alter the RoadMap to instanteously create the 2-states
Archimedes Plutonium
valiant
attempt. And also, it could be a huge liability now on Mr. Bush for the
next
election for if it fails to achieve any progress then the Democrats can
point
to that failure come the 2004 election.
What Mr. Bush is really confronting is the Israeli desire and wish to
own as
much of the Middle East as possible and for the Palestinians to expect
them
as an occupied people to be able to self police and to stop what they
are doing
is self contradictory because it is the fighting that has brought the
Palestinians
to this point so far.
I am not saying that it is in Jewish religion to want to own as much of
the
Middle East as possible but when a religion believes they are the
"chosen
people" then the idea of a "chosen land ownership" is not far behind. So
it is selfcontradictory for the Israelis to follow Mr. Bush's Roadmap.
It is selfcontradictory for the Palestinians to follow the Roadmap in
two aspects (1) it was fighting that brought the Palestinians to the
roadmap
and (2) how can anyone, even Mr. Bush expect the Palestinians to act and
behave like a state with a police force when the Palestinians are
reduced to
rubble from an occupier.
Solution: The only clear solution that I can see is for the USA not to
sit
on the sidelines and mouth off some advice or plans or compliments or
disapprovals. But rather to impose the 2 states solution. For the USA to
actual send the military with steel fence posts and to put them up along
the 1967 borders and for the USA military to put up that fence border
and to stay there in Israel and Palestine for about 1 or 2 years as a
border checkpoint. Put a curfew on all Israelis and Palestinians that
they
cannot be across the border but must stay in their own countries.
This struggle that has been going on for more than 50 years is stupid to
think that the 2 combatants are going to be "well behaved" and follow
some
new and recent Roadmap. The practical solution is to ditch the Roadmap
and to actually, Physically, create the 2 country states where the USA
actually
creates the 2 states and ignores all the daily fighting.
Only after the 2 states are created will the 2 sides begin to calm down
and
act rationally and only then will the Middle East have Peace.
One of my favorite quotes: God is Science and, Science is God.
Another one of my favorite quotes: Israel is not a holy site on Earth,
nor
is Jerusalem nor is Mecca, nor is Salt Lake City, nor is Rome. The
holiest
sites on Earth are the places where the great scientists delivered their
science.
London is closer to God than is anything in the Middle East because it
was
London that much of Quantum Physics was born.
People who want to get close to God, all they have to do is read science
or physics and not these decrepit old books authored by fanatic zealots
in the deserts. God is not represented by bibles. God is represented by
any text of science. God is the truth and the truth is science, not what
some deranged and deluded person like Peter and Paul et al.
People who fight over religion are like baboons fighting over a piece
of territory.
Archimedes Plutonium, a_plu...@hotmail.com
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
Steve Hanneke
Although many U.S. citizens, myself included, would love to see peace in
the middle east and everywhere else, what makes you think the U.S.
government wants peace in the middle east? Think of the bargaining power
in international oil deals when there is a conflict that oil dealers care
deeply about and they are convinced only one nation can do anything about
it.
Archimedes Plutonium
go back and look how close Clinton came to a Peace accord.
Actually Clinton was very close to some success. His problem was that he
dealt with Yassar Arafat. I believe Mr. Arafat is in the initial stages of
some
old age disease. Ever notice how his hands and mouth shake in public
appearance. Is it Alzheimers or Parkinson? Anyway, I wonder what would
have happened if Clinton had had a new Palestinian prime minister. Perhaps
there may have been a 2-state solution in the Clinton term.
I believe the only real solution now is to impose the Peace on the Middle
East
instead of being sideline spectators which the USA has become. Two
misbehaving states such as Israel and Palestine need a physical imposition
of the peace. Where the USA military puts up a fence of the 2 state
solution
and guards the border where the 2 countries have nothing to do with each
other while the USA guards the border.
Impose the border and impose the 2 -state solution. And if Hamas sneeks
through the border to kill Israelis than have a regime change in Palestine
until Palestine has a regime that has a police force to keep their
militants
curbed. And if Israel sends gunships over into Palestine, well, do not play
favoritism but have a regime change in Israel until they behave like a
normal
state also.
I just wonder if when Israel was created back in 1947 and if the
Palestinians
had never acted hostile or military towards Israel, I just wonder if the
state of Palestine would have been created a long time ago of perhaps
by 1955 or 1965 to those early UN resolutions when Israel was created.
I just wonder if a well-behaved Palestinian people who never acted
aggressive
towards Israel from 1947 onwards and never allied with any armies against
Israel, I just wonder if a Palestinian state would have been created a long
time
ago. I am unfamilar with the actual history. I just wonder if the
Palestinian
people had never lifted a finger against the Israelis whether they would
now
have their own state or whether the Israelis would have taken all the land
of
the Palestinians. I do not know what the history was, and it is difficult
to find
the true history because so many people who write about the Middle East
conflict take sides that their writings are too biased and not objective.
Anyone have an answer as to whether the present day Palestinians would have
been better off after 1947 if they never lifted a finger against the
Israelis and
would they now have their own State or would the Israelis have somehow
shoved out the Palestinians or herded them off to some inhospitable corner
of the region such as the Dead Sea, much like what the USA did to the
native
Indians.
Edward Green
> Although many U.S. citizens, myself included, would love to see peace in
> the middle east and everywhere else, what makes you think the U.S.
> government wants peace in the middle east? Think of the bargaining power
> in international oil deals when there is a conflict that oil dealers care
> deeply about and they are convinced only one nation can do anything about
> it.
Maybe. General thesis: a number of groups have deep interest in
conflict continuing -- like Hamas. Like narcs. Leaders of terrorist
groups like hamas have large investment in status quo because ...
well, because that's what they do. N.B. "leaders": they enjoy respect
in their community, have steady supply of young idiots ready to carry
out their wishes. They no doubt claim to want "peace", on their terms
-- meaning complete anhilation of Israel -- which they know is about
impossible, so may be safely asked for. On any other terms? They'd
be out of work. What are they going to do -- open mom & pop tea shops
on the west bank? Also, the worst know they will be tracked down
relentlessly by their adversaries, peace or not. So like the diehard
Saddamites, may as well keep fighting.
A number of Officially Oppresed Peoples (OOP's) would do well to wake
up to the fact that those who claim to be fighting for them, their
heros, are really parasites battening on their flesh, who have no
interest in real change which would put them out of a meal. Cf. Mr.
Al "Outrage" Sharpton, in absence of outrages. Of course this isn't
going to happen anytime soon.
CIA should be slipping in covert education.
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Green wrote:
> Steve Hanneke <han...@uiuc.edu> wrote in message news:<Pine.GSO.4.31.03061...@ux10.cso.uiuc.edu>...
>
> > Although many U.S. citizens, myself included, would love to see peace in
> > the middle east and everywhere else, what makes you think the U.S.
> > government wants peace in the middle east? Think of the bargaining power
> > in international oil deals when there is a conflict that oil dealers care
> > deeply about and they are convinced only one nation can do anything about
> > it.
I am rather surprized to see the price of oil has not come down even though
the Iraq oil is beginning to come to market.
I concur with your judgment that the Middle East is a bargaining chip, or
lever as more appropriate, for the oil. But perhaps the tightrope walking
act just maybe detrimental to USA. We never had a "en masse Arab
countries" against the USA. There was the Russian threat in the Cold War
that kept many Arab countries on the side of the USA but that no longer
exists. And that was probably a larger bargaining chip than the Israel lever
to oil. So it maybe the case that the Middle East as a oil lever is going to
hurt the USA more than it is an option in favor of oil.
One indication of this issue is the fact that whenever the USA enters into
a war in the Middle East region, the West is quick to keep Israel out of the
action and a noncoalition contributor. Another indication is the steps to
get a 2-state solution would have been unheard of until now; meaning that
the middle-east-oil-lever is favoring the Arab countries more than ever
before in their ability to conjoin in power of influence.
Perhaps the 2-state solution of a Palestine homeland will rapidly make
progress once the Arab countries begin pegging their oil exports to progress
on that issue alone. Instead of the Iraq of oil for food program, a new program
to come out by the Arab League of oil for Palestinian Homeland.
Perhaps the Arabs are in a new mode of political persuasion and dropping
the terrorism mode. Perhaps now they will undertake the new mode that
if no progress on a Palestinian Homeland then oil exports are narrowed and
cut, so that if the West stalls on Palestine then the Arab League stalls on
oil exports.
I have always maintained that the history of people is more contained
in the push and pull of economics than it is the visible big events. Example
is the USA Civil War which was a big visible event but if there had not
been a 1860s war, that the economics of the USA would have gotten rid
of slavery all by itself and perhaps Civil Rights may not have been
ushered in by the 1960s but it probably would not have been delayed by
much. Of course it is impossible to say what the world would have been
like if there never had been a USA Civil War in the 1860s but the point
I am making is that the pull of Economics is the major pull of world
history. And so if the Arabs wanted to make a bigger mark in history,
then they would do so, more by the control of their oil exports than their
penchant of fomenting political terrorism.
>
>
> Maybe. General thesis: a number of groups have deep interest in
> conflict continuing -- like Hamas. Like narcs. Leaders of terrorist
> groups like hamas have large investment in status quo because ...
> well, because that's what they do. N.B. "leaders": they enjoy respect
> in their community, have steady supply of young idiots ready to carry
> out their wishes. They no doubt claim to want "peace", on their terms
> -- meaning complete anhilation of Israel -- which they know is about
> impossible, so may be safely asked for. On any other terms? They'd
> be out of work. What are they going to do -- open mom & pop tea shops
> on the west bank? Also, the worst know they will be tracked down
> relentlessly by their adversaries, peace or not. So like the diehard
> Saddamites, may as well keep fighting.
>
> A number of Officially Oppresed Peoples (OOP's) would do well to wake
> up to the fact that those who claim to be fighting for them, their
> heros, are really parasites battening on their flesh, who have no
> interest in real change which would put them out of a meal. Cf. Mr.
> Al "Outrage" Sharpton, in absence of outrages. Of course this isn't
> going to happen anytime soon.
>
> CIA should be slipping in covert education.
Ed, I am guessing you are Jewish, and thus a perfect person to ask my
original question. I am guessing also that you are older than I and payed
more attention to the Middle East conflict than I. Question is, if Palestinians
had been utterly peaceful and peaceloving from 1947 onwards with never
any Yassar Arafat around and never any allying with other Arab countries
against Israel. Question is would the Palestinians have had their homeland
a long time ago rather than a RoadMap by year 2003.
This is a lesson to be gleaned for future generations as to know whether the road
to a Homeland has to have terrorism involved or whether the road to a homeland
can be peacefully achieved. I suppose India homeland was achieved not via terrorism to the British. But I wonder about
the Palestinians or would the
Israelis have confiscated their lands and pushed them off into the Dead Sea.
Edward Glamkowski
> go back and look how close Clinton came to a Peace accord.
>
> Actually Clinton was very close to some success.
Not, Clinton really wasn't close. And Bush will never get close. Nobody can
get close. It's the great black hole of politics. It is a problem that can
never be solved.
But really, the problem shouldn't even exist - most of the traditional
"Palestine" (if we may even say such a thing exists) is actually in Jordan, but
Jordan won't give them an inch of land. In fact, no other arab country will
take them. Palestinians are merely a pawn for other arab countries in their
fight to exterminate the jews. So long as the Palesintinans are useful to that
end, there will be no peace. No president can claim to be close to a solution.
And nobody should ever claim any one president has come close to a solution.
Back in the 1920s and 30s, when Britain controlled it, there was no "political
correctness", no "sensitivity" or "tolerance". The Brits had free reign to do
absolutely whatever they wanted in the Palestine Mandate. And THEY couldn't
solve the issue either. That *anybody* dreams of solving the problem peacefully
in the current political environment is mind-boggling.
As a cynic, I offer the following (non-politically correct, insensitive,
intolerant, and no doubt somehow racist) solution:
The whole world should just turn their backs on the middle and ignore everything
that goes on there. Don't buy anything from them, don't sell anything to them,
just let them do whatever they want. In a few years, we'll go back and deal
with whoever is left.
THAT is the only effective and permanent solution. And no president will EVER
propose or endorse such a thing.
----
Here's an article I saved from Dec 26, 2002 by one Martin Sherman:
Explaining ´Palestine´
Martin Sherman
26 December 2002
Email this story
Print this story
Article 16: "...the people of Palestine, desiring to befriend all nations which
love freedom, justice, and peace, look forward to their support in restoring the
legitimate situation to Palestine... and [in] enabling its people to exercise
national sovereignty and freedom."
Article 24: "This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty
over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, [or] on the Gaza
Strip..."
Article 26: "The Liberation Organization... does not interfere in the internal
affairs of any Arab states."
These excerpts from the Palestinian National Charter, as it was formulated in
1964 by the inaugural convention of the Palestinian National Council in Cairo
(where the Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded) are of significant
consequence, for they point to a fundamental fallacy in the authenticity of the
Palestinian claims for national self-determination. As can be seen, they
explicitly eschew any claims of sovereignty in the territories of Judea and
Samaria (the "West Bank") and the Gaza Strip, which they openly concede to the
jurisdiction of the Jordanians and the Egyptians respectively.
This seriously cuts away the ground from under any claim that the "West Bank"
and Gaza constitute the Palestinians´ ancient and long-yearned-for motherland,
and to which they have unalienable and inexorable rights. On the one hand, this
submissive concession of sovereignty over these territories to non-Palestinian
rule indicates a remarkable malleability in the national aspirations of the
Palestinians, which seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom.
On the other hand, it is entirely consistent with the position taken by the late
Zuheir Muhsin, formerly the head of the PLO´s Military Department and member of
its Executive Council.
Almost a decade and a half after the first public endorsement of the Palestinian
Charter, on March 31, 1977, Muhsin made the following declaration in an
interview with the Dutch daily Trouw: "There are no differences between
Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation.
It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian
identity, because it is in the interest of the Arabs to encourage a separate
Palestinian identity. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity
serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool
in the continuing battle against Israel."
It thus appears that there is room for the "heretical" postulation that the true
Palestinian desire is not really a state. Indeed, perhaps the time has come to
suggest most of the prevailing conventional wisdom regarding the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is totally unfounded, even misguided. For according
to this wisdom, the fuel of the conflict is the lack of Palestinian
self-determination, and that the goal of the Palestinians´ struggle is to
establish a state for themselves. However, the competing explanation, which
seems to emerge from the words and deeds of the Palestinians themselves, is
quite the opposite. According to this explanation, the fuel of the conflict is
not the lack of Palestinian self-determination, but the existence of Jewish
self-determination. As long as Jewish self-determination persists, so will the
conflict. Moreover, according to the alternative explanation, the goal of the
Palestinians is not to establish a state for themselves but to dismantle a state
for others - the Jews.
The question that now arises is: Which of these two alternative versions has the
greater explanatory power? The answer seems to be unequivocally the latter. For
it offers eminently plausible explanations for a range of events, which the
former is powerless to account for.
For example:
- It explains why every territorial proposal, which would have allowed them to
create a state of their own (from the 1947 partition plan to Barak´s offer at
Camp David in 2000), never satisfied Arab leadership.
- It explains why only the total negation of Jewish independence would appear
acceptable to the Palestinians, as evidenced not only by their rejection of any
viable offer for statehood, but by much of their rhetoric and symbolism, in
which they invariably portray the whole the Land of Israel, from the
Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, as constituting part of Arab Palestine.
- It explains not only why the Palestinians refrained from attempting to exert
their national sovereignty in the pre-1967 "West Bank" (as evidenced by their
original National Charter), but why today the Palestinians, as an overwhelming
majority in Jordan, resign themselves to the rule by a Hashemite Bedouin despot,
who represents the minority in the land.
- It explains not only why they rejected the far-reaching generosity of the
Barak proposal, but also the violent manner in which they rejected it.
- It explains why the Palestinians stubbornly insist on the "right of return,"
which would imply placing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians now living in
Arab lands under Israeli jurisdiction. It is hardly consistent with an alleged
desire to be free of oppressive Israeli control or with an equitable two-state
solution.
By contrast, none of the above phenomena can be reconciled with the explanation
propounded by the advocates of conventional wisdom. For, in reality, the
Palestinians appear to have little motivation in expressing their national
sovereignty in territories when they are under non-Palestinian, but Arab, rule.
Strangely, this desire only manifests itself in these territories when they fall
under Jewish rule. Indeed, Palestinian efforts seem far more comprehensible if
seen as directed toward the the undermining and elimination of Jewish
sovereignty (by demanding either Israeli withdrawals, where possible, or Arab
repatriation, where not), than in the realization of their own independence.
If this is true, then making ever more generous proposals regarding Palestinian
statehood will be totally unproductive, indeed counterproductive, for these will
induce no peaceable response whatsoever. After all, as Muhsin said, "The
founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against
Israel."
It will be of great interest to see which explanation the next Israeli
government adopts as the foundation of its policy toward the Palestinians - that
which has considerable power to account for Palestinian behavior, or that which
has none.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Martin Sherman is a senior research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center,
Herzliya.
Archimedes Plutonium
(snipped)
> Archimedes Plutonium <a_plu...@dtgnet.com> wrote in message
> > As we see the Bush roadmap disintegrating in a matter of one week we can
> > go back and look how close Clinton came to a Peace accord.
> >
> > Actually Clinton was very close to some success.
>
> Not, Clinton really wasn't close. And Bush will never get close. Nobody can
> get close. It's the great black hole of politics. It is a problem that can
> never be solved.
I disagree. Many events of the 20th century looked intractable and surprizingly
were solved with great speed. For example the Berlin Wall and Cold War.
The solving of the nuclear missile buildup by USA and USSR ended nicely.
