from television footage has to do with some "essential" Evil because the situations from within which such actions arise are not available to you a priori (the medium) and are excluded with even more force by conservative political assumptions--which confuse the surface of things with how things are, which looks around and sees the "amurican way of life" and does not connect it to anything, just takes it as given.

if you sense that this surreal "way of life" is being threatened, absent either a coherent account of your own situation or one of the situations that might drive people to consider violence that you call "terrorism" then it would follow that indiscriminate killing on the part of the state is justifiable for you. no limit to it because Evil is being Exterminated by the Forces of Truth Justice and the American Way.

so if you think about palestine, for example, if you do think about it, it is easy peasy to televisualize the conflict and see only Evil Palestinians and Nice Israeli Victims staged across some displacement of the Showdown at High Noon on Main Street blah blah blah. this because your view of Things is such that the actual history is excluded of the treatment of the palestinian population by the israelis since 1948, its various phases, etc, and of the palestinian responses to occupation in its various modalities since 1948 and the dehumanizing effects this protracted conflict has had ON BOTH SIDES.......but this little story leaves out the third side, the one made up tv viewers who do not understand shit because they are handed nothing but shit and confuse that shit with the world: much easier to decide on the basis of video footage that you are watching good versus evil and to cheerlead for the good with all the analytic sophistication required for any professional wrestling match, and to hope that Good exterminates Evil, wiping out every last man, woman and child because, damn it, that's what the Good does is exterminate Evil down to every last man woman and child because that way the Good demonstrates its inward Quality as the Good, through the violent elimination of what opposes it.....and boy is that a convincing demonstration, everyone thinks so.

no wonder "terrorism" is such a surprise.
whaddya so pissy about, guys? this is happening because of the Amurican Way of Life, which is the very objectification of the Good..you cant possibly oppose it...you cant possibly have a problem with it or *any* of its implications...what grounds would you have? any claim you make is a demonstration of your inward Evil. so do what Good People do when faced with oppression and get with the program: understand that the Good necessitates your wholesale dehumanization and it'll become easier to accept your lot. it's what made america great.

wake up.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dksuddeth

will, please tell me you see the total absurdity of that statement.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

desal75

Roach, i'm not sure what oppression you are talking about in relation to terrorism?

__________________
The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.

dksuddeth

and if you don't see the 'act of war' instigated by Hezbollah, then you're being willfully ignorant.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

powerclown

The beauty of this particular conflict lies in its crystal clarity.

One side dedicated to a partnership, diplomacy, concession and bargaining.

One side dedicated to the absolute and complete destruction of the other side without compromise.

Really, what more is there to say?

Willravel

It is absurd how right I am from time to time. I have to pinch myself to make sure it's all real. If you have something to say, then say it.
Well if you're going to find out who started the whole thing, then it was the UN, who gave Palestine to Israel, who was targeted by the PLO from Lebanon, who was invaded, who formed the Hezbollah, who kidnapped soldiers, then Israel attacked and invaded and blockaded, and then the Hezbollah opened fire.

If we're talking about who started it, it was the UN (or maybe Nazi Germany?). If we're talking about who started the Israeli/Lebanese conflict of 2006, it was Israel. Anyone who doesn't see that is being 'willfully ignorant'.

dksuddeth

Will, you said "'terrorism' is war made by those unable to make war."

if they are unable to make war, then terrorism cannot be war. If terrorism IS war, then they certainly can make war. I fail to see how this makes you so right.

If we were the leaders of two neighboring countries and you kidnapped a soldier of mine, you commit an act of war and I will attack you. Unless you think that a government should passively roll over when it's soldiers are kidnapped. If Israel kidnapped a hezbollah soldier, they'd still be starting it, wouldn't they? at least you would think so.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

dc_dux

Will...it surprises me that you continue to offer this misinterpretation of history. The UN did not give Palestine to Israel...it partioned a land in 1948, with 1.5 million Arabs and .7 million Jews, both of whom had legitimate historical claims, into two states. The Jews being given the land where they had the majority population and the Arabs given the land where they were in the majority.