I think that this Middle East Problem may well become a speedy surprizing
end. Consider how many people and resources and their brains looking
to solve this one problem. So I would not be surprized for the news in a few
years to rarely have any incidents in either Israel or Palestine.
>
>
> But really, the problem shouldn't even exist - most of the traditional
> "Palestine" (if we may even say such a thing exists) is actually in Jordan, but
> Jordan won't give them an inch of land. In fact, no other arab country will
Here again I am sketchy of the history as to how long the Palestinian people
made that region their home. And I suppose indigenous Jews lived amoung
the Palestinians. I do not know when in history that the majority of people
living in that area were Muslims and that the Jews and Christians were only
a tiny population. You see I do not know the history to assess the claims on
the land.
But this much seems certain that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states seem to
be satisfied with the 1967 borders and if they are satisfied then it seems to
me that Palestine statehood should be the 1967 borders.
>
> take them. Palestinians are merely a pawn for other arab countries in their
> fight to exterminate the jews. So long as the Palesintinans are useful to that
> end, there will be no peace. No president can claim to be close to a solution.
> And nobody should ever claim any one president has come close to a solution.
I think the initial rage of a Jewish nation after WW2 by surrounding Arabs
was predictable. And predictable that by 50 years the neighbors of Israel
would accept them, foremost being Egypt et al.
>
>
> Back in the 1920s and 30s, when Britain controlled it, there was no "political
> correctness", no "sensitivity" or "tolerance". The Brits had free reign to do
> absolutely whatever they wanted in the Palestine Mandate. And THEY couldn't
> solve the issue either. That *anybody* dreams of solving the problem peacefully
> in the current political environment is mind-boggling.
Well, Britain was not solving a problem for it was creating a problem. It would
be rare to find any spot on Earth where you have indigenous people living and to
then transport into that land, new people and tell the other people that this land
is
no longer theirs but these new arriving people. It would be almost a miracle for
there to not be a war, fighting and bloodshed.
>
>
> As a cynic, I offer the following (non-politically correct, insensitive,
> intolerant, and no doubt somehow racist) solution:
>
> The whole world should just turn their backs on the middle and ignore everything
> that goes on there. Don't buy anything from them, don't sell anything to them,
> just let them do whatever they want. In a few years, we'll go back and deal
> with whoever is left.
>
Well, I would say your solution is what the Bush administration solution was
for the past 2 years-- ignore the place.
I have a solution that is better than the RoadMap of Bush. Instead of pretending
that the Palestinians and Israelis will be well-behaved and follow the RoadMap and
then their reward at the end is a 2 states living side by side in peace.
I say set up the 2 states immediately. Saudi Arabia has plenty of money to buy
fencing material and to buy enough to enclose the WestBank and Gaza of the
1967 borders. Have both the Palestinians and Israelis construct the fence. All
Jewish settlers inside the fence perimeter have until construction to evacuate.
Once the fence is totally around the WestBank and Gaza then have USA
or UN troops patrol the fence because it is not allowed for any Arab to
go into Israel and not allowed for any Israelis to go into Palestine.
How much would a fence cost Saudi Arabia and how long would it take
to construct it around Gaza and the WestBank closing that land off from
Israel?
Create the 2 states immediately. Fence off the Arabs from the Israelis so that
neither has anything to do with one another. Patrol the fence and shoot anyone
trying to gain access.
Peace should follow very quickly.
By the way, I believe the above is the fastest and cheapest and most equitable
solution. Bush's RoadMap is fine once you reverse the order by starting with
the 2-states and building a fence and then when the Arabs and Israelis have no
contact with each other they will begin to act like normal human beings with
something more constructive to do in life rather than killing one another.
jmfb...@aol.com
null...@aol.com (Edward Green) wrote:
>Steve Hanneke <han...@uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:<Pine.GSO.4.31.03061...@ux10.cso.uiuc.edu>...
>
>> Although many U.S. citizens, myself included, would love to see peace in
>> the middle east and everywhere else, what makes you think the U.S.
>> government wants peace in the middle east? Think of the bargaining
power
>> in international oil deals when there is a conflict that oil dealers
care
>> deeply about and they are convinced only one nation can do anything
about
>> it.
>
>Maybe. General thesis: a number of groups have deep interest in
>conflict continuing -- like Hamas. Like narcs. Leaders of terrorist
>groups like hamas have large investment in status quo because ...
>well, because that's what they do. N.B. "leaders": they enjoy respect
>in their community, have steady supply of young idiots ready to carry
>out their wishes.
Don't forget...lots of lovely money.
> ..They no doubt claim to want "peace", on their terms
Why is it that, whenever somebody says "I want peace if..",
everybody assumes that the goal is peace?
<snip>
>CIA should be slipping in covert education.
I'd be air-dropping Korans.
/BAH
Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail.
Archimedes Plutonium
enclose Gaza as a self autonomous state and WestBank as another
state? How much would it cost Saudi Arabia for a fence that encloses
Gaza and another fence that encloses WestBank?
And how long would it take to construct that fence?
I believe it best to make Westbank a separate and different country
from Gaza because the 1967 borders would have those two noncontiguous.
So I think that since it is noncontiguous to make the two separate lands
separate countries. And the portion of Gaza open to the sea would not
be fenced nor the portion of Westbank bordering Jordan need not be
fenced.
I suppose call the WestBank as Palestine and call Gaza just simply
Gaza.
And once the fence is constructed and the fence patrolled there will
be no contact between Israelis and Arabs in that region.
Take the fence down only sometime in the distant future when the
3 countries can behave decently.
Archimedes Plutonium
(all snipped)
Ed is too pessimistic and you rarely ever solve or help solve a problem with
pessimism. It indicates you have given up.
Optimism invests more energy into finding the solution.
But I want to talk about the science of psychology or Sociology with the
Bush Roadmap. In the Bush Roadmap the end result or reward or carrot
is a Palestine statehood.
Is it wise to have the reward only after a long torturous years of good-behaviour?
I mean, let us look at naughty 3 children who are fighting each other. Can you
ever get 3 fighting children to behave well and at the end they given a reward?
I suspect it almost impossible. Nor will it ever work if you have 3 adults fighting
(the 3 are Israel, WestBank, Gaza).
The Bush RoadMap is deeply flawed because the endresult or reward should
be made upfront. The WestBank should be given to those Palestine people
as the first thing in the Roadmap. The Gaza should be given to those Arabs
in the Gaza strip. Both Westbank and Gaza be fenced and patrolled so that
neither Arabs nor Israelis ever have anything to do with one another.
There will be Peace because the Palestines will never have contact with the
Israelis and vice versa.
So, with the Palestinians finally having their land that eliminates the grudge
of land. And being isolated from the Israelis the killing should end.
Silly to think that any Roadmap will work that requires a long term of good
behaviour when these people have been killing each other for 50 years now.
The reward of land to Palestinians is the entire reason for the 50 year
crisis. Once the problem of "land" is no longer the issue, then Peace
is the only alternative.
Silly to think that 3 fighting toddlers are going to well behave in order
to get a reward. Instead, what we do with 3 toddlers is we isolate them
in order to calm them down and we give them their treat to faster calm them
down of icecream (land in the crisis).
So, if the Bush Roadmap were reversed in order. Where you create the 2
new states of WestBank and Gaza (noncontiguous 1967 borders). And you
fence in both the Westbank and Gaza with the standing rule that no Arab
allowed into Israel and no Israeli allowed into Westbank and Gaza and you
patrol the fence by the UN or USA.
Well, then, give it about 2 years and probably never any bad news coming
out of the Middle East. Only alot of "Thank You" coming out of WestBank,
Gaza and Israel.
Summary, Bush RoadMap is flawed in that the reward should be imposed
immediately, but that land be fenced. Have Saudi Arabia pay for the fence.
Patrol the fence where no Arab allowed in Israel and no Israeli ever step
foot in Westbank or Gaza. Give it about 2 years and the place will enjoy
lovely peace.
Edward Glamkowski
> 12 Jun 2003 10:06:40 -0700 Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> (snipped)
>
> > Archimedes Plutonium <a_plu...@dtgnet.com> wrote in message
> > > As we see the Bush roadmap disintegrating in a matter of one week we can
> > > go back and look how close Clinton came to a Peace accord.
> > >
> > > Actually Clinton was very close to some success.
> >
> > Not, Clinton really wasn't close. And Bush will never get close. Nobody
> > can get close. It's the great black hole of politics. It is a problem that
> > can never be solved.
>
> I disagree. Many events of the 20th century looked intractable and
> surprizingly were solved with great speed. For example the Berlin Wall and
> Cold War. The solving of the nuclear missile buildup by USA and USSR ended
> nicely.
Yes, but in those cases you were dealing with rational actors. In the
mid-east
you are dealing with religious fanatics (on both sides). MAD is no
deterent
to the arabs, and the Jews are more then willing to do whatever they
need to
do to protect themselves, world opinion be damned. Recall the
creation of the
Jewish state was given great urgency by the Holocaust, and the Jews
aren't
going to give it up if there is even a hint of a possibility they
might be
subject to such a thing again. And given the amount of hatred of the
Jews that
is still latent in Europe, I propose it is a real possibility in the
future.
Not the immediate future, but maybe 100 or 200 years from now.
The Soviets were trying to gain hegemony over the world, but a
destroyed world
would mean nothing, so they were willing to back down from crises and
be
relatively diplomatic in solving problems. Neither the arabs nor the
jews
have such aspirations or such moderations.
> I think that this Middle East Problem may well become a speedy surprizing
> end. Consider how many people and resources and their brains looking
> to solve this one problem. So I would not be surprized for the news in a few
> years to rarely have any incidents in either Israel or Palestine.
Consider how many people and resources and their brains have already
looked
into solving this one problem. And for over 100 years they've been
working
on it to absolutely no avail. More often then not it is the arabs
walking
away from the negotiating table. The arabs are absolutely unwilling
to co-exist
with the Jews. Yes, Egypt may have made peace, but that's possible
exactly
because of the "Palestinians". They have a foil to attack the Jews
indirectly.
It's a win-win for arabs states that make peace with Israel while the
Palestinians are still around - the peace makers look good for the
international
community, real "doers" and "seekers of peace", all the while
continuing to egg
the Palestinians on to further violence against the jews. They still
get to
attack Israel, if only indirectly, while appearing to be nice guys.
Recall that
Arafat is from... EGYPT!
> > But really, the problem shouldn't even exist - most of the traditional
> > "Palestine" (if we may even say such a thing exists) is actually in Jordan,
> > but Jordan won't give them an inch of land. In fact, no other arab country
> > will
>
> Here again I am sketchy of the history as to how long the Palestinian people
> made that region their home. And I suppose indigenous Jews lived amoung
> the Palestinians. I do not know when in history that the majority of people
> living in that area were Muslims and that the Jews and Christians were only
> a tiny population. You see I do not know the history to assess the claims on
> the land.
The name Palestine was given to the region by .... the ROMANS! Long
before
Mohammed and the creation (or revealation, if you prefer) of Islam.
Why did
the Romans change the name? Because the Jews, who had been living
there since
forever, rebelled against Roman authority. The Romans finally got
tired of
these rebellions, so they destroyed the temple in Jersaulem, and
dispersed
the jews - the diaspora. They changed the name of the region from
Judea to
Palestine in order to further destroy the Jewish identity.
The Muslims didn't even exist until the 7th century AD, and they had
to conquer
this region by force and faced several rebellions against Muslim
authority in
the early years. The Jews predate the Muslims in this region by well
over
1000 years. The only claim the Muslims have to it is that they
conquered it.
And the Jews conquered it back in the 1940s-70s.
> But this much seems certain that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states seem to
> be satisfied with the 1967 borders and if they are satisfied then it seems to
> me that Palestine statehood should be the 1967 borders.
Anyways the Palestinians themselves did not originally recognize those
borders.
Article 24 of the Palestinian National Charter says "This Organization
does not
exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the
Hashemite Kingdom
of Jordan, [or] on the Gaza Strip..."
In any event, since the jews won REPEATED wars against the arabs (wars
which
the arabs started, BTW), they should just outright be dictating the
terms - the
arabs shouldn't have any say at all in the matter. The fact that the
jews ARE
willing to negotiate at all, and that the ARABS refuse to accept any
terms the
jews present, tells you which party is not playing nice.
> I think the initial rage of a Jewish nation after WW2 by surrounding Arabs
> was predictable. And predictable that by 50 years the neighbors of Israel
> would accept them, foremost being Egypt et al.
The neighbors only accept them exactly because they can still attack
Israel
indirectly through the Palestinians. Before in 1947, there were no
arab
Palestinians at all. The idea of Palestinians or a country of
Palestine
simply did not exist. It sprang into existance only exactly because
of the
creation of Israel - if the arabs didn't make some counter-claim to
the land
right away, they'd lose any chance to do anything about the jews later
on.
So, the literally overnight creation of "Palestine". It's a farce.
But one
that is necessary for the arabs if they are ever to drive the jews
away from
the middle east.
> > Back in the 1920s and 30s, when Britain controlled it, there was no
> > "political correctness", no "sensitivity" or "tolerance". The Brits had
> > free reign to do absolutely whatever they wanted in the Palestine Mandate.
> > And THEY couldn't solve the issue either. That *anybody* dreams of solving
> > the problem peacefully in the current political environment is
> > mind-boggling.
>
> Well, Britain was not solving a problem for it was creating a problem. It
> would be rare to find any spot on Earth where you have indigenous people
> living and to then transport into that land, new people and tell the other
> people that this land is no longer theirs but these new arriving people. It
> would be almost a miracle for there to not be a war, fighting and bloodshed.
First, the Jews had lived there long before Islam ever existed. Not
these
specific jews, but it was the jewish homeland for centuries, possibly
millenia,
until the ROMANS, not the arabs, evicted them. This opened the door
to arab
domination of the region after the roman empire, and Islam didn't take
over
except through bloody conquest. It is the muslim arabs who are the
invaders
here, not the jews.
Second, the Jews have been more then willing to co-exist, right from
the very
start. Every deal offered by the Jews has allowed for the arabs to
continue
living in Israel. Never has a plan been suggested that would
dislocate any
arabs or any muslims from their homes. The arabs, on the other hand,
are
absolutely unwilling under any circumstances at all to peacefully
co-exist.
That's why THEY are the ones who have walked away from every single
peace deal
offered, despite the fact that they have repeatedly lost wars to
Israel.
As for your fence building idea - the jews have already started
building a
fence. The UN has specifically and directly asked Israel to cease
building
this wall.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-un-mideast-wall,0,5535389.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
But then, the UN has NEVER been able to accomplish the goal of
bringing peace
to anybody. The only two wars it has officially sanctioned were North
Korea
and Iraq 1991. Neither one of those wars ended in a way favorable to
long
term peace. So the UN needs to just butt out, since it obviously has
no clue.
In fact, the UN is utterly impotent to do much of anything. They are
still
working on restoring water and power to Kosovo YEARS after the fact,
while the
US has got these things up and running in Baghdad after mere weeks.
The UN
can't even do humanitarian things right. It's such a joke, the UN
needs to
just dissolve itself and go away.
Edward Glamkowski
> pessimism. It indicates you have given up.
No, it indicated you have thoroughly studied the problem and are prepared to
approach it in a REALISTIC way. In a way that matches the reality of the
situation and seeks a permanent solution, rather then just band-aids. Optimists
are more then happy to apply band-aids and worry about real solutions later
(when the band-aid falls off). Pessimists just want the thing to be over and
done with once and for all.
> I mean, let us look at naughty 3 children who are fighting each other. Can you
> ever get 3 fighting children to behave well and at the end they given a
> reward? I suspect it almost impossible. Nor will it ever work if you have 3
> adults fighting
Why would you ever reward them for fighting at all? They only deserve to be
punished. You want to talk psychology, how about this:
You get more of the behavior you reward and less of the behavior you punish.
> (the 3 are Israel, WestBank, Gaza).
Palestine has specifically rejected claims to Gaza and the West Bank.
At least initially, though I suppose they may have changed their tune over
time, deciding it was politically expedient to make claims to those lands.
> The Bush RoadMap is deeply flawed because the endresult or reward should
> be made upfront.
And if you give them their reward up front, they no longer have incentive
to stop their bad behavior. In fact, quite the opposite - they may continue
or increase their bad behavior believing they will get still more from you.
Instead, the US should go in and kick butt - they should support Israel's
campaign against Hammas, provide intel and weapons and everything else the
jews need to root out and erase this organization from existance. Just
letting Hammas win will only make things worse for the jews.
> The WestBank should be given to those Palestine people as the first thing in
> the Roadmap. The Gaza should be given to those Arabs in the Gaza strip. Both
> Westbank and Gaza be fenced and patrolled so that neither Arabs nor Israelis
> ever have anything to do with one another.
Reward the criminal, punish the victim, eh? Great.
You wouldn't be one of those British "judges" that is currently screwing over
Tony Martin, would you?
http://www.tonymartinsupportgroup.org/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/norfolk/2987642.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3010949.stm
It's a very dangerous precedent to set, and only makes justice loving people
the world over very angry.
> There will be Peace because the Palestines will never have contact with the
> Israelis and vice versa.
Because the arabs could never just blow up the wall?
> So, with the Palestinians finally having their land that eliminates the grudge
> of land. And being isolated from the Israelis the killing should end.
It isn't about the land - the arabs could care less about the land.
Really for the jews, the specific land they occupy is not so critical, as long
as they have something. For the arabs, though, only the complete extermination
of the jews will satisfy them.
> Silly to think that any Roadmap will work that requires a long term of good
> behaviour when these people have been killing each other for 50 years now.