The Arab neighbors of the new state of Israel not only attacked it 5 times in the next 20 years, but also were the first to create Palestinian refugees by annexing their land and denying them citizenship.

Israel has not been blameless in its brief history and there have been times when it has taken the offensive, sometimes to excess, as the best defensive strategy for survival when surrounded by enemies.

Please read your history, particularly regarding the Partition and the early days of the proposed two state solution and how the neighboring Arab leaders (Nasser in Egypt and Abdullah in Jordan) used the Palestinians as sacrificial pawns with the intent of creating and maintaining a stateless defacto fighting force of anti-Isreal terrorists.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Willravel

I forgot to put the first war in quotations. War is made by those nations or organizations with capable arms. Terrorists, as the word has become, are unable to wage real war (tanks, planes, etc.), so they resort to less orthodox means of attack.
Ah, but the kidnapping didn't happen in a vacuum. You act as if there was a great time of peace or something before the kidnapping. That's not true. It's been an ongoing conflict for the past 20 years. The kidnapping was a response to the continuing presence of Israel in the Shabaa Farms and for the Sept 2003 Israeli bombing of Southern Lebanon as a response to Hezbollah firing anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli aircraft as a response to the Israeli occupation and kidnappings.

I'm sorry you're only able to look back one year, but this whole conflict is as old as we are. The 2006 Israel-Lebanon Conflict was started by Israel's blocade, invasion, and bombing campaign that claimed over 1,200 lives and displaced almost a million Lebanese. You know a lot of Southern Lebanon is still uninhabitable because of unexploded cluster bombs.

dc_dux

Its refreshing to agree with Powerclown and dksuddeth on something!

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Willravel

Now who's forgetting history. The partition was rejected, failed and resulted in the Arab-Israeli war. "United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181" was approved by the United Nations General Assembly, but was never implemented.
The Arab leadership in Palestine opposed the resolution, and argued that it violated the rights of the majority of the populace of the country. It wasn't just Iran, Jordan, Egypt and the rest of the fun gang. It was the people directly involved in the decision made, but not involved in the decision making.
Something being an effective defense is hardly an excuse.
I'm well versed. I'd suggest you read Chomsky's "Middle East Illusions" for more information on the subject.

The_Jazz

Roach, that was quite the interesting post. I agree with most of your points when it comes to modern terrorism (meaning the last 30 years or so).

HOWEVER, please look to the left of your post and give me the label most often assigned to that individual for the years 1890-1917. Also, please think about his brother. And the People's Will. I know that the Soviets claimed to invent lots of things, but I doubt that their propaganda machine ever contemplated a suggestion of mass media television in the Tsarist era.

If you want my thought of the cause of terrorism at it's most basic, I would tell you "boredom". Boredom from lack of opportunities, expression, intellectual thought or maybe even good music. I for one thank my lucky stars that we've got TFP around to keep some of you folks from running amuck.

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

dc_dux

Will..I am well aware that the Partition resolution (approved by the UN General Asembly - 33 votes in favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions and one absent) was rejected by the Arabs and the fact that it was implemented without the approval or participation of those Arab nations, who chose to wage war instead.