> The reward of land to Palestinians is the entire reason for the 50 year
> crisis. Once the problem of "land" is no longer the issue, then Peace
> is the only alternative.
No, the existance of the Jews in the middle east is the entire reason for the
50 years of crisis. The land is merely an excuse, a conventient political
tool towards a very different end.
> Silly to think that 3 fighting toddlers are going to well behave in order
> to get a reward. Instead, what we do with 3 toddlers is we isolate them
> in order to calm them down and we give them their treat to faster calm them
> down of icecream (land in the crisis).
Better to reward bad behavior, so you more of it, eh?
You a parent? I sure hope not...
> So, if the Bush Roadmap were reversed in order. Where you create the 2
> new states of WestBank and Gaza (noncontiguous 1967 borders). And you
> fence in both the Westbank and Gaza with the standing rule that no Arab
> allowed into Israel and no Israeli allowed into Westbank and Gaza and you
> patrol the fence by the UN or USA.
The UN wouldn't do crap (most of the time UN peacekeepers are not allowed to
shoot under any circumstances, and sometimes they don't even carry weapons!).
And the US public would never accept a permanent role there. Heck, there's
plenty of jew-haters in the US who would not tolerate are being there on the
ground at all! And you certainly can't trust the arabs to fulfill that role.
A patrolled partition will never work, simply because there's nobody who is
willing and capable of such a role for the long-term.
> Well, then, give it about 2 years and probably never any bad news coming
> out of the Middle East. Only alot of "Thank You" coming out of WestBank,
> Gaza and Israel.
Not really, since the arabs don't really give a damn about land, only the
existance of the jews.
The actors in this story are not rational, so treating them in a rational
manner will not work.
Archimedes Plutonium
(snipped)
>
>
> The Soviets were trying to gain hegemony over the world, but a
> destroyed world
> would mean nothing, so they were willing to back down from crises and
> be
> relatively diplomatic in solving problems. Neither the arabs nor the
> jews
> have such aspirations or such moderations.
>
The USSR and USA had M.A.D implemented because from 1950 to
1991 there was never any nuclear war. And it was a M.A.D. Fleet during
the Cuban Missile Crisis that also prevent a nuclear war between the two.
The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961 (correct me if wrong year) was not a
full fledged M.A.D. Fleet because blockading Cuba that a M.A.D. Fleet
would be today, but it certainly was the first historical M.A.D. Fleet to
have occurred in history. And it did its job superbly because the USSR
backed down. We should have had a M.A.D. Fleet off the coast of Pakistan
and India in 2002 and we should have had a M.A.D. Fleet off the coast of
NorthKorea in 2003. And it still may have to come to that reality of a M.A.D
Fleet to defuse Pakistan vs India and to regime change NorthKorea.
Once a M.A.D Fleet comes to be a commonplace reality in geopolitics then
I suspect all countries and all fanatics with their fanatical-religions will be
unable to ignore the power of M.A.D. Fleet because their radical politics and
their terror would easily cause the M.A.D. Fleet to make a regime change
due to the rising incidents of terror. Ever since the Afghanistan regime change
the incidents of terror have diminished.
Terrorism does not work well in a world where a M.A.D. Fleet operates.
For it causes all nations to crackdown and diminish terrorism in fear that
their country regime will be changed if terrorisms rises.
Archimedes Plutonium
(snipped)
> > Ed is too pessimistic and you rarely ever solve or help solve a problem with
> > pessimism. It indicates you have given up.
>
> No, it indicated you have thoroughly studied the problem and are prepared to
> approach it in a REALISTIC way. In a way that matches the reality of the
> situation and seeks a permanent solution, rather then just band-aids. Optimists
> are more then happy to apply band-aids and worry about real solutions later
> (when the band-aid falls off). Pessimists just want the thing to be over and
> done with once and for all.
>
tell that to Hillary or the preHillary climbers of Everest that they should have
a large number of pessimists amoung the climbers. You lost logical, commonsense in
your writing above, Ed.
Archimedes Plutonium
picture them helping to construct a fence around the Westbank and that
the settlers have until the fence is completed to evacuate. Picture that instead
of expecting the Palestinians to police their terrorism that they are constructing
a fence around WestBank and Gaza.
You see, by the physical act of both Israelis and Palestinians in constructing
a fence, we know and the whole world knows who wants peace-- for it is the
people who are avidly putting up the fence. That is what the RoadMap should
be all about-- Physical hard core evidence of moving in the right direction
to peace. Not blabbering and blubbering talk of promises.
Have Saudi Arabia pay and buy a fence and keep shipping more fence
to the Westbank and Gaza. This fence will enclose the 1967 borders. Ignore
the daily killing of Jew on Arab or Arab on Jew, in fact, block out coverage
of that. Instead report daily of the progress of how much of the fence was
constructed during that day. How much the Israelis help to put up the fence
that day and how much the Palestinians worked to put up the fence for that
day. And to tell everyone in the enclosing fence of WestBank and Gaza that
upon completion there must not be any Jew inside the WestBank or Gaza
and that no Arab can enter into Israel once the fence is near complete.
Gaza would be a separate country from WestBank.
So to solve this problem, the Palestinians will have their own countries of
Gaza and Westbank but they will not be able to enter Israel.
The RoadMap to peace is this fence and the daily progress in building the
fence on the 1967 borders. Forget about monitoring signs of good behaviour
or bad behaviour for some carrot-stick reward at the end of a state living
side by side in peace. People killing each other for 50 years proves that
"talkity talk diplomacy" does not work.
What will work is Physical Action of Doing the job of creating Peace. Build
the fence creates the states. Build the fence is proof that Israel wants to solve
this problem. Build the fence will prove that the Palestinians want their country
and not the habit of killing Jews.
The RoadMap to Peace has the reward up and front. It gives the reward immediately
and it shows that the world is "serious" about wanting peace.
The reward is the 1967 borders. The path towards peace is the construction
building of that FENCE to enclose the 1967 borders.
The RoadMap to peace is not a dilly dally wait until Palestinians elect a new
prime mininster. Dilly dally until the Palestinians have a police force to
crack down on its militants. Dilly Dally until the Palestinians do this and that.
Dilly dally until the Israelis make a show of removing some outpost tin shacks
where they should not be.
The Roadmap to Peace is a Physical Show of Proof by building a Fence
on the 1967 borders. Can the Israelis lift one finger in helping to construct
the fence, if not, then they are not wanting of Peace but rather instead want this
daily bloodshed. Can the Palestinians lift one finger in starting to build the
fence on the 1967 borders? If not, then they prove that they do not want Peace
but are more happy in killing Jews.
The Fence will say it all....
I pick on Saudi Arabia because it is so wealthy that it can afford to buy the
fence and because it was Saudi Arabia that suggested that the 1967 borders is
a *fair and just* amount of land for the Palestinian Homeland.
So, please start to buy the FENCE and ship it to the Middle East and then
say to the Palestinians and Israelis. Please begin to build the fence that
will enclose the three countries and to bring peace to their people.
Edward Glamkowski
Hillary had a very finite and well-define goal. Once he reached the top, that
was it. Once Israel and Palestine agree to live in peace, it is not the end,
it is only the end of the beginning.
Anyways, are you seriously going to ignore the entire post just for this one
comment? Perhaps my arguments were too compelling that you couldn't come up
with a good counter? Or did you not even bother to read them, even though
they were all quite valid points of debate?
I'd really like to see a point-by-point reponse, rather then such a casual
shrugging off.
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> Hillary had a very finite and well-define goal. Once he reached the top, that
> was it. Once Israel and Palestine agree to live in peace, it is not the end,
> it is only the end of the beginning.
Here is another adventure. Amundsen's trek to the South Pole. You could say
he was weeding out the pessimists before the final slog to the pole. Pessimists
are lethargic and worn out people.
>
>
> Anyways, are you seriously going to ignore the entire post just for this one
> comment? Perhaps my arguments were too compelling that you couldn't come up
> with a good counter? Or did you not even bother to read them, even though
> they were all quite valid points of debate?
>
> I'd really like to see a point-by-point reponse, rather then such a casual
> shrugging off.
Point by point response with a pessimist is futile.
I actually think the MiddleEast will find a solution long before Ireland
finds their solution.
I think the Berlin Wall was a solution for the Communists to keep people in.
So that the reverse of the Berlin Wall would be a fence around the 1967 borders
to keep the Palestines out of Israel.
So the solution would be to give the Palestines both the WestBank and Gaza
but to have a fence around each so that Israelis and Palestinians have
no further contact with each other.
Like marriage and divorce where only separation brings peace. So my solution
is build that FENCE.
A metal fence with barb wire should not be that costly. In fact Israel puts fences
around its settlement camps already. And to guard the fence should not be
costly either.
No, Ireland has a worse problem in that you have to find a way to get people
to "like one another". Whereas the problem of Israel and Palestinians is merely
one of giving up land and then separating the 2 groups. Thank goodness that
the Middle East problem is not like the Ireland problem in that you would have
to get Jews to like Arabs and Arabs to like Jews. And then I may become as
pessimistic as you Ed.
Edward Glamkowski
> > Anyways, are you seriously going to ignore the entire post just for this one
> > comment? Perhaps my arguments were too compelling that you couldn't come up
> > with a good counter? Or did you not even bother to read them, even though
> > they were all quite valid points of debate?
>
> >
> > I'd really like to see a point-by-point reponse, rather then such a casual
> > shrugging off.
>
> Point by point response with a pessimist is futile.
So you follow the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" model and choose
to ignore several thousand years of history. *shrug*
> I actually think the MiddleEast will find a solution long before Ireland
> finds their solution.
Maybe. It's the same thing though - the Irish won't be happy til the British
leave, and the British are unwilling to leave. Same exact thing. Religion is
only a convenient cover, but not the root cause.
Actually, I'm going to disagree - the British may actually decide it is no
longer worthwhile and leave - there really isn't much there, after all. It's
mostly just a point of honor. But in the middle east, the jews need their
homeland and the arabs won't tolerate the existance of jews in "their" land.
Neither side will ever decide it is no longer worthwhile.
The British are rational, neither the jews nor arabs are rational when it comes
to Israel/Palestine.
> No, Ireland has a worse problem in that you have to find a way to get people
> to "like one another".
Or to just get one side to leave.
> Whereas the problem of Israel and Palestinians is merely one of giving up land
> and then separating the 2 groups.
No, it's about one side wanting to exterminate the other. That's your
fundamental misunderstanding about the entire Palestine problem. The arabs
will never be satisfied until Israel ceases to exist. The "Palestinians" are
merely the current tool to that end. If the Palestinian problem is ever solved,
the arabs will come up with something else.
The "Palestinian problem", after all, could have been "solved" decades ago if
the arab countries had been willing to give up a little bit of land here and
there, but none of them are willing to give an inch. Why do we expect Israel
to give up lots of land, but expect nobody else to give anything at all?
After all, Israel won repeated wars - the defeated should not be dictating
anything. The Jews have been extremely reasonable all along, the arabs are
the ones who refuse to deal. And they refuse to deal because of their
irrational hatred of the jews. It's just that simple. Only genocide will
slate the arabs.
As for building a fence, the arabs will just blow it up and send in more
suicide bombers. A fence isn't going to stop people who aren't afraid to
die. Who, in fact, see it as their religious duty to die, if only they
can take a few jews with them. Even though most Muslims disagree with the
idea of suicide bombings in this way, enough do believe in them to keep it
going.
Now, you want a solution? Despose all the petty dictators. Build up
the local economies. Provide real education to the masses. Obliterate
funadmentalists and terrorist organization. You have to do the middle east
like what we did in Germany after WWII. De-nazification then,
de-fundementalization of the middle east now. That is the only true,
permanent long term solution. Anything less is a band-aid and will not solve
the root problems. A fence is a horrible idea. And even the Berlin Wall
didn't survive. Even the Great Wall of China wasn't breach-proof, China having
been rules by "barbarians" at various times in its history despite the Great
Wall, most notably the Mongolians and Manchus. Walls and fences just don't
work as a long-term solution, and that's historical reality.
Historically speaking, genocide is quite effective, but the arabs lack the
necessary force to accomplish that goal. The denazification type process is
also proven to work, and to work in a modern framework, both in Germany and
Japan.
Your optimism seeks merely to address symptoms, my pessimism seeks to address
the fundamental root cause. Fixing symptoms just doesn't solve the problem.
Archimedes Plutonium
(snip)
>
> Maybe. It's the same thing though - the Irish won't be happy til the British
> leave, and the British are unwilling to leave. Same exact thing. Religion is
> only a convenient cover, but not the root cause.
>
You cannot have a solution to a problem when you do not understand the
problem in the first place. The Irish problem is nowhere resembling the
Israel-Palestine problem. The Israel problem is simply a "land" problem.
Israel refuses to recognize indigenous people of Palestinians of the UN
charter of pre-1947 and of 1947. And Israel continues to confiscate
lands not their own in each neighborhood wars after 1947. Israel has
been a greedy land grabber ever since 1947.
So, once the Israelis give the Palestinians their rightful land of the 1967
borders-- problem solved and with a fence around those borders peace
will ensue.
>
> Actually, I'm going to disagree - the British may actually decide it is no
> longer worthwhile and leave - there really isn't much there, after all. It's
> mostly just a point of honor. But in the middle east, the jews need their
> homeland and the arabs won't tolerate the existance of jews in "their" land.
> Neither side will ever decide it is no longer worthwhile.
>
> The British are rational, neither the jews nor arabs are rational when it comes
> to Israel/Palestine.
>
Ed, your assessment of what the problem is -- is trite and skewed. Because
the problem of Israel & Palestinians is a problem in which the two sides
need never "like each other". But the Ireland problem challenge is how to
get two different people to live together and to like one another. Israel
can just fence off the Palestinians and never have to come to like the
Palestinians but the Irish face the challenge of having to like one another.
Solution to the Ireland problem: I believe the best solution is what I have
been espousing in the 1990s. That Ireland become accepted as the 51st
State of the USA. This is both Irelands as one nation becoming the
51st state and in the USA their are many states in the Union where there
is a large catholic constituency and a large protestant constituency and noone
really cares what religion you are here in the USA. Not Northern-Ireland
as a separate state but the entire Ireland island as one state of the USA--
the 51st state. That eliminates the cause and need of the two groups having
to like one another and it creates One-Ireland.
Ed seems to lack crystal clear logic and is ruled more by his whims of the
moment. For as you can see, the Ireland problem is perhaps 180 degree
different problem than Israel and Palestine. Imagine for one second that
the USA would try to make Israel + WestBank + Gaza as the 52nd State
of the Union of the USA. What a nightmare because you would have to
deploy virtually the entire USA military to try to keep the peace.
Ireland becoming the 51st state would solve the Ireland problem but Israel+
WestBank + Gaza becoming the 52nd state would not create peace and
a solution but give further licence and impetus for increasing bloodletting.
However, come to think of it. Making Israel the 52nd state and putting a
fence around Gaza and the WestBank and saying to the Palestinians, here,
here is your land but you can not enter Israel. Why, jimmeny-cricket, that
would solve the Israel Palestine problem, because one of the issues of a
fence around Gaza and Westbank is the possibility that the Palestinians
will import rocket missiles and launch them into Israel in the future. But
that would not happen if Israel became the 52nd state of the USA.
Archimedes Plutonium
>
>
> Solution to the Ireland problem: I believe the best solution is what I have
> been espousing in the 1990s. That Ireland become accepted as the 51st
> State of the USA. This is both Irelands as one nation becoming the
> 51st state and in the USA their are many states in the Union where there
> is a large catholic constituency and a large protestant constituency and noone
> really cares what religion you are here in the USA. Not Northern-Ireland
> as a separate state but the entire Ireland island as one state of the USA--
> the 51st state. That eliminates the cause and need of the two groups having
> to like one another and it creates One-Ireland.
>
And that was a serious error and flaw of the EU in that they recognized
2 Irelands. What the EU should have done was not recognize 2 Irelands
but only One Ireland. But of course, the EU is not one central government
that the USA is. And Ireland as the 51st state of the Union, all of its people
have one vote in national and local elections. So that forces the Irish to
become one group of people erasing their distractions and hatred and killing
of one another.
The hatred problem of Ireland is solved not by building fences between
the 2 Irelands but by amalgamating or unionizing the 2 Irelands into a
larger political entity such as the USA as the 51st state.
But in the case of Israel and Palestine the problem is that the two are
unioned already and what they need is a Fence and a big Fence at that.
Not only is Ed a pessimist but also muddied logic as to what the reality
and situation of the problems are of Ireland and MiddleEast. These two
problems are almost 180 degree opposite problems requiring different
solutions. Because Ireland has a fence and needs to drop its fence to
become one country and Israel refuses to fence thinking that if they
hold out then Israel will continue to own the Westbank and Gaza and
push the Palestinians off the map.
Question Ed: did you ever take any Logic course while in University?
That is one of the pitfall failures of USA education in that so many
young students are quick with their stupid opinions and never take
any Logic in school.
Edward Glamkowski
> (snip)
> > Maybe. It's the same thing though - the Irish won't be happy til the
> > British leave, and the British are unwilling to leave. Same exact thing.
> > Religion is only a convenient cover, but not the root cause.
>
> You cannot have a solution to a problem when you do not understand the
> problem in the first place. The Irish problem is nowhere resembling the
> Israel-Palestine problem. The Israel problem is simply a "land" problem.
> Israel refuses to recognize indigenous people of Palestinians of the UN
> charter of pre-1947 and of 1947. And Israel continues to confiscate
> lands not their own in each neighborhood wars after 1947. Israel has
> been a greedy land grabber ever since 1947.
>
> So, once the Israelis give the Palestinians their rightful land of the 1967
> borders-- problem solved and with a fence around those borders peace
> will ensue.