I have never been impressed with Chomky's arguments.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Willravel

But what about the Arabs in Palestine/Israel? Where was their vote? Where was the vote of the majority of the population? Outside influences may all have their big opinions and such, be they UN or Arab neighbor, but why was the population of the land being carved up not given an opportunity to vote? The simple answer is that Palestine would be Arab run, with Jews in it (like Lebanon, but without the Hezbollah), and the members UN wouldn't have that. They felt badly about the holocaust and instead of trying to end antisemitism in Europe, which would have been a logical response to the holocaust, they allowed their guilt and pity to lead to the seizure of land that was already occupied. As I tried to make clear, the majority Arab population of what is not Israel said 'no' to the UN's ruling. What right did the UN have to ignore them? The British pulled out completely and refused to implement the plan for this very reason. Considering that the British had the only real claim on the land with their Mandate of Palestine, the UN lost any and all of it's authority in the situation. The funny thing is that despite the fact that the UN had no authority to do so, they proclaimed that Israel was a state after this and admitted them into the UN, bypassing the reality of the situation. It was in response to this and the rising of Zionism that Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon declared war. Israel gained financial and arms backing from the US and Russia and numerous other states already armed to the teeth, and that is where Israel came from.

roachboy

the-jazz: thanks. i was kinda waiting for someone to ask about comrade lenin---there's a story behind my using that particular photo (post-stroke) but i think writing it out here would be a threadjack. but in general, you're right about the genealogy of the term and the ways in which it has migrated, being used to designated particular enemies of the state s mostly because it makes them sound real bad. i guess as a direct response to your post, tho, i'd make a hard distinction between the reconfiguring of the term since, say, black september (1972 munich olympic games) and the previous history of the term. but it's one of those distinctions that could be argued against, and beyond a certain point, i'd just end up insisting on it and seeing what happened.

as for the israel/palestine turn the thread has taken---the "history" that makes this conflict "clear" is fine in the way that any narrative of a sufficiently high level of vagueness is--it serves the purpose of making things appear "clear" by simply ignoring everything that would complicate it.

in this case---well---my rejection of the arguments from powerclown et al regarding this conflict is so fundamental that it is hard to know where to start with it--and even more to know if there is any point in engaging in this debate--again---when the premises being put forward as the same as those put forward in the previous 20 versions of the same debate.

a couple points on what has been discussed a little directly above:

i think the question of how the balfour decision was taken are beside the point now. the conflict was set up, in its initial phase, by the decision to herd displaced palestinians into camps and to leave them there to rot. in this, there is blame aplenty to go around (please dont waste my time by talking about jordan and syria's actions in all this: i know about it--that's why i wrote what i did)--but i think the handling of the people who were expelled in 1948 is a good example of the ways in which this conflict has dehumanized *all* sides---the palestinians by way of the daily brutalization handed them in the camps--the israelis by the handing out of that brutalization.

but no-one in their right mind does not see that the present conflict derives much more from the aftermath of 1967 than it does from 1948.

and no-one who knows ANYTHING about the occupation itself argues that what has been happening can be reduced to the kind of "clarity" powerclown is claiming: of course you could generate "clarity" is you erase things--the problems that surround the right of return, the israeli settlement program (this is a HUGE factor in shaping the present incoherence and conflict--riddle me how anything is clear about this good guy/bad guy nonsense if you factor in the settlements...) the modalities of occupation itself, the sense of dehumanization that has resulted from it for BOTH the occupiers and occupied....i could go on and on about this....but i'll leave it here: if your "clarity" about the conflict does not involve an account of this kind of information, then your clarity comes at the expense of coherence.
and it is a sad comment on the state of affairs that obtains here that such incoherence can and does get folded into to an even greater incoherence in this abstract, goofball notion of "terrorism."

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Elphaba

roachboy, could you guide me through some questions I have regarding the Zionist movement? Is it not an act of 'terror' to claim another's land as your own simply because your ancestory once lived on that land? What were the legal justifications guiding the UN that allowed them to support the partitioning of the region?

I sense an underlying racism in the decision directed at both the Arabs and the Jews. Was there never a Jewish "right of return" to their homes and businesses in Europe? The act of creating a Jewish 'homeland', at the expense of the current populace is the incoherence that I am unable to reconcile in my mind.

The US has experienced mostly symbolic protests of this kind by native Americans, and harshly dealt with militant protests to recapture land lost many generations ago. Do they not have a far more recent claim to this land, than the Jews had of Palestine in 1948? It makes my head spin.