Ok, perhaps it was not very clear from previous postings, and that's my fault:
There has never, in the entire history of the middle east, been a sovereign
and independent nation of Palestine.
Never.
Therefore it makes no sense to talk of "rightful" borders, 1967 or any time.
Or of a "right of return". It makes no sense to talk of Israel as a land
grabber - before Israel, the British controlled that land (by mandate from the
League of Nations, as part of their spoils of the Great War), and the British
threw up their hands in frustration and left the area, leaving a vacuum.
Before the British, the land had belonged to the Ottoman Empire, but the
Ottoman Empire no longer existed in the 1940s. Before the Ottomans, it was
owned by the Byzantine Empire. It's been controlled variously by the Persians,
Romans, Greeks, Assyria, Babylonia, Judea, and before the jews, it was the
Kindom of Canaan! NEVER has there been an independent Palestine. There are
no historic borders for it, cause it never existed! And since none of these
other ancient powers still existed in the 1940s, they could bloody well lay
claim to it. So the Jews, being the only ancient power still alive today with
ties to the land, reclaimed it. The arabs attacked them, and the Jews won.
And they won again and again and again. Israel shouldn't have to budge an inch
if they don't want to - it's their land, nobody else has any better claim to the
land then the jews, and in any event, they won said unclaimed land by military
might.
Further, the Jews have been more then willing to co-exist, offering to settle
a permanent peace repeatedly. It is the arabs who have every time walked away
from the bargaining table, even on the Barak Accords! The jews want peace, the
arabs clearly don't. It isn't enough to separate the two peoples with a fence,
the mere existance of the jews on this land is what irritates the arabs so -
they will blow up the fence and stream through the breach to destroy the "evil
zionists"! You can't stop people who are determined to die rather then
"suffer" this! It is an intractable problem, and the great black hole of
politics.
Regarding Northern Ireland:
> Ed, your assessment of what the problem is -- is trite and skewed.
Not really. And I'd go so far as to say you've got it completely backwards.
The British and Irish are not the ones who have to learn to co-exist, the
arabs and jews are in that boat.
I just did some research and the problem dates back to the 16th century.
Britain, having failed to integrate Ireland into the commonwealth, declared the
country to be a colony instead. It was a land grab, pure and simple. It was
largely in response to the acquisitions France and Spain were making in the
New World - Britain felt the need to expand, and Ireland was convenient.
During WWI and WWII, northern Ireland became an important strategic base for
the British for combating U-Boats. Today it has little strategic value to the
British, and the historical importance as colonial land is long gone.
The two sides don't have to learn to live together - the British could
trivially leave, having no remaining real interests in the land other then
pride and national honor. The Irish, having won the independence of the
majority of their country, have little reason not to finish the fight when
they are so close (in terms of land area, anyways... depends on how success
is measured in this case).
I don't personally have any problems with adding any country as a new state,
so long as they want to be added. Adding Ireland as a state may very well
solve the problem, but just because we have religious tolerance in our
country (in our constitution!), doesn't mean it WILL work. There is 400 years
of bitter oppression to get over! It may work, it may not, but it probably
would be a big step in the right direction. Of course, then you have to deal
with the geopolitical consequences of a US state in Europe, especially with the
expanding development of the EU.
So how do you propose to convince Ireland to sign up as a US state?
As for Israel as a 52nd state - I doubt that would work. Arabs *already* hate
us anyways, and especially so for having a presence in the middle east (our
presence in Saudi Arabia is one of Osama bin Laden's stated reasons for his
attacks on the US). They spew enough vitrolic about our "jewish controlled
government" and US zionism and all sorts of crap. Having Israel as a US state
will only feed these frenzied fires even more, not put them out. The awesome
might of the US military hasn't stopped Saddam loyalists from attacking US
troops in Iraq. And that's a tiny number of arabs, since almost nobody there
liked Saddam. Plus, as I said before, there are far too many people in this
country who hate the jews and smypathize with the arab anti-Zionist propaganda -
they'd never accept Israel as a US state. Hammas would not stop just because
Israel became a US state. Hezbollah and all the rest are determined to kill
the jews no matter what. US presence will only make them more angry, not less.
Israel as a US state won't work for anyone unless all the radicalism,
fundamentalism and terrorism is stamped out of the muslim nations in the
region FIRST. It won't follow, it needs to preceed.
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> Ok, perhaps it was not very clear from previous postings, and that's my fault:
>
I would not say that it is your fault that you are poor in logic. Most people
are poor in logic.
>
> There has never, in the entire history of the middle east, been a sovereign
> and independent nation of Palestine.
> Never.
For more than 1 thousand years, (I do not know the exact century) that region was
occupied in the majority by Muslims of which the Palestinians are the modern day
ancestors. Muslims governed that land for the past 1 thousand years. So when the
British departed the region, the Palestines had every consciousnable right to have
their own state. Even the 1947 UN charter recognized that right and made provisions
for it.
>
>
> Therefore it makes no sense to talk of "rightful" borders, 1967 or any time.
The 1947 UN charter creating Israel also created provisions for their to be
a Palestinian state. Somehow that process was never followed through. Perhaps
the Jew-Arab wars set those provisions on a freeze.
>
> Or of a "right of return". It makes no sense to talk of Israel as a land
The "right of return" is a minor sidetrack issue. The only real issue is
land. Ever since 1947, Israel has never met its responsibility of giving land
for a Palestinian homeland.
>
> grabber - before Israel, the British controlled that land (by mandate from the
I suspect you are Jewish, Ed, for if you were objective instead of passionate,
you would know that the Lakuds did many acts of terrorism upon the British
in order to get the British to leave. The Lakuds bombed a hotel killing
many innocents and then they hanged several British soldiers. They got Israel
from the British by acts of terrorism.
>
> League of Nations, as part of their spoils of the Great War), and the British
> threw up their hands in frustration and left the area, leaving a vacuum.
No, apparently the British were tired of the Jewish acts of terrorism on their
soldiers.
>
> Before the British, the land had belonged to the Ottoman Empire, but the
> Ottoman Empire no longer existed in the 1940s. Before the Ottomans, it was
> owned by the Byzantine Empire. It's been controlled variously by the Persians,
> Romans, Greeks, Assyria, Babylonia, Judea, and before the jews, it was the
> Kindom of Canaan! NEVER has there been an independent Palestine. There
Good to see you reading some history books. I wonder whether any of them
gave the statistics of what percent of the people living in that region were Jews
compared to Muslims for the past 1,000 years. Whether the Jewish population
in the region of Isreal had ever exceeded the Muslim population, or whether
the Jewish population had been about 10% or less for the past 1,000 years.
Ed, you conveniently deny that the Muslims lived there for over a
thousand years and governed the region. And you deny that the UN charter
of 1947 had provisions for a Palestine state.
> are
> no historic borders for it, cause it never existed! And since none of these
> other ancient powers still existed in the 1940s, they could bloody well lay
> claim to it. So the Jews, being the only ancient power still alive today with
> ties to the land, reclaimed it. The arabs attacked them, and the Jews won.
It would be nice to have Ed write a history textbook for HighSchool and
freshman-college and to say some of the things he said above. Nice as a
form of comedy entertainment to watch both students and teachers as to
how long it would take them to realize that they are not reading "history"
but the subjectivism of an individual.
>
> And they won again and again and again. Israel shouldn't have to budge an
Now that sets me to wondering. Suppose it is the conscious will of the 20th
century Israeli to reform a modern day Israel of the same size as the ancient
Israel. And what would be the easiest and surest way of achieving that goal?
Would it not be to incite and even frame the neighbors into goading them
into a war and after the war is over with knowing for certain you will win
since the USA is there with you. Have these wars so that you can steal the
land of the defeated.
Ed, give me one example of where Israel has had a war with its neighbor/s
and has not taken any of the land of that neighbor?
> inch
> if they don't want to - it's their land, nobody else has any better claim to the
> land then the jews, and in any event, they won said unclaimed land by military
> might.
I am not saying that what the Americans did to the indigenous Indians was
exemplary behaviour in any way shape or form. I do think some Indians are
better off today than if no white man had ever come to these shores.
So the question remains as to the national ambitions and future ambitions
of the Jewish people. Is it that they want the land of modern Israel to match
the land of ancient Israel and that any other people living on that land must
be removed or exterminated by whatever means.
Ironic that Nazi Germany tried to exterminate the Jews in Europe, and that
the Jews of Israel seem to have adopted that attitude towards the indigenous
Muslims of Palestinians.
Can the modern day Israel get rid of the Palestinians and thus have the land
all for themselves? Can they pack up all the Palestinians and train them or
boat them somewhere else? Can the Israelis have a "constant bloodletting"
for thousands of years into the future and in that fashion will have held
onto the land even though millions had died over it.
>
>
> Further, the Jews have been more then willing to co-exist, offering to settle
> a permanent peace repeatedly. It is the arabs who have every time walked
That is false because never have the Israelis been serious about the land
as in the 1947 UN charter. The last
negotiation under Clinton was a land that was not one piece but swiss-cheese
discontinous, and the goverance would remain with Israel.
> away
> from the bargaining table, even on the Barak Accords! The jews want peace, the
> arabs clearly don't. It isn't enough to separate the two peoples with a fence,
There is an old Indian saying "what you do speaks so loudly that I cannot
hear what you say". The Jews obviously from their last 50 years history shows
us clearly that they want land more than anything else. They rather have
daily killings for the next 2 thousand years rather than give up one square
centimeter of Israel.
>
> the mere existance of the jews on this land is what irritates the arabs so -
> they will blow up the fence and stream through the breach to destroy the "evil
> zionists"! You can't stop people who are determined to die rather then
> "suffer" this! It is an intractable problem, and the great black hole of
> politics.
Certainly the Arabs are no angels. And their overall history is so badly marred
with violence. And, to tell the truth, if I were ever forced in the situation of
having to live amoung Jews or having to live amoung Muslims, I would
chose the Jews simply because there is more order than the fanatical passion.
Hell is a place where logic and order have a hard time. And religions have
that tendency to reduce logic and order.
>
>
>
> Regarding Northern Ireland:
>
> > Ed, your assessment of what the problem is -- is trite and skewed.
>
> Not really. And I'd go so far as to say you've got it completely backwards.
> The British and Irish are not the ones who have to learn to co-exist, the
> arabs and jews are in that boat.
You talk of the people of Northern Ireland as if they are not Irish. As if they
are foreigners. You make it sound as if Northern Ireland is a place where
British soldiers and policemen ferry across from England every day and that
the problem is as simple as keeping those British out of Ireland.
>
>
> I just did some research and the problem dates back to the 16th century.
> Britain, having failed to integrate Ireland into the commonwealth, declared the
> country to be a colony instead. It was a land grab, pure and simple. It was
> largely in response to the acquisitions France and Spain were making in the
> New World - Britain felt the need to expand, and Ireland was convenient.
>
> During WWI and WWII, northern Ireland became an important strategic base for
> the British for combating U-Boats. Today it has little strategic value to the
> British, and the historical importance as colonial land is long gone.
>
> The two sides don't have to learn to live together - the British could
> trivially leave, having no remaining real interests in the land other then
I really have lost interest in talking with you Ed. There is no point in talking
about the Ireland problem with a person who does not understand who these
three groups are -- British, NorthernIrish, nonNorthernIrish.
>
> pride and national honor. The Irish, having won the independence of the
> majority of their country, have little reason not to finish the fight when
> they are so close (in terms of land area, anyways... depends on how success
> is measured in this case).
>
>
> I don't personally have any problems with adding any country as a new state,
> so long as they want to be added. Adding Ireland as a state may very well
> solve the problem, but just because we have religious tolerance in our
> country (in our constitution!), doesn't mean it WILL work. There is 400 years
> of bitter oppression to get over! It may work, it may not, but it probably
> would be a big step in the right direction. Of course, then you have to deal
> with the geopolitical consequences of a US state in Europe, especially with the
> expanding development of the EU.
>
> So how do you propose to convince Ireland to sign up as a US state?
>
A provision clause in the signingup of Ireland, in that Ireland can split off
of the USA once a careful determination that Ireland is all healthy again.
And it would show the ultimate in Altruism of the USA as a nation of people
that they care so much to solve the problem of a wounded and diseased
country as Ireland that the USA is willing to nurse it back to health and then
once fixed and well to set it free again.
What will cure Ireland of its disease is the living under the government and
being part of the USA government that the Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants
no longer have anything worth killing one another for.
>
>
> As for Israel as a 52nd state - I doubt that would work. Arabs *already* hate
> us anyways, and especially so for having a presence in the middle east (our
> presence in Saudi Arabia is one of Osama bin Laden's stated reasons for his
> attacks on the US). They spew enough vitrolic about our "jewish controlled
> government" and US zionism and all sorts of crap. Having Israel as a US state
They are going to do that no matter what. By having Israel as the 52nd state
would certainly end this Palestine problem because they would have their
homeland. The Palestinians no longer occupied and the Palestinians have
their own homeland. The fence would keep the two separated and allow
for peace to grow.
Ed, no need to reply because you need more schooling of the history of
Israel and Ireland to make it worthwhile. And your writings are too
subjective, and you are probably Jewish in that you seem blind to the
notion of a Palestinian state. To your credit though, Ed, in that you
have not labeled me antisemite. For it is rather obnoxious that many
people suggesting the idea of a Palestinian state are branded as a
antisemite.
Silentotto
That the land wasn't organized into a soverign state doesn't mean that
the land wasn't claimed and owned.
Palestinians and Jews co-existed quite peacefully until there was a
huge influx of Europeans who began using terrorist tactics to commit
ethnic clensing and to steal the land.
They dispossed the rightful owners of that land by killing them or
threatening to kill them without compensation to the survivors.
Under international law, that is illegal and has been since before
Israel was founded.
They hung Germans at Nuremberg for doing the same thing.
>
> Further, the Jews have been more then willing to co-exist, offering to settle
> a permanent peace repeatedly. It is the arabs who have every time walked away
> from the bargaining table, even on the Barak Accords! The jews want peace, the
> arabs clearly don't. It isn't enough to separate the two peoples with a fence,
> the mere existance of the jews on this land is what irritates the arabs so -
> they will blow up the fence and stream through the breach to destroy the "evil
> zionists"! You can't stop people who are determined to die rather then
> "suffer" this! It is an intractable problem, and the great black hole of
> politics.
Some Jews want peace, others want the rest of the land and are willing
to kill to get it.
Israel's supporters go on and on about the Barak Accords like they
were some wonder full offer, when in reality it was a package, not
subject to negotiation, that left the West Bank divided up between
Israeli settlements, which, again, are illegal under international
law.
To place all of the blame for this mess on the Palestinians is absurd.
> Regarding Northern Ireland:
>
> > Ed, your assessment of what the problem is -- is trite and skewed.
>
> Not really. And I'd go so far as to say you've got it completely backwards.
> The British and Irish are not the ones who have to learn to co-exist, the
> arabs and jews are in that boat.
>
> I just did some research and the problem dates back to the 16th century.
> Britain, having failed to integrate Ireland into the commonwealth, declared the
> country to be a colony instead. It was a land grab, pure and simple. It was
> largely in response to the acquisitions France and Spain were making in the
> New World - Britain felt the need to expand, and Ireland was convenient.
>
> During WWI and WWII, northern Ireland became an important strategic base for
> the British for combating U-Boats. Today it has little strategic value to the
> British, and the historical importance as colonial land is long gone.
>
> The two sides don't have to learn to live together - the British could
> trivially leave, having no remaining real interests in the land other then
> pride and national honor. The Irish, having won the independence of the
> majority of their country, have little reason not to finish the fight when
> they are so close (in terms of land area, anyways... depends on how success
> is measured in this case).
That isn't quite the case.
You forgot to mention that the British settled protistants, mostly
from Scotland, in Northern Ireland. These protistants are loyal to
Britian and don't want to become a protistant minority in a greater
Ireland.
Further, as their families have lived in the area for something like
300 years, they aren't exactly willing to pull up stakes and move
away, even were there someplace for them to go.
Were the British to pull out, they would be abandoning these people to
an uncertain fate, not to mention the legal difficulties involved. It
would be like the rest of our country telling New Mexico that they are
no longer part of the U.S. and are now part of Mexico.
I don't think that would fly here and I don't think it would fly in
Great Britian either.
>
> I don't personally have any problems with adding any country as a new state,
> so long as they want to be added. Adding Ireland as a state may very well
> solve the problem, but just because we have religious tolerance in our
> country (in our constitution!), doesn't mean it WILL work. There is 400 years
> of bitter oppression to get over! It may work, it may not, but it probably
> would be a big step in the right direction. Of course, then you have to deal
> with the geopolitical consequences of a US state in Europe, especially with the
> expanding development of the EU.
>
> So how do you propose to convince Ireland to sign up as a US state?
That would be my point.
What makes anyone think that Ireland want's to be a 51st state?
>
> As for Israel as a 52nd state - I doubt that would work. Arabs *already* hate
> us anyways, and especially so for having a presence in the middle east (our
> presence in Saudi Arabia is one of Osama bin Laden's stated reasons for his
> attacks on the US). They spew enough vitrolic about our "jewish controlled
> government" and US zionism and all sorts of crap. Having Israel as a US state
> will only feed these frenzied fires even more, not put them out. The awesome
> might of the US military hasn't stopped Saddam loyalists from attacking US
> troops in Iraq. And that's a tiny number of arabs, since almost nobody there
> liked Saddam. Plus, as I said before, there are far too many people in this
> country who hate the jews and smypathize with the arab anti-Zionist propaganda -
> they'd never accept Israel as a US state. Hammas would not stop just because
> Israel became a US state. Hezbollah and all the rest are determined to kill
> the jews no matter what. US presence will only make them more angry, not less.
> Israel as a US state won't work for anyone unless all the radicalism,
> fundamentalism and terrorism is stamped out of the muslim nations in the
> region FIRST. It won't follow, it needs to preceed.
Well, one thing that would come as a result of Israel becoming a state
is that we would dismantle the settlements, no if's and's or but's
about it.
That would go a long way toward destroying the powerbase of the
radicals.
If the radicals can be made a small enough minority then they can be
controlled.
But as it stands now, the settlements and the behavior of the settlers
is such a powerful provocation that they create the radicals who go on
to become suicide bombers.
As Sharon was the one who was behind the creation of the settlements
in the first place, and he did it as a step in a further land grab,
the Palestinians can hardly be blamed for having doubts about Sharon's
good will in seeking a peace solution.
Ultimately, there is no military solution to this problem with out
commiting acts that all agree would be attrocities.
Perhaps removing the settlements won't solve all the problems, but one
thing is certain, with the settlements in place no solution is
possible.
Edward Glamkowski
> Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> I would not say that it is your fault that you are poor in logic. Most people
> are poor in logic.
That's very funny, cause when I took the GRE I scored 740 on the logic section,
94th percentile.
I'm not Jewish - if anything, Glamkowski, being a polish name, would suggest
Catholic. In fact, I'm not religious at all.
And I haven't seen you write anything that is even suggestive of anti-semitism,
so why would label you as such?
Anyways, it appears you're done with this thread, but I just wanted to clarify
for the record those last little bits of ad hominems you dispsensed :-p
Archimedes Plutonium
(some snipping for brevity)
>
>
> That the land wasn't organized into a soverign state doesn't mean that
> the land wasn't claimed and owned.
Finally a writer who is objective and not subjective + biased.
Otto, I do not know what sort of land boundaries had been "imagined"
for the Palestinians circa the 1947 UN accord. I know the UN
addressed the issue of land for a Palestinian homeland but I wonder
if the WestBank and Gaza was floated around in that 1947 UN accord.
I wonder if the Palestinians had always been peaceful towards the
Israelis and never involved in any war, I wonder if they would now have
their own sovereign land and whether it would be a land that is larger
than the WestBank + Gaza.
What I am guessing is that the Israelis incited and goaded the Palestinians
circa 1947 to go to war against Israel so that in future years they can
confiscate and remove all Palestinians from the land.
The land of Israel pre-1947 and right up to the UN Accord of 1947
is less than half of the land that Israel now claims. That indicates to
me that the policy of Israel from 1947 onwards is one of a land grab
stealing policy and do anything to get the land even if it means
perpetual bloodletting. That means Israel is prepared to go into
eternity with bloodletting and never any peace because the land
is worth more to the Israelis than ever is peace.
>
>
> Palestinians and Jews co-existed quite peacefully until there was a
> huge influx of Europeans who began using terrorist tactics to commit
> ethnic clensing and to steal the land.
Yes, I wonder why no historian is willing to fetch and print the facts as
to the relative size of population of Jews to Arabs in the region of Israel
from year 2003 going all the way back to before the birth of Islam. My
guess is that for the majority of those thousand years that the Muslim
population was 90% and the Jew population was a mere 10% in that
region.
>
>
> They dispossed the rightful owners of that land by killing them or
> threatening to kill them without compensation to the survivors.
>
Why is it that we tolerate the disallowing of the printing of the facts
of history in that every historian knows of the Jewish terrorism of
that region but that no historian is allowed to print and write it up.
That the history of Israel from 1947 onwards has been one of
aggression and land stealing but that the history books make the
Israelis out as "defenders". Sure, they defended themselves in those
wars against neighboring Arabs but why do historians delete all the
land stealing going on. And why do historians delete the possibility
that Israel perhaps incited and encouraged its neighbors to partake
in a war in order to steal their land after the fighting had stopped.
>
> Under international law, that is illegal and has been since before
> Israel was founded.
>
> They hung Germans at Nuremberg for doing the same thing.
>
It is about time that the rest of the world wakes up and forces Israel
to end this Israel Palestine Conflict by giving the Palestinians the
Westbank and Gaza.
The world cannot afford to pleasure Israel with its selfish desire to
make the land of Israel a duplicate copy of what Israel was in
Ancient times. This desire to make Israel an exact copy of the land of
David or the land of Moses is a dangerous desire that can drag the
entire rest of the world into nuclear war conflict.
So, give the Palestinians the WestBank and Gaza and fence it so that
no Israeli and no Arab have access to each other.
>
>
>
> Some Jews want peace, others want the rest of the land and are willing
> to kill to get it.
>
> Israel's supporters go on and on about the Barak Accords like they
> were some wonder full offer, when in reality it was a package, not
> subject to negotiation, that left the West Bank divided up between
> Israeli settlements, which, again, are illegal under international
> law.
>
Yes, I knew it was a swisscheese land offer, and if the Palestinians had
accepted it, it would have been the first country on Earth that would be
a country of -- now you see it, now you don't.
Otto, I do not know the details of the Egypt peace accords with Israel but
I vaguely remember that some of the land of the Sinai was given back to
Egypt in order for that Carter peace accord to go through. Question: did
the Israelis manage to take some of the land of Egypt afterall? In other
words, in every dealing with the Israeli government with its Arab
neighbors, has Israel always ended up with the acquisition of land,
even with Egypt and even though they have a peace accord.
I beleive the behaviour of a people is more telling of them and their
politics than their talk and words and even the history textbooks.
The history textbooks of the Middle East region is just one big land
grab stealing chapter after another.
>
> To place all of the blame for this mess on the Palestinians is absurd.
>
And I am afraid that the USA war on terrorism begun in 11SEP01 is
another pretext for Israel to steal more land and to never come clean
with the Palestinian problem. When in fact, the worst terrorists of that
region have been the Israelis themselves since they have grown in land
size by doubling since 1947.
>
> > Regarding Northern Ireland:
> >
> > > Ed, your assessment of what the problem is -- is trite and skewed.
> >
> > Not really. And I'd go so far as to say you've got it completely backwards.
> > The British and Irish are not the ones who have to learn to co-exist, the
> > arabs and jews are in that boat.
> >
> > I just did some research and the problem dates back to the 16th century.
> > Britain, having failed to integrate Ireland into the commonwealth, declared the
> > country to be a colony instead. It was a land grab, pure and simple. It was
> > largely in response to the acquisitions France and Spain were making in the
> > New World - Britain felt the need to expand, and Ireland was convenient.
> >
> > During WWI and WWII, northern Ireland became an important strategic base for
> > the British for combating U-Boats. Today it has little strategic value to the
> > British, and the historical importance as colonial land is long gone.
> >
> > The two sides don't have to learn to live together - the British could
> > trivially leave, having no remaining real interests in the land other then
> > pride and national honor. The Irish, having won the independence of the
> > majority of their country, have little reason not to finish the fight when
> > they are so close (in terms of land area, anyways... depends on how success
> > is measured in this case).
>
> That isn't quite the case.
>
> You forgot to mention that the British settled protistants, mostly
Yes, that is certainly a better name than my name of nonNorthernIrish.
I could not call them SouthernIrish. The best tags are British settled
Protestants and Irish Catholics. But what they are fighting about is
to make Ireland one nation, one country, and a one nation island.
That is what Ireland as the 51st state of the USA would accomplish.
Instantly they would be a "ONE sovereignty" and as time goes by
they will iron out their differences and live peacefully ever after.
>
> from Scotland, in Northern Ireland. These protistants are loyal to
> Britian and don't want to become a protistant minority in a greater
> Ireland.
>
> Further, as their families have lived in the area for something like
> 300 years, they aren't exactly willing to pull up stakes and move
> away, even were there someplace for them to go.
>
> Were the British to pull out, they would be abandoning these people to
> an uncertain fate, not to mention the legal difficulties involved. It
> would be like the rest of our country telling New Mexico that they are
> no longer part of the U.S. and are now part of Mexico.
>
> I don't think that would fly here and I don't think it would fly in
> Great Britian either.
Yes, the European Union could not make Ireland one but the USA
could make Ireland one with the stroke of a pen as the 51st state.
>
>
> >
> > I don't personally have any problems with adding any country as a new state,
> > so long as they want to be added. Adding Ireland as a state may very well
> > solve the problem, but just because we have religious tolerance in our
> > country (in our constitution!), doesn't mean it WILL work. There is 400 years
> > of bitter oppression to get over! It may work, it may not, but it probably
> > would be a big step in the right direction. Of course, then you have to deal
> > with the geopolitical consequences of a US state in Europe, especially with the
> > expanding development of the EU.
> >
> > So how do you propose to convince Ireland to sign up as a US state?
>
> That would be my point.
>
> What makes anyone think that Ireland want's to be a 51st state?
To solve their problem. To become the One Ireland of Old. They have nothing
to lose by becoming state 51. And a provision of that statehood will be to let
Ireland decide after 100 years in the future whether they want out of the USA
Union and be free as a one state country.
>
>
> >
> > As for Israel as a 52nd state - I doubt that would work. Arabs *already* hate
> > us anyways, and especially so for having a presence in the middle east (our
> > presence in Saudi Arabia is one of Osama bin Laden's stated reasons for his
> > attacks on the US). They spew enough vitrolic about our "jewish controlled
> > government" and US zionism and all sorts of crap. Having Israel as a US state
> > will only feed these frenzied fires even more, not put them out. The awesome
> > might of the US military hasn't stopped Saddam loyalists from attacking US
> > troops in Iraq. And that's a tiny number of arabs, since almost nobody there
> > liked Saddam. Plus, as I said before, there are far too many people in this
> > country who hate the jews and smypathize with the arab anti-Zionist propaganda -
> > they'd never accept Israel as a US state. Hammas would not stop just because
> > Israel became a US state. Hezbollah and all the rest are determined to kill
> > the jews no matter what. US presence will only make them more angry, not less.
> > Israel as a US state won't work for anyone unless all the radicalism,
> > fundamentalism and terrorism is stamped out of the muslim nations in the
> > region FIRST. It won't follow, it needs to preceed.
>
> Well, one thing that would come as a result of Israel becoming a state
> is that we would dismantle the settlements, no if's and's or but's
> about it.
Very true, because the USA citizens do not have this religious delusion that
Israel of the 21st century need ever be the same size of land as Israel of
ancient times. Why drag the rest of the world into conflicts because of
some religious dream that Israel land should be the same size as when
David had.
>
>
> That would go a long way toward destroying the powerbase of the
> radicals.
>
> If the radicals can be made a small enough minority then they can be
> controlled.
>
> But as it stands now, the settlements and the behavior of the settlers
> is such a powerful provocation that they create the radicals who go on
> to become suicide bombers.
>
> As Sharon was the one who was behind the creation of the settlements
> in the first place, and he did it as a step in a further land grab,
> the Palestinians can hardly be blamed for having doubts about Sharon's
> good will in seeking a peace solution.
>
> Ultimately, there is no military solution to this problem with out
> commiting acts that all agree would be attrocities.
>
> Perhaps removing the settlements won't solve all the problems, but one
> thing is certain, with the settlements in place no solution is
> possible.
I believe the gameplan of the Israelis is to never give up one square centimeter
of land. And that the price of Jew and Arab bloodletting is better than to ever
give up a square centimeter of land.
I do not know the exact statistics from 1947 to 2003 but would guess that
about 19 to 20 Palestinian lives were lost per every 1 Israeli life lost. So, if
we carry that statistic into the future with the statistic of birth rates to Palestinians
versus Israelis, then in about the year 4503 or thereabouts there will no
longer exist any Palestinians and then Israel can claim all of the WestBank
and Gaza.
The fate of the American Indian in the USA was a better fate than the
Palestinian in the Middle East. And at least the USA gave the American
Indians land to live on and has tried to make the lives of Native Indians
better. Unlike the Israelis who want only one solution outcome of where
the Palestinians are either exterminated or transported off the land.
Making Israel the 52nd state of the USA would solve the Israel Palestine
Problem probably overnight. Almost as soon as the world news reported that
Israel would become the 52nd state then the Palestine conflict would almost
end overnight because they would get their Homeland promised to them by
the 1947 UN.
The people of the USA are the most altruistic people country on Earth and will
bend over backwards to do good for other countries whenever they can.
Edward Glamkowski
> > > Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> That the land wasn't organized into a soverign state doesn't mean that
> the land wasn't claimed and owned.
But without a soverign state to protect land claims, what is there?
In any event, many of the arabs in the region were nomads, so there
really wouldn't have been much claimed land in the sense that, say,
americans think of claimed land.
The League of Nations, and its successor in the UN, had established
that a Palestine would be created only once the people living there
were sufficiently responsible, civil, and prepared for it. The
British found the people living there to be "completely unreasonable"
(regardless of who was the cause of it, that was their evaluation of
the region) and withdrew. They withdrew not because they felt the UN
plan was ready to be implemented, but because they did not feel it was
worth the cost in British lives. When nobody else proved willing to
step in to take the place of the Brits, the UN plan fell to the
wayside and became an irrelevent point.
As it turns out the Zionists were prepared to create their state in
the vacuum, while the arabs were proverbially caught with their pants
down. The arabs tried to "rectify" this on their own and failed
(repeatedly). Is the UN to be faulted for this? the League of
Nations? Britain? Who?
Here's where we get into a bit of a philosophical issue, but since
this is talk.politics.theory, I'm gonna go at it :-)
International Law is a farce. The only international law is: might
makes right. When we talk of the UN or the LN or international
treaties or anything else that you might suggest as being "law", what
is it really? If these things are not enforceable, they are worthless
to speak of as being law. If they are enforceable, then how? How?
By force, that's how. By military might.
Like what just happened in Iraq. There is no such thing as
"international law", only the law of the jungle. That is because
there is no external third party to act as a police force. When one
party to a treaty breaks that treaty, the other parties either can let
them get away with it, or they must themselves take steps to force
compliance. So when Archimedes talks of the UN and international law
requiring a Palestinian state subsequent to British departure, what
means that? The arabs were caught napping, and proved unable to
enforce the "law", and were unable to get anybody else to enforce it
on their behalf. That means no Palestine. That means Israel. News
flash: life's not fair.
If some "international law" has been broken, why hasn't this law been
enforced? Where are the enforcers? Of course, there are none,
because there is no such thing as international law.
ANYWAYS, if you look at the modern history of the area, you'll find
that the original League of Nations solution from 1922 was to
implement the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which called for the creation
of a JEWISH state in the region, not an arab one. It is convenient to
say that because the UN called for an arab state, there should be an
arab one. But who is the UN to make such a declaration? And why are
they any more of less qualified to make such a declaration then the LN
before them, who had demanded a jewish state? Which organzation is
"right"? Do we consider the UN right merely because they exist today
and the LN doesn't? Isn't that my point with Israel vs. Palestine?
That Israel deserves to exist and Palestine doesn't merely because
Israel does, in fact, exist? If mere existance is enough to prove
validity, then Israel is it and Palestine loses.
Anyways, the arabs were every bit as much guily of terrorism as the
jews were before 1947. Yes, the jews were not nice and they
contributed heavily to the British depature though a systematic
campaign of terrorism, but the arabs did not sit on the sidelines and
act like angels during this time period either. The arabs didn't just
begin their campaign in 1948. Arab terrorism may have been in
response to jewish terrorism, but jewish terrorism was targetted at
creating a jewish state, not at committing a genocide against the
arabs. Arab terrorism is genocide.
> They dispossed the rightful owners of that land by killing them or
> threatening to kill them without compensation to the survivors.
>
> Under international law, that is illegal and has been since before
> Israel was founded.
But for almost the entirety of human history, it wasn't illegal. In
fact, for almost the entirety of human history, there was no such
concept as international law. The very concept didn't even exist.
The reality of international law still doesn't exist, even though we
now have the concept of it. All that exists is the desire of the
biggest stick to impose its will on everyone else.
> They hung Germans at Nuremberg for doing the same thing.
Because the germans threatened the person with the biggest stick (the
US), and the people of the big stick's country wanted to see them
punished. Might makes right.
The arabs and jews don't threaten the big stick, so we do nothing. Or
at least, they didn't, but now they do (or so we like to think they
do, though it is a bit less obvious whether the *really* do). And now
we're doing something about it. It's not about international law,
it's about the big stick imposing its will. In the case of the US,
that means acting when it feels threatened. The world today is lucky:
in past eras, the big stick would impose its will just because it felt
like doing so, and was typically down right brutal when it did do so.
The US doesn't like to do so, and is often "humane" when doing so.
> You forgot to mention that the British settled protistants, mostly
> from Scotland, in Northern Ireland. These protistants are loyal to
> Britian and don't want to become a protistant minority in a greater
> Ireland.
That they're from Scotland isn't terribly relevent - the point is that
they are non-Irish non-Catholics. It's only meaningful if you want to
talk about the English attitudes vis-a-vis the colonialism, and how
many englanders probably wouldn't care much if some scottish were left
hanging out to dry. From the Irish perspective, it's all the same -
"foreign invaders".
Sure, the Scottish people living there don't want to be a protestant
minority in Norther Ireland, but if they had been English or Welsh
instead, they also wouldn't want to be left behind as a minority.
> Further, as their families have lived in the area for something like
> 300 years, they aren't exactly willing to pull up stakes and move
> away, even were there someplace for them to go.
People pull up stakes and move all the time. My mom's family had been
living in Ohio for over a hundred years, but she left for another
state. I left that state and went yet elsewhere. It's not the end of
the world, people can and do successfully do this all the time.
It seems to me, however, that the British could provide relocation
assistance to loyal families, then just pull out of the area
completely. Those who choose to stay behind (relocation would not be
mandatory) would have to deal with the situation on their own - they
had a fair chance to leave and knew what was coming.