__________________
"You can't ignore politics, no matter how much you'd like to." Molly Ivins - 1944-2007

dc_dux

Will...do you really believe there were democratic institutions in place in Palestine before Partition?

Under the defacto "government" or authoritarian rule of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem (an ally of Hitler), even after he was convicted at the Nuremburg trials as a war criminal and living in exile in Egypt under the protection of Nasser) the simple answer is that the Arabs in Palestine/Israel had no right to vote on anything that affected their lives. The majority Arab population did what the Mufti ordered them to do.

In fact, there is a body of evidence that suggests that the Mufti ordered the Arab population to leave their homes after the Partition vote (with a promise that they could return after the Jews were driven from the land), which was what really initiated the Arab refugee problem. (I know there is a counter argument that the new Israeli govt ordered the Arabs to leave).

While the Mufti was in exile in Egypt after WW II, his nephew, a 17 yr old Egyptian named Mohammed Abder Rauf Arafat Al-Kudwa Al-Husseini, better known as Yasir Arafat, began to work for him and carry out his jihad against all Jews and any moderate Muslims who accepted the Jews in Palestine (this was even before Partition).

edit:
I know the above may further feed Roachboy's comment... "history" that makes this conflict "clear" is fine in the way that any narrative of a sufficiently high level of vagueness is--it serves the purpose of making things appear "clear" by simply ignoring everything that would complicate it....but you really cant ignore the role of the Grand Mufti in creating the 20th century Pan Arab terrorist movement against the Jews in the Middle East...it is part of the history.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Willravel

That's not the point. The point is that the UK, the government that had control over the region, said "No" because the population was ignored and then left, meaning that the UN had no authority over the region at all. Despite that fact, members of the UN supplied Israelis with weapons and funds, and the UN itself recognized Israel as a member even though it wasn't even Israel yet.

dc_dux

THE UK didnt say NO...they turned the Palestinian issue over to the UN in Feb 47 and then abstained from the Partition vote, which received a greater than 2/3 majority in the affirmative, in Nov 47.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

roachboy

elphaba: i would defer to will and dc on the questions you posed to me.

the only comment that i'd make is that by 1948, the wrong zionism was in control---and that many of the problems that have followed seem to me to turn on the particular notion of the meaning of a jewish state that right zionism brought along with it. that is the center of opposition to the right of return, when you get down to it: fear of a swamping of the jewish electorate.

i think that will and dc (and probably other comrades) know more about the prequels to the balfour decision than i do:

to my mind, the central questions are not so much how israel came to be formed--not at this point (2007)---but rather the ways in which that decision impacted on palestinians. behind this is the idea that the choice that was made was a terrible one, and its consequences are still playing out today.

one reason for this focus is that i see no point in debating the legitimacy of israel as a state--it is a fait accompli.
personally, i think that the single greatest shift in the terms of conflict that could happen would be for israel to shift into being a secular, multi-cultural state. this would provide a basis for addressing the myriad problems created by the refusal to allow the return of pelstinians displaced in 1948.

it would also undermine the rationale for the settlements, which i think need to be dismantled. all of them. the sooner the better.

if you look at palestine as outlined in the oslo accords, the map looks like hamburger thrown on a paper--the reason for that is the settlements, which render palestine completely incoherent---non-viable as a state---it makes palestine into an archipelago on the order of the "homelands"/reservations set up in south africa under apartheid. and that parallel is accurate.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

dc_dux

roachboy..I agree completely on the settlements issue. I dont agree on the Palestinian right of return or Israel moving towards becoming a secular, multi-cultural state. Once the Jewish majority is lost, so are the Jews.