It's not like such a thing would be the type of thing the British
government is too squeemish to do.
> Were the British to pull out, they would be abandoning these people
> to an uncertain fate, not to mention the legal difficulties
> involved.
What legal difficulties? If they leave, they leave. It's up to the
locals to figure out the next step. No legal problems for Britain!
> It would be like the rest of our country telling New Mexico that
> they are no longer part of the U.S. and are now part of Mexico.
>
> I don't think that would fly here and I don't think it would fly in
> Great Britian either.
If the other 49 states decided New Mexico had to go, what are the
peopel of New Mexico gonna do? They can't force the US government to
keep them. And they can't get the UN to force the US government to
keep them. People who lived there that didn't want to be a part of
Mexico would no doubt all get out and move elsewhere. But at the end
of the day, they couldn't stop it from happening.
Now maybe Mexico wouldn't want New Mexico, in which case it just
become some independent state. But at that point it's their problem,
not the US's problem.
> What makes anyone think that Ireland want's to be a 51st state?
Apparently Archimedes thinks it would want to.
Personally, I doubt they'd be so inclined. If they did want to, I'd
be cool with it, but I just don't find it bloody likely.
> Well, one thing that would come as a result of Israel becoming a
> state is that we would dismantle the settlements, no if's and's or
> but's about it.
I guess so, I don't really know. If we felt those settlements were
violating the borders of other nations we probably would. If we felt
they were part of the state, we wouldn't. How do we decide the
borders of this new state?
> That would go a long way toward destroying the powerbase of the
> radicals.
My understanding is that many of these "illegal settlements" are very
tiny - a few families in many cases. A couple of families scattered
here and there throughout the desert isn't much of a powerbase...
There's gotta be more to it then that.
> As Sharon was the one who was behind the creation of the settlements
> in the first place, and he did it as a step in a further land grab,
> the Palestinians can hardly be blamed for having doubts about
> Sharon's good will in seeking a peace solution.
I also doubt Sharon is the best choice for pursuing peace. I also
don't believe peace will be possible as long as Arafat is alive as
well. Both sides need new leadership before the thing can progress,
if it ever can progress.
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> Archimedes Plutonium <a_plu...@dtgnet.com> wrote in message
> > Edward Glamkowski wrote:
>
> > I would not say that it is your fault that you are poor in logic. Most people
> > are poor in logic.
>
> That's very funny, cause when I took the GRE I scored 740 on the logic section,
> 94th percentile.
Hard to believe you scored so high and yet your writings on the Israel Palestine
conflict are tilted in excess with favoritism toward the Israelis. When people are
this biased and subjective, they cannot be logical and reasonable. Logic and
reasonability require detached objectivism. Science is objective. And although
some people can score high on math or GRE or SAT, they are so subjective
that their ideas are worthless.
>
>
> I'm not Jewish - if anything, Glamkowski, being a polish name, would suggest
> Catholic. In fact, I'm not religious at all.
Well, good for you. It shows you are at least smart in one avenue of life in that
you are not religious. Organized-Religion is the mind-rot, the mind-decay of the
20th century. The faster people realize that God is Science and Science is God
the better off all people and this planet Earth will be.
>
>
> And I haven't seen you write anything that is even suggestive of anti-semitism,
> so why would label you as such?
Well because of your inability to say even one good thing about the Palestinians
in any of your writing suggested that you had Jewish roots. And it has become
a Jewish propaganda ploy to make all nonJews feel sorry for the Jew because
of the Holocaust. And if a person does not side with the Jew, then the accusation
of antisemite is not far off. Everyone in favor of a Palestinian Homeland as a
solution is labeled as a antisemite.
>
>
> Anyways, it appears you're done with this thread, but I just wanted to clarify
> for the record those last little bits of ad hominems you dispsensed :-p
Concur, they were adhominens at you, simply because I was getting bored
with your subjectivism and bias towards Israel. Read Otto's post for an example
of an objective post.
Edward Glamkowski
>Palestinian in the Middle East.
Not really.
>And at least the USA gave the American Indians land to live on and has tried
>to make the lives of Native Indians better.
Actually, truly helping the indians is a very modern concept, if we can say it
exists at all. The Office of Indian Affairs, created in 1824, was very hostile
towards the indians. That hostility didn't really end until 1947, when the
renamed Bureau of Indian Affairs moved from the War Department to the Dept.
of the Interior. FDR sought ways to improve the agency in the 1930s, but it
was this department shift that really changed its focus.
It was this agency (OIA) that TOOK AWAY land from the Indians (because whites
wanted to settle on their land), brought us the Trail of Tears, that fed the
indians rancid meat and spoiled flour to save money (or rather, to embezzle
money), perpetrated massacres and summary executions, introduced diseases such
as cholera, and generally tried to accomplish genocide against the indians.
It doesn't get much worse then that.
http://www.horizons.k12.mi.us/~aim/papers/stannardamerholocaust.html
The Israelis don't do any of these things to the arabs, except for the taking
of land. And even at that, they have returned some of it (Sinai, for example)
and have offered to return yet more as part of a peace settlement. The US
government has never offered to restore land to the indians, much less actually
done so.
From http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/AIE/Ind_Ed.html:
Even after Civil Service reforms in 1892, hiring officials did not see that any
knowledge about Indians was important, since BIA schools were designed to
perform cultural genocide. In the words of Carlisle Indian School founder
Captain Richard Pratt, such schools were to "kill the Indian and save the man."
and
There was a naive belief in the late 19th Century that if Indian youth were
removed for just a few years from their parents and placed in boarding schools,
they could be assimilated into white society, thus solving "the Indian problem."
Indian Commissioner Thomas Jefferson Morgan wrote in his 1889 annual report to
the Secretary of the Interior that "the Indian must conform 'to the white man's
way,' peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must."
and
A government-commissioned study in the late 1920s, the Meriam Report, found
many problems with the government's handling of its "wards" and concluded:
The philosophy underlying the establishment of Indian boarding schools, that
the way to "civilize" the Indian is to take Indian children, even very young
children, as completely as possible away from their home and family live, is a
variance with modern views of education and social work, which regard the home
and family as essential social institutions from which it is generally
undesirable to uproot children.
The indian population was reduced down to a low of a mere quarter million
in 1900. It's still only 2.5 million today, which is no doubt still well
below the indian population of 1492. You won't see that kind of demographic
decline and stiffling among any other population on earth.
It wasn't until the 1960s that the BIA became serious about helping the
indians, and really not until the 70s that they actually started doing
any good. I recall a few years ago (under Clinton?) they were passing
a law to finally get universal phone connectivity on the reservations.
However, the agency continues to plagued by corruption to this very day,
though it is true they aren't acting the same way the IDF does, but that's
no doubt only because the indians aren't running around engaging in homicide
bombings...
Edward Glamkowski
> bend over backwards to do good for other countries whenever they can.
And yet, there are many in the world who don't understand this and/or still
hate us anyways. Well, in the not to distant future, when the US has declined
in power and China takes center stage, they'll all be begging for a return of
the USA...
C'est la vie.
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> >The fate of the American Indian in the USA was a better fate than the
> >Palestinian in the Middle East.
>
> Not really.
>
> >And at least the USA gave the American Indians land to live on and has tried
> >to make the lives of Native Indians better.
>
> Actually, truly helping the indians is a very modern concept, if we can say it
> exists at all. The Office of Indian Affairs, created in 1824, was very hostile
> towards the indians. That hostility didn't really end until 1947, when the
> renamed Bureau of Indian Affairs moved from the War Department to the Dept.
> of the Interior. FDR sought ways to improve the agency in the 1930s, but it
> was this department shift that really changed its focus.
>
> It was this agency (OIA) that TOOK AWAY land from the Indians (because whites
> wanted to settle on their land), brought us the Trail of Tears, that fed the
> indians rancid meat and spoiled flour to save money (or rather, to embezzle
> money), perpetrated massacres and summary executions, introduced diseases such
> as cholera, and generally tried to accomplish genocide against the indians.
> It doesn't get much worse then that.
Oh, it gets worse than that alright.
It gets to where the aggressors start throwing up settlements into their
territory. To where the movement is restricted by border guards. To where
no-one can have a job or make a living unless you strap a suicide bomb.
To where a life is controlled by foreigners whose only happiness is to see
you vanish from Earth. Where you are denied a land to make a home and
where the foreigners can run their tanks and gunships up and down your
place anytime they want. And when you lift a finger against this oppression
then they label you as a terrorist deserving of even harder repression and
oppression.
If any group of Americans had been put through what the Palestinians have
been put through for the past 20 years-- boy, that would be a show. Because,
well, because a group of Americans would make the Palestinian uprisings
and acts of terror look like a picnic. If Americans, or Europeans for that fact
were placed into a Palestinian sort of situation, they would not be suicide
bombing but rather they would be kamikaze machine gunning.
The long view of history will probably say-- how mild were these Palestinians
to have endured and suffered all of that oppression.
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Glamkowski wrote:
And do you not think that the Zionists with a specific agenda of creating
a modern day Israel whose land was equal to or greater than the land of
Ancient Israel would have preempted the Palestinians from ever gaining
the land that they rightfully deserved and needed in order to live.
The rest of your post centered on International Law is rather irrelevant
because International Law is a body of rules and regulations mostly aimed
at
the oceans and waters of the planet and to try to superimpose Inter. Law to
country-sovereignty is a useless exercise.
Archimedes Plutonium a_plu...@hotmail.com
Silentotto
>> eglam...@angelfire.com (Edward Glamkowski) wrote in message
>> > > Edward Glamkowski wrote:
>> That the land wasn't organized into a soverign state doesn't mean
that
>> the land wasn't claimed and owned.
>
>But without a soverign state to protect land claims, what is there?
There are people who live there and who are willing to fight to keep
what is rightfully theirs.
What do you think is going on right now?
Having a sovereign state isn't exactly a prerequisite to being able to
offer resistance, although it is useful to avoid being labled a
terrorist.
>In any event, many of the arabs in the region were nomads, so there
>really wouldn't have been much claimed land in the sense that, say,
>americans think of claimed land.
That land ownership wasn't in the form that we think of it is
completely irrelevant.
If a Nomad is accustomed to grazing his herd of goats on a given piece
of land every spring and another in the summer and yet another in the
winter, he is going to resent and resist interlopers who prevent him
from doing so.
Even among nomadic peoples, things like grazing rights and especially
water rights are very real and are to be defended.
>The League of Nations, and its successor in the UN, had established
>that a Palestine would be created only once the people living there
>were sufficiently responsible, civil, and prepared for it. The
>British found the people living there to be "completely unreasonable"
>(regardless of who was the cause of it, that was their evaluation of
>the region) and withdrew. They withdrew not because they felt the UN
>plan was ready to be implemented, but because they did not feel it
was
>worth the cost in British lives. When nobody else proved willing to
>step in to take the place of the Brits, the UN plan fell to the
>wayside and became an irrelevent point.
It was the European Zionists who were "completely unreasonable" and
forced the British out by using terrorist tactics against them. Once
they accomplished that they did the same thing to the indigenous
population, committing numerous massacres and other atrocities to
drive the people from their land.
Thus far we, in the US, have been rewarding such behavior.
I don't think we should be.
>As it turns out the Zionists were prepared to create their state in
>the vacuum, while the arabs were proverbially caught with their pants
>down. The arabs tried to "rectify" this on their own and failed
>(repeatedly). Is the UN to be faulted for this? the League of
>Nations? Britain? Who?
Us.
We have been arming and supporting Israel since it's inception.
Without our intervention it is doubtful that the Zionists would have
been able to declare an independent state and even less likely that
they would have survived the various wars in which they became
involved.
Nor would they have the ability to assume the hard line stance that
they have been following in their dealings with the Palestinians.
They would have been forced to come to an equatable solution long ago.
As it stands now, they can take a hard line approach and use the
resistance that approach generates as an excuse for further land
grabs.
That is exactly what they have been doing for 50 years.
>Here's where we get into a bit of a philosophical issue, but since
>this is talk.politics.theory, I'm gonna go at it :-)
>
>International Law is a farce. The only international law is: might
>makes right. When we talk of the UN or the LN or international
>treaties or anything else that you might suggest as being "law", what
>is it really? If these things are not enforceable, they are
worthless
>to speak of as being law. If they are enforceable, then how? How?
>By force, that's how. By military might.
I'll accept that.
But, I'll also point out that Israel doesn't independently have the
military might to insure it's survival or maintain it's conquests.
Their source of power is and has been the US.
In that sense they are an extension of US might and we have been
fighting a proxy war against the Arabs for 50 years.
I don't think we should be fighting a proxy war against the Arabs.
>Like what just happened in Iraq. There is no such thing as
>"international law", only the law of the jungle. That is because
>there is no external third party to act as a police force. When one
>party to a treaty breaks that treaty, the other parties either can
let
>them get away with it, or they must themselves take steps to force
>compliance. So when Archimedes talks of the UN and international law
>requiring a Palestinian state subsequent to British departure, what
>means that? The arabs were caught napping, and proved unable to
>enforce the "law", and were unable to get anybody else to enforce it
>on their behalf. That means no Palestine. That means Israel. News
>flash: life's not fair.
Perhaps life isn't fair, but I don't want my tax money being spent on
propping up a clear injustice.
You act like there was no third party intervention in the situation.
Well, your wrong. There was third party intervention.
It was by the US on behalf of Israel.
If we cease to intervene in the situation then Israel will have no
other choice than to come to an equatable solution.
That is the direction our policies should be following, not the
current one where we are enabling Israel to maintain an expansionist
policy.
>If some "international law" has been broken, why hasn't this law been
>enforced? Where are the enforcers? Of course, there are none,
>because there is no such thing as international law.
Your right that in the end it comes down to might.
Having said that, we have been using our might to protect Israel from
the logical consequences of it's actions.
With out our protection the UN would have long ago intervened and
forced Israel into meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians.
>ANYWAYS, if you look at the modern history of the area, you'll find
>that the original League of Nations solution from 1922 was to
>implement the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which called for the creation
>of a JEWISH state in the region, not an arab one. It is convenient
to
>say that because the UN called for an arab state, there should be an
>arab one. But who is the UN to make such a declaration?
Who were the British to call for a Jewish state?
Why do you give what the British plans precedence over what the native
people wanted?
It's not like the Arabs living in the region didn't have a vision of
their own for their future.
> And why are
>they any more of less qualified to make such a declaration then the
LN
>before them, who had demanded a jewish state?
Because the British Mandate, which came out of the League of Nations
based on the Balfour declaration, didn't take into account the wishes
of the native people and their right for self government.
The British Mandate is the only example of a League of Nations mandate
where the right of self government was ignored.
As to why the UN has more authority than the League of Nations, it has
more authority because it is the more recent organization. New
organizations supersede old defunct organizations and their decision
have precedence.
> Which organzation is
>"right"? Do we consider the UN right merely because they exist today
>and the LN doesn't?
Yes.
The British assumed almost colonial powers when it came to
administering the British Mandate, which was counter to the intentions
of the League of Nations. That undermines the Leagues standing in the
matter.
Further, the British failed to live up to promises that were made to
the Arab peoples living in the region, which further undermines the
agreement.
Finally, Israel was formed, not under the League of Nations, but under
the UN, which clearly gives the UN precedence in the matter.
> Isn't that my point with Israel vs. Palestine?
>That Israel deserves to exist and Palestine doesn't merely because
>Israel does, in fact, exist? If mere existance is enough to prove
>validity, then Israel is it and Palestine loses.
But Israel only exists due to third party intervention. They could
not survive in the long term with out our support and that makes the
US complicit in Israel's actions.
Having said that, I don't have a problem with Israel existing. I see
it as a done deal now.
But our support should be far more conditional than it is. We're
paying for the settlements and the Israeli tanks that enable them to
avoid meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians.
I think that is a mistake and I don't like it.
>Anyways, the arabs were every bit as much guily of terrorism as the
>jews were before 1947. Yes, the jews were not nice and they
>contributed heavily to the British depature though a systematic
>campaign of terrorism, but the arabs did not sit on the sidelines and
>act like angels during this time period either. The arabs didn't
just
>begin their campaign in 1948. Arab terrorism may have been in
>response to jewish terrorism, but jewish terrorism was targetted at
>creating a jewish state, not at committing a genocide against the
>arabs. Arab terrorism is genocide.
I don't agree with that.
The Arabs wanted\want the same thing the Jews did.
Land.
The Jews were\are stealing it and the Arabs wanted\want them to stop
and leave.
If the Jews were to pick up and leave tomorrow, this would all end
tomorrow.
Granted, that isn't going to happen, but don't confuse genocide with a
conflict over land. They aren't the same thing no matter how strong
the rhetoric may get from time to time.
Even Hamas's position is the eradication of the State of Israel, not
the extermination of the Jews.
>> They dispossed the rightful owners of that land by killing them or
>> threatening to kill them without compensation to the survivors.
>>
>> Under international law, that is illegal and has been since before
>> Israel was founded.
>
>But for almost the entirety of human history, it wasn't illegal. In
>fact, for almost the entirety of human history, there was no such
>concept as international law. The very concept didn't even exist.
>The reality of international law still doesn't exist, even though we
>now have the concept of it. All that exists is the desire of the
>biggest stick to impose its will on everyone else.
That a concept of international law didn't exist in the past is
completely irrelevant.
It does exist now and this is the world that we're living in.
And, if it's the biggest stick that counts, then I don't like the
Israelis beating the Palestinians with my stick, because that is what
is going on now to the tune of $5,000,000,000 a year.
>> They hung Germans at Nuremberg for doing the same thing.
>
>Because the germans threatened the person with the biggest stick (the
>US), and the people of the big stick's country wanted to see them
>punished. Might makes right.
Fine.
When Israel has the might to back their behavior then I guess they
will be entitled to what they can get.
But they aren't entitled to use my might to grab what they can, and I
want it stopped.
>The arabs and jews don't threaten the big stick, so we do nothing.
Or
>at least, they didn't, but now they do (or so we like to think they
>do, though it is a bit less obvious whether the *really* do). And
now
>we're doing something about it. It's not about international law,
>it's about the big stick imposing its will. In the case of the US,
>that means acting when it feels threatened. The world today is
lucky:
>in past eras, the big stick would impose its will just because it
felt
>like doing so, and was typically down right brutal when it did do so.
>The US doesn't like to do so, and is often "humane" when doing so.
>
>
>> You forgot to mention that the British settled protistants, mostly
>> from Scotland, in Northern Ireland. These protistants are loyal to
>> Britian and don't want to become a protistant minority in a greater
>> Ireland.
>
>That they're from Scotland isn't terribly relevent - the point is
that
>they are non-Irish non-Catholics. It's only meaningful if you want
to
>talk about the English attitudes vis-a-vis the colonialism, and how
>many englanders probably wouldn't care much if some scottish were
left
>hanging out to dry. From the Irish perspective, it's all the same -
>"foreign invaders".
No, I only mentioned they were Scots to illustrate what you said, that
they are non-Irish, non-Catholic and considered foreign invaders by
the Irish.
>Sure, the Scottish people living there don't want to be a protestant
>minority in Norther Ireland, but if they had been English or Welsh
>instead, they also wouldn't want to be left behind as a minority.
No, like I said, the fact that they are Scots isn't all that important
in the scheme of things.
You're making more of it than I intended.
>> Further, as their families have lived in the area for something
like
>> 300 years, they aren't exactly willing to pull up stakes and move
>> away, even were there someplace for them to go.
>
>People pull up stakes and move all the time. My mom's family had
been
>living in Ohio for over a hundred years, but she left for another
>state. I left that state and went yet elsewhere. It's not the end
of
>the world, people can and do successfully do this all the time.
Sure they can. The point is, do they want to? And if they don't how
do you force them to?
>It seems to me, however, that the British could provide relocation
>assistance to loyal families, then just pull out of the area
>completely. Those who choose to stay behind (relocation would not be
>mandatory) would have to deal with the situation on their own - they
>had a fair chance to leave and knew what was coming.
That would be one solution, but most in England would consider that a
betrayal of their countrymen and wouldn't go for it.
There is a potential solution to every problem in the world.
The problem is getting people to agree to that solution.
I don't see the British agreeing to such a solution, just as we
wouldn't agree to return New Mexico, for example, to Mexico.
>It's not like such a thing would be the type of thing the British
>government is too squeemish to do.
I don't agree with that at all.
I've lived in England. I didn't see much support for the idea of
pulling out of Northern Ireland at all.
They see it as defending their fellow Britons, not as maintaining a
colonial outpost.
>> Were the British to pull out, they would be abandoning these people
>> to an uncertain fate, not to mention the legal difficulties
>> involved.
>
>What legal difficulties? If they leave, they leave. It's up to the
>locals to figure out the next step. No legal problems for Britain!
The legal problems would be getting Parliment to agree to such a move,
compensation for those who feel forced to leave, where to settle them,
and so on.
England is a country governed by law, after all. It's not like the PM
or the Queen can simply decide to pull out. The people they would be
abandoning or dispossessing have rights as Englishmen under English
law.
That is not a small thing.
>> It would be like the rest of our country telling New Mexico that
>> they are no longer part of the U.S. and are now part of Mexico.
>>
>> I don't think that would fly here and I don't think it would fly in
>> Great Britian either.
>
>If the other 49 states decided New Mexico had to go, what are the
>peopel of New Mexico gonna do? They can't force the US government to
>keep them. And they can't get the UN to force the US government to
>keep them. People who lived there that didn't want to be a part of
>Mexico would no doubt all get out and move elsewhere. But at the end
>of the day, they couldn't stop it from happening.
You're missing the point.
The point is that the people of the other 49 states would never agree
to such a thing.
Further, there is no mechanism in the constitution to allow for such a
thing.
While the constitution could be altered to allow it, the chances of
such a thing happening are so remote that it isn't even worth
speculating about.
>Now maybe Mexico wouldn't want New Mexico, in which case it just
>become some independent state. But at that point it's their problem,
>not the US's problem.
Like I said, you're missing the point.
If one is going to seriously think about potential solutions to world
trouble spots, then one should take into consideration what is likely
to be acceptable and what is not.
Otherwise one is not seriously thinking about solutions, but rather,
engaging in fantisy.
One may as well speculate about transforming Israel into an Island in
the middle of the Atlantic.
>> What makes anyone think that Ireland want's to be a 51st state?
>
>Apparently Archimedes thinks it would want to.
Well, I think Archimedes is wrong on that point.
I wonder if he's open to a large wager on the subject? :-)
>Personally, I doubt they'd be so inclined. If they did want to, I'd
>be cool with it, but I just don't find it bloody likely.
No, me either.
Although as far as it goes, I wouldn't have a problem having Ireland
as a 51st state either, although more likely 3 or 4 states given their
poplation.
>> Well, one thing that would come as a result of Israel becoming a
>> state is that we would dismantle the settlements, no if's and's or
>> but's about it.
>
>I guess so, I don't really know. If we felt those settlements were
>violating the borders of other nations we probably would. If we felt
>they were part of the state, we wouldn't. How do we decide the
>borders of this new state?
We would likely go along with the '67 borders. There is broad
international consensus for an Israeli state along those lines.
>> That would go a long way toward destroying the powerbase of the
>> radicals.
>
>My understanding is that many of these "illegal settlements" are very
>tiny - a few families in many cases. A couple of families scattered
>here and there throughout the desert isn't much of a powerbase...
>There's gotta be more to it then that.
There are 300,000 plus settlers living in the West Bank. Many of the
settlements are towns in their own right.
The Barak Plan, that everyone goes on about, would have left the
settlements in place with further land under Israeli control
connecting the settlements to Israel proper.
Picture tenticals extending into the West Bank with settlements at the
tips.
For a Palestinian to get from point A to point B, in many cases they
would be forced to detour for miles around Israeli controled
territitory, subject themselves to Israeli checkpoints or both.
And that ignores the behavior of the settlers.
Before the more recent troubles errupted, a realitively common way for
a Palestinian to be killed was to be shot by a settler.
I recall one instance where a setter shot and killed a Palestinian
child for throwing a rock at his car. And it wasn't a case of
panicked self-defence. He got out of the car and chased the kid down
before he shot him.
I was guilty of doing things like that myself when I was a child.
It's hardly a shooting offence.
Nor, unfortunately, were occurances like that all that isolated.
Another fairly recent incident had Israeli settlers taking potshots as
Palestinian farmers who were trying to harvest their olive crop in a
grove that was near one of their settlements.
To their credit the Israeli army finally interviened, put a stop to it
and let the farmers get on with their business.
But those examples just go to show that all of the excesses going on
in the West Bank aren't being committed by Palestinians.
Further, the Israelis have been notoriously lax in investigating and
prosecuting crimes commited by settlers.
I recently looked into the matter and discovered that for several
hundred murders in the last 10 years or so, only about half of them
were investigated, fewer were prosecuted and fewer still resulted in
jail time for the perpetrator. One of those sentences the jail time
that the offender recieved was not even related to the murder that was
commited.
And this isn't simply my observation. The Israeli High Court,
Israel's version of the Supreme Court, issued a scathing indictment of
the lower courts and the police for their failure to vigerously
investigate and prosecute these crimes.
>> As Sharon was the one who was behind the creation of the
settlements
>> in the first place, and he did it as a step in a further land grab,
>> the Palestinians can hardly be blamed for having doubts about
>> Sharon's good will in seeking a peace solution.
>
>I also doubt Sharon is the best choice for pursuing peace. I also
>don't believe peace will be possible as long as Arafat is alive as
>well. Both sides need new leadership before the thing can progress,
>if it ever can progress.
I won't really dispute that, but I will point out that finding someone
more moderate than Arafat that can gain and maintain the support of
the majoriy of people won't, as were seeing now, be an easy task.
Many don't realize that Arafat is being pushed to the positions that
he takes as much as he is leading.
Make no mistake, he's walking a very fine line between the hardliners
in Israel and the hardliners in his own people. If the radical
Palestinians think he's willing to give away to much for a peace deal,
they will kill him themselves.
So, unless the radicals can be brought under control, there is no hope
of getting a moderate in power.
And there is no hope of getting the radicals under control as long as
the settlements are in place.
Silentotto
> 18 Jun 2003 01:43:08 -0700 Silentotto wrote:
> (some snipping for brevity)
>
> >
> >
> > That the land wasn't organized into a soverign state doesn't mean that
> > the land wasn't claimed and owned.
>
> Finally a writer who is objective and not subjective + biased.
> Otto, I do not know what sort of land boundaries had been "imagined"
> for the Palestinians circa the 1947 UN accord. I know the UN
> addressed the issue of land for a Palestinian homeland but I wonder
> if the WestBank and Gaza was floated around in that 1947 UN accord.
Here is a map of the origional deal.
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/maps/M0082c.gif
As you can see the Israelis have expanded their dominions considerably
since then.
> I wonder if the Palestinians had always been peaceful towards the
> Israelis and never involved in any war, I wonder if they would now have
> their own sovereign land and whether it would be a land that is larger
> than the WestBank + Gaza.
That's difficult to say.
As you know, the Palestinians are a people and not a state. While
they no doubt participated in the various wars the Arab states
launched against Israel, as they weren't a state in themselves they
weren't exactly in a postion to take the decision if the wars should
have been launched in the first place.
Further, Israel has always contained a rather large expansionist
element in it's population. I'm almost certain that they wouldn't
have been contented with the '47 accords, but where they would have
taken that discontent is an open question.
> What I am guessing is that the Israelis incited and goaded the Palestinians
> circa 1947 to go to war against Israel so that in future years they can
> confiscate and remove all Palestinians from the land.
Disposessing Arabs of their land through terrorist tactics was
certainly incitment, as was declaring a Jewish state on largely Arab
land.
And, that certainly seems to be the tactics they are currently using,
else why build the settlements.
Arel Sharon was quoted as saying something like, and I'm paraphrasing,
"If people grow up on land so that they know all the hills and
valleys, they will consider the land theirs and they will fight for
it."
As you likely know, Sharon was a very promanent player in the
settlement plan.
> The land of Israel pre-1947 and right up to the UN Accord of 1947
> is less than half of the land that Israel now claims. That indicates to
> me that the policy of Israel from 1947 onwards is one of a land grab
> stealing policy and do anything to get the land even if it means
> perpetual bloodletting. That means Israel is prepared to go into
> eternity with bloodletting and never any peace because the land
> is worth more to the Israelis than ever is peace.
The most extreme Zionists feel that they are entitled not only to the
land of present day Israel and the West Bank, but also large tracts of
Jordan and Iraq and Syria.
To be fair these people represent only a small minority of Israelis,
but it does serve to illistrate the mentality of their most extreme
people.
More moderate Zionists want only the West Bank, especally Jerusalam,
Gaza and the Golan Heights.
These people are counter balanced by Israelis who think further
expansion would be a mistake all the way to the extreme non-Zionists
Jews who don't think that Israel should exist in the first place.
Many people tend to see the Israelis as a single entity always acting
in concert, when in reality their political opinions are as diverse as
any in the world.
Arel Sharon and the Likud parties support in Israel is by no means
universal.
But to get back to your point, yes, I think that the Israeli right has
been deliberately provoking the Palestinians and using their response
to gain support for further expansion. There is no logical
explanation for the settlements other than as the first step in a
further land grab.
The longer the fighting goes on, the greater the number of Israelis
that become convinced that there is no lasting solution to the problem
other than expelling the Palestinians from the area's under dispute
and taking control of the land.
> > Palestinians and Jews co-existed quite peacefully until there was a
> > huge influx of Europeans who began using terrorist tactics to commit
> > ethnic clensing and to steal the land.
>
> Yes, I wonder why no historian is willing to fetch and print the facts as
> to the relative size of population of Jews to Arabs in the region of Israel
> from year 2003 going all the way back to before the birth of Islam. My
> guess is that for the majority of those thousand years that the Muslim
> population was 90% and the Jew population was a mere 10% in that
> region.
Historians have studied the question. While I can't point you to a
convienient link, and while your numbers may be off a bit, your
assessment is essentially correct.
> >
> >
> > They dispossed the rightful owners of that land by killing them or
> > threatening to kill them without compensation to the survivors.
> >
>
> Why is it that we tolerate the disallowing of the printing of the facts
> of history in that every historian knows of the Jewish terrorism of
> that region but that no historian is allowed to print and write it up.
It's not disallowed.
The sources are out there and available to anyone who is interested.
Do a search on something like Israeli attrocities and you'll get
hundreds of hits.
But be VERY CAREFUL as to what you consider valid. There are a lot of
propaganda sites out there that deliberately distort the facts.
You'll have to spend as much time checking the source material as you
do learning about the actual events if you wish to be confident that
you're getting the actual facts.
> That the history of Israel from 1947 onwards has been one of
> aggression and land stealing but that the history books make the
> Israelis out as "defenders". Sure, they defended themselves in those
> wars against neighboring Arabs but why do historians delete all the
> land stealing going on. And why do historians delete the possibility
> that Israel perhaps incited and encouraged its neighbors to partake
> in a war in order to steal their land after the fighting had stopped.
It all depends on which historys you read. There are many that tackle
the situation in a more even handed mannor.
Having said that, people tended to percieve Israel as the underdog and
the various wars as an extension of the Holocaust.
As you know, Americans tend to identify with the underdogs.
> >
> > Under international law, that is illegal and has been since before
> > Israel was founded.
> >
> > They hung Germans at Nuremberg for doing the same thing.
> >
>
> It is about time that the rest of the world wakes up and forces Israel
> to end this Israel Palestine Conflict by giving the Palestinians the
> Westbank and Gaza.
I agree.
The rest of the world is ready to do just that.
It is the US that has been allowing Israel to resist such efforts.
However, hopefully, it looks like that is now begining to change.
Even though nobody likes to admit it, the 9/11 attacks were directly
related to US policies in support of Israel. The Bush administration
knows it and I think they also realize that there is no solution to
the war on terror as long as the conflict over the West Bank is
simmering.
It looks like their beginging to take steps, in a small way, to apply
pressure to Israel to come to a fair agreement with the Palestinians.
> The world cannot afford to pleasure Israel with its selfish desire to
> make the land of Israel a duplicate copy of what Israel was in
> Ancient times. This desire to make Israel an exact copy of the land of
> David or the land of Moses is a dangerous desire that can drag the
> entire rest of the world into nuclear war conflict.
I don't think it will come to that. 9/11 was a wake up call for the
US. I think our support for Israel in the future will be far more
conditional.
One positive side effect of the Iraq war was to eliminate a sizable
threat to Israel and make it more possible for the Israeli moderates
to gain additional influence.
> So, give the Palestinians the WestBank and Gaza and fence it so that
> no Israeli and no Arab have access to each other.
Israel is doing just that, builing a fence, but making sure that some
of the borderline settlements are on their side of it.
However, I don't think the fence idea is a workable long term
solution. Large sectors of the Israeli economy are dependent on
Palestinian labor and a large number of Palestinians are dependent on
Israeli jobs.
It does no good to create a Palestinian state if it isn't economically
viable.
Having said that, giving the Palestinians their own state and removing
the settlements would likely undercut the support of the Palestinian
radicals to the point where they could be controlled, making such a
fence un-necessary.
It might be a good internm solution though, until each side gains
conficence in their own security and the goodwill of the other side.
> > Some Jews want peace, others want the rest of the land and are willing
> > to kill to get it.
> >
> > Israel's supporters go on and on about the Barak Accords like they
> > were some wonder full offer, when in reality it was a package, not
> > subject to negotiation, that left the West Bank divided up between
> > Israeli settlements, which, again, are illegal under international
> > law.
> >
>
> Yes, I knew it was a swisscheese land offer, and if the Palestinians had
> accepted it, it would have been the first country on Earth that would be
> a country of -- now you see it, now you don't.
Had Arafat accepted it he would be fertilizer right now.
> Otto, I do not know the details of the Egypt peace accords with Israel but
> I vaguely remember that some of the land of the Sinai was given back to
> Egypt in order for that Carter peace accord to go through. Question: did
> the Israelis manage to take some of the land of Egypt afterall? In other
> words, in every dealing with the Israeli government with its Arab
> neighbors, has Israel always ended up with the acquisition of land,
> even with Egypt and even though they have a peace accord.
Yes and no.
Before the '67 war the Gaza strip was under Egyptian administration,
although it wasn't technically part of Egypt, and the Palestinians
living there didn't have Egyptian citizenship.
The Camp David Accords in '78 returned the Sinai to Egypt, but placed
the Gaza Strip under Israeli administration with the understanding
that it was to come under Palestinian administratin within 5 years.
This never happened as envisioned, and Israel built settlements in
Gaza just like they did the West Bank.
Whether Israel manages to finally steal the land or not is, at this
point, still and open question.
> I beleive the behaviour of a people is more telling of them and their
> politics than their talk and words and even the history textbooks.
> The history textbooks of the Middle East region is just one big land
> grab stealing chapter after another.
Well, one could say the same about just almost any other region of the
world.
> >
> > To place all of the blame for this mess on the Palestinians is absurd.
> >
>
> And I am afraid that the USA war on terrorism begun in 11SEP01 is
> another pretext for Israel to steal more land and to never come clean
> with the Palestinian problem. When in fact, the worst terrorists of that
> region have been the Israelis themselves since they have grown in land
> size by doubling since 1947.
The Israelis certainly tried to turn it into one, although, at this
point it doesn't look like they succeeded.
Like I said, I think the Bush administration, while stepping
delicately, is starting to apply pressure to Israel to reach a
settlement.
Somehow I can't see it getting easier for Israel to grab more land
from here on out.
I think the fence they are building is evidence of that. They can see
the writing on the wall about the West Bank and are trying to finalize
the borders as favorably as they can keeping in mind what they can
reasonably expect to hold onto.
So, they are going to get some additional land, but they aren't going
to get as much as many Zionists would like.
Perhaps, but even in that case it wouldn't happen overnight. It would
still likely take a couple of generations before people settled down
and learned to get along.
The biggest change would be the improved economic prospects for the
North Irish Catholics, and that would go a long way toward reducing
the strife.
> >
> > from Scotland, in Northern Ireland. These protistants are loyal to
> > Britian and don't want to become a protistant minority in a greater
> > Ireland.
> >
> > Further, as their families have lived in the area for something like
> > 300 years, they aren't exactly willing to pull up stakes and move
> > away, even were there someplace for them to go.
> >
> > Were the British to pull out, they would be abandoning these people to
> > an uncertain fate, not to mention the legal difficulties involved. It
> > would be like the rest of our country telling New Mexico that they are
> > no longer part of the U.S. and are now part of Mexico.
> >
> > I don't think that would fly here and I don't think it would fly in
> > Great Britian either.
>
> Yes, the European Union could not make Ireland one but the USA
> could make Ireland one with the stroke of a pen as the 51st state.
Only if the Irish agree.
I don't think that is very likely. Not many countries are willing to
give up their independent status.
But if they did wish to join it would be fine by me.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > I don't personally have any problems with adding any country as a new state,
> > > so long as they want to be added. Adding Ireland as a state may very well
> > > solve the problem, but just because we have religious tolerance in our
> > > country (in our constitution!), doesn't mean it WILL work. There is 400 years
> > > of bitter oppression to get over! It may work, it may not, but it probably
> > > would be a big step in the right direction. Of course, then you have to deal
> > > with the geopolitical consequences of a US state in Europe, especially with the
> > > expanding development of the EU.
> > >
> > > So how do you propose to convince Ireland to sign up as a US state?
> >
> > That would be my point.
> >
> > What makes anyone think that Ireland want's to be a 51st state?
>
> To solve their problem. To become the One Ireland of Old. They have nothing
> to lose by becoming state 51. And a provision of that statehood will be to let
> Ireland decide after 100 years in the future whether they want out of the USA
> Union and be free as a one state country.
With the exception of Northern Ireland, the rest of Ireland is doing
pretty well. Their economy was booming through the 90's. They do
have a problem with an aging population, as does the rest of Europe,
but immagration may well help solve that problem.
They were offering repatriotation to anyone of Irish descent a few
years ago. They probably still are.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > As for Israel as a 52nd state - I doubt that would work. Arabs *already* hate
> > > us anyways, and especially so for having a presence in the middle east (our
> > > presence in Saudi Arabia is one of Osama bin Laden's stated reasons for his
> > > attacks on the US). They spew enough vitrolic about our "jewish controlled
> > > government" and US zionism and all sorts of crap. Having Israel as a US state
> > > will only feed these frenzied fires even more, not put them out. The awesome
> > > might of the US military hasn't stopped Saddam loyalists from attacking US
> > > troops in Iraq. And that's a tiny number of arabs, since almost nobody there
> > > liked Saddam. Plus, as I said before, there are far too many people in this
> > > country who hate the jews and smypathize with the arab anti-Zionist propaganda -
> > > they'd never accept Israel as a US state. Hammas would not stop just because
> > > Israel became a US state. Hezbollah and all the rest are determined to kill
> > > the jews no matter what. US presence will only make them more angry, not less.
> > > Israel as a US state won't work for anyone unless all the radicalism,
> > > fundamentalism and terrorism is stamped out of the muslim nations in the
> > > region FIRST. It won't follow, it needs to preceed.
> >
> > Well, one thing that would come as a result of Israel becoming a state
> > is that we would dismantle the settlements, no if's and's or but's
> > about it.
>
> Very true, because the USA citizens do not have this religious delusion that
> Israel of the 21st century need ever be the same size of land as Israel of
> ancient times. Why drag the rest of the world into conflicts because of
> some religious dream that Israel land should be the same size as when
> David had.
Right.
> >
> >
> > That would go a long way toward destroying the powerbase of the
> > radicals.
> >
> > If the radicals can be made a small enough minority then they can be
> > controlled.
> >
> > But as it stands now, the settlements and the behavior of the settlers
> > is such a powerful provocation that they create the radicals who go on
> > to become suicide bombers.
> >
> > As Sharon was the one who was behind the creation of the settlements
> > in the first place, and he did it as a step in a further land grab,
> > the Palestinians can hardly be blamed for having doubts about Sharon's
> > good will in seeking a peace solution.
> >
> > Ultimately, there is no military solution to this problem with out
> > commiting acts that all agree would be attrocities.
> >
> > Perhaps removing the settlements won't solve all the problems, but one
> > thing is certain, with the settlements in place no solution is
> > possible.
>
> I believe the gameplan of the Israelis is to never give up one square centimeter
> of land. And that the price of Jew and Arab bloodletting is better than to ever
> give up a square centimeter of land.
That is certainly the game plan of some of them. But others are more
reasonable.
> I do not know the exact statistics from 1947 to 2003 but would guess that
> about 19 to 20 Palestinian lives were lost per every 1 Israeli life lost. So, if
> we carry that statistic into the future with the statistic of birth rates to Palestinians
> versus Israelis, then in about the year 4503 or thereabouts there will no
> longer exist any Palestinians and then Israel can claim all of the WestBank
> and Gaza.
I'm not so sure about that. Palestinian birth rates are 6 times
higher than Israeli birth rates.
Actually, that is one of the problems.
Israel wants to maintain it's status as a Jewish state and wants to
maintain it's, more or less, democratic institutions.
Yet, if current trends continue, the Palestinians that rightfully live
within Israel are going to become a majority in a few generations.
That is another problem the Israelis are facing is in part one of the
reasons that they have hesitated in outright anexing the West Bank.
Unless they can expel all of the Palestinians, a step that is going
way to far for us to support, then they would have to deny the
Palestinians any political rights if they want to maintain a Jewish
state. Again, that isn't something that they could do and still
expect to maintain our support.
> The fate of the American Indian in the USA was a better fate than the
> Palestinian in the Middle East. And at least the USA gave the American
> Indians land to live on and has tried to make the lives of Native Indians
> better. Unlike the Israelis who want only one solution outcome of where
> the Palestinians are either exterminated or transported off the land.
Again, I wouldn't be too free about painting the Israelis with one
brush. Were all Israelis of one mind, the West Bank would have been
part of Israel proper a long time ago, with the Palestinians expelled
to Jordan.
> Making Israel the 52nd state of the USA would solve the Israel Palestine
> Problem probably overnight. Almost as soon as the world news reported that
> Israel would become the 52nd state then the Palestine conflict would almost
> end overnight because they would get their Homeland promised to them by
> the 1947 UN.
Or, we could make the West Bank a state and use our military might to
resolve their land claims in the Palestinians favor. The US religious
right would love to have the holy land as part of the US.
> The people of the USA are the most altruistic people country on Earth and will
> bend over backwards to do good for other countries whenever they can.
Well, we like to think of ourselves as such, although I'm not so
certain that our actions always support our ideals.
Our unconditional support of Israel over the years is a case in point.
It was great for the Israelis, but it sucked for the Palestinians.
Archimedes Plutonium
> Archimedes Plutonium <a_plu...@dtgnet.com> wrote in message news:<3EF0B96A...@dtgnet.com>...
> > 18 Jun 2003 01:43:08 -0700 Silentotto wrote:
> > (some snipping for brevity)
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > That the land wasn't organized into a soverign state doesn't mean that
> > > the land wasn't claimed and owned.
> >
> > Finally a writer who is objective and not subjective + biased.
> > Otto, I do not know what sort of land boundaries had been "imagined"
> > for the Palestinians circa the 1947 UN accord. I know the UN
> > addressed the issue of land for a Palestinian homeland but I wonder
> > if the WestBank and Gaza was floated around in that 1947 UN accord.
>
> Here is a map of the origional deal.
>
> http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/maps/M0082c.gif
>
That map sure is an eye-opener and Palestinians perhaps cry and weep
everytime they see it.
Otto, I am baffled as to why most of the Arab world would agree to the 1967
border as a Palestinian state, where I am assuming it is about the size of
the WestBank + Gaza? Why would they accept the 1967 border, is it because
they are so exhausted with the conflict that they just want a pragmatic end
and the 1967 border would suit them fine.
>
> As you can see the Israelis have expanded their dominions considerably
> since then.
>
> > I wonder if the Palestinians had always been peaceful towards the
> > Israelis and never involved in any war, I wonder if they would now have
> > their own sovereign land and whether it would be a land that is larger
> > than the WestBank + Gaza.
>
> That's difficult to say.
>
> As you know, the Palestinians are a people and not a state. While
> they no doubt participated in the various wars the Arab states
> launched against Israel, as they weren't a state in themselves they
> weren't exactly in a postion to take the decision if the wars should
> have been launched in the first place.
I was just wondering if the Palestinians had done the opposite behaviour
of never anything against Israel, I just wonder if that would have been the
best strategy and that today they would be better off than resistance. I wonder
if they would have gotten a land bigger than WestBank + Gaza or whether
they would have been ignored and Israel have planted settlements everywhere
and never any hope of a Palestinian homeland. An answer to that question
would have required the word of mouth by people who lived through it all.
When I think back over the history of the indigenous native American
Indian it is easy to see what the best strategy was. In that resistance was
futile and that getting away from the white-man until it was impossible
to get away was the best strategy.
I do believe the history pattern of the US and Indians is very much similar
to the history pattern of Israel and Palestinians.
>
>
> Further, Israel has always contained a rather large expansionist
> element in it's population. I'm almost certain that they wouldn't
> have been contented with the '47 accords, but where they would have
> taken that discontent is an open question.
>
> > What I am guessing is that the Israelis incited and goaded the Palestinians
> > circa 1947 to go to war against Israel so that in future years they can
> > confiscate and remove all Palestinians from the land.
>
> Disposessing Arabs of their land through terrorist tactics was
> certainly incitment, as was declaring a Jewish state on largely Arab
> land.
>
> And, that certainly seems to be the tactics they are currently using,
> else why build the settlements.
>
> Arel Sharon was quoted as saying something like, and I'm paraphrasing,
> "If people grow up on land so that they know all the hills and
> valleys, they will consider the land theirs and they will fight for
> it."
>
I wonder if there is something in the Jewish religion in the Torah about
"land". Something to explain the behaviour of the modern state of Israel
in its zeal to gain land and lack of care of native people as if people mean
nothing and the land means everything. Is there something in the Jewish
religion that demands of Israel to gain all of the land of Ancient Israel?
Do the Jews think that getting all of Ancient Israel back, no matter how
many Arabs they kill or make homeless in the process that they will
go to heaven for it? I know most religions have a doctrine of spreading
the word of their faith but is Judaism a religion that seeks to gain
land, not converts?
Otto, do you know what the first major incident between Israelis
and Palestinians were after the 1947 UN Accord? I mean did either
side try to be friends with one another or did they clash. And can
one be blamed as a "first aggressor"?
One of the problems here in the USA is the large sway of control of
education and news media by Jewish sympathizers and Jews. A large
proportion of the USA people are ignorant of the conflict and kept
ignorant. If the people of the USA knew that Israel had stolen the land
of the Palestinians, instead of being fed every night with images of
arab militants, then the USA people would be pressuring Israel to
settle and to give the Palestinians their rightful land. This is where the
President can best act as a teacher to the American people to inform them
of what that Conflict is. I firmly believe that the average American has a
good balance of justice, but they cannot express that justice without a
clear understanding of the history of that region. And the news media
so heavily is biased against the Palestinians and touts the Israelis as good
guys.
The roadmap is mostly talk. A fence would be physical action and proof that
the end of this conflict is wanted. The fence would solve the settlement because
once the fence is completed then any Israeli settler still in the WestBank has
no security or protection. So all Israeli settlers have to get out before the fence
is complete.
And the fence would end the borderline disputes that a talkity talk Roadmap
would cause.
The fence idea is a better idea than the Bush Roadmap idea because it
solves the Conflict and is not dependent on good behaviour on either side.
They can go ahead and kill one another while the fence is being constructed.
The Palestinians have very rich neighbors such as Saudi Arabia in order to
help them get through economics while the fence is being built.
The Fence would be tangible proof of progress towards ending the
Conflict.
>
>
> It does no good to create a Palestinian state if it isn't economically
> viable.
>
It is not viable now but depends on the goodwill of its rich Arab
neighbors. About the only job of Palestine now is that of suicide
bombing or militancy.
And with the fence going up, there would be an immediate job in
Fence contruction and building.
>
> Having said that, giving the Palestinians their own state and removing
> the settlements would likely undercut the support of the Palestinian
> radicals to the point where they could be controlled, making such a
> fence un-necessary.
I think the people need to see some physical fence to know for sure that
they have a Homeland and not some promises and words on paper.
>
>
> It might be a good internm solution though, until each side gains
> conficence in their own security and the goodwill of the other side.
I am sure the fence will come down after about 100 years.
It would solve their problem of having 2 Irelands when there is a desire
to have just one Ireland. And the leading politicians would become governor
of Ireland and senators and congressman to the USA federal govt.
And there could be a clause in the statehood that lets Ireland go free again
after 75 years where they can coexist without the bloodshed.
Making Ireland a state of the USA would act as a cleanser or cleaner of
Ireland of its ugly past history. All it would take is top Irish officials get
together with Washington and set the plan into motion. I suspect that it
would take about 1 year from proposal to 51st state with a special session
of Congress and special sessions of states to ratify. I wonder if Congress
could do it all without the need of state ratifications.
Ireland is not that populous of a state to tip the balance of votes, although
it would have tipped the balance in favor of Democrats in the Bush vs.
Gore election assuming that the Irish would have voted for Gore mostly.
And of course, a provision in the statehood of Ireland that it can opt out
after a time period of say 50 or 75 years if it looks as though their problem
was solved.
Palestinians could turn that into their favor should the Israelis never
give up any land. In that scenario, then the bloodletting will go on until
there are too few Palestinians or too many Israelis killed. That is where
population size is a critical factor. If Palestinians could get help from
their Muslim brothers and sisters by sending more and more arabs
into the region to buoy the attrition rates. And supported by oil money,
and whose aim is to reduce the population of Israelis. If Israelis never
give up any land then the Palestinians must make a gameplan of
maximum bloodletting because that is what the Israelis will do.
And the Palestinians cannot do big bloodletting because that will
give Israel the excuse to train or ship out Palestinians en masse.
Sad to say that probably most Israel government official and most
Palestinian militants are forming a gameplan of bloodletting whereas
they should be forming a gameplan of making 2 states live side by
side in peace.
>
>
Perhaps that is not outlandish as it first sounds. What if Iraq stabilization
and new government goes successfully fast and well. Then perhaps another
such countrybuilding could take place for the WestBank. Making the
WestBank and immediate State with US soldiers on patrol of the border
and building a fence of that border. The USA would win alot of friends
in the Islam world and seen no longer as the champion of Israel but as
evenhanded.
>
>
> > The people of the USA are the most altruistic people country on Earth and will
> > bend over backwards to do good for other countries whenever they can.
>
> Well, we like to think of ourselves as such, although I'm not so
> certain that our actions always support our ideals.
>
> Our unconditional support of Israel over the years is a case in point.
> It was great for the Israelis, but it sucked for the Palestinians.
>
> > Archimedes Plutonium, a_plu...@hotmail.com
> > whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
> > of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
Altruistic only in the sense that Americans like to solve problems and willing to lend a helping hand. I
made that altruism gesture as not a assessment of the American people but more as a prod to do good. And
I think the Cold War overshadowed the Middle East
Conflict but now that this conflict is taking too much attention of the world
that the USA is long overdo and will make progress in solving.
Archimedes Plutonium
> 19 Jun 2003 15:27:41 -0700 Silentotto wrote:
(huge snips)
>
> >
> > Or, we could make the West Bank a state and use our military might to
> > resolve their land claims in the Palestinians favor. The US religious
> > right would love to have the holy land as part of the US.
>
> Perhaps that is not outlandish as it first sounds. What if Iraq stabilization
> and new government goes successfully fast and well. Then perhaps another
> such countrybuilding could take place for the WestBank. Making the
> WestBank and immediate State with US soldiers on patrol of the border
> and building a fence of that border. The USA would win alot of friends
> in the Islam world and seen no longer as the champion of Israel but as
> evenhanded.
>
I do not recall the location of Jerusalem with regards to the WestBank. And
with regards to the 1967 borders where Jerusalem lies. That would be a
nightmare issue to resolve who gets what as far as Jerusalem is concerned.
So my idea of building a fence and trashcanning the Roadmap would not
be good for the case of Jerusalem in that no-one can decide what to do with
the property.
But if the USA made the WestBank as a 52nd state then the USA can figure
out how to parcel out Jerusalem.
So it maybe that the WestBank as the 52nd state is the fastest, easiest and
most fair solution of all.
The Fence solution will become entangled once it reaches the Jerusalem
property. The 52nd state solution will work out the problem in time.
Edward Glamkowski
> > it exists at all. The Office of Indian Affairs, created in 1824, was very
> > hostile towards the indians. That hostility didn't really end until