The Oslo map is not much worse than the original Partition map, which was based, in part, on where Arabs and Jews had majority populations rather than practical geographic boundaries. Egypt quickly annexed part of the southern Palestinian canton and Jordan annexed part of the eastern canton, and both denied citizenship to the Arab populations in those regions.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

roachboy

dc: the secular state-right of return matters are the central sticking point behind all others, i think.
and i probably should have included the caveat that this is a question that is only easily worked out in principle. while i personally am not at all persuaded that the a secular multi-cultural israel means the loss of anything for anyone.....we alreadty find ourselves at the heart of the matter.
these positions operate across a deep ideological divide---which could be a topic for discussion....however:

would debating this here be a threadjack?
i dunno...it is linked to the question of the situation endured by palestinians and is without doubt a factor in shaping what folk like to call "terrorism"....but there's the matter of the emotional explosiveness of this to consider as well...

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

That's not the whole story. The UK refused to implement the 1947 Partition Plan, citing that the plan was not acceptable to both sides (Jew and Arab). The UK terminated the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948, and henceforth the UK, and thus the UN had no jurisdiction over the carving up of Palestine. Despite this, the UN accepted Israel into the UN even though the Arab Israeli war had not had a victor yet. The US and the Soviet Union accepted Israel's declaration about being an independent nation. Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, and Egyptian troops invaded as a response to this (where they had only been working covertly to assist the Palestinians before). The US and Russia backed Israel, so the Arab nations and Palestine lost.

dc_dux

Will...we obviously have different interpretations of the UN jurisdiction that wont be resolved.

and I agree with Roachboy on the emotional explosiveness of the Israeli/Palestinian issue and have been through the debate too many times.

__________________
"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

Willravel

Okey dokey, back to terrorism I guess.

roachboy

these questions are not disconnected from each other, obviously.
and there is a rationale for concentrating on the situation endured by palestinians as a way to talk about "terrorism" as it has come to be defined since the early 1970s.

the right of return is at the center of the conflict, really: and it is a good example of the kind of intractable issue that can give way to hardening of other lines: on the palestinian side, to the sense of being dominated without any possibility of redress, the sense that the palestinians are a poor, powerless, pulverized group of people who confront a regional superpower behind which there is another superpower...given that there would appear to be little hope of movement on the fundamental sticking point, and that the present state of affairs is totally untenable, recourse to violence would make sense, wouldn't it?
i mean, where are the good options?

then you compound this with other lovely actions like the israeli refusal to recognize hamas after the last elections--which effectively prevented hamas from moderating--which i think it would have done--and you can get an idea of how things go. it is a short jump from stuff like this to a view of israel as a single entity geared entirely around a logic in the occupied territories in particular that would result in the elimination of the palestinian population--i mean, if you factor in settlements that routinely divert water supplies away from palestinian areas, for example, it does not take a rocket scientist to see why folk would come to see themselves as trapped in the loosing position in a game they cannot win.

if you found yourself in such a situation, how would you react?
would you just roll over and accept whatever is given?
if it was clear to you that no conventional political mode existed that would enable anything like a redress of that situation to even get started?
and if you looked toward the future and saw nothing?

i dont know, folks: the pacifist side of me deplores the consequences of this type of action.....but i also understand why they would happen.
these actions are POLITICAL---they have definite causes, they are geared around producing particular effects---so the category "terrorism" does nothing but obscure things, make a rational consideration of what is going on even less likely to happen--who benefits from this? well, the place that sells weapons systems sure as fuck benefits.....


if you were in power on the israeli side and came to understand that the attempts to stomp out these actions were doing nothing by increasing the pressure within the situation that caused them in the first place.....what would you do?

the logic of this conflict is wholly self-perpetuating.
pretending it is otherwise seems to me delusional.
there is no clarity to be had here that does not include accounts of the self-perpetuating dynamics that are the conditions of possibility for "terrorist" actions.
and to my mind the ideological viewpoint that casts israel in the position of Victim and the palestinians in the position of Persecuting Other is nothing short of obscene.

that is why i participate with considerable reluctance in debates about this.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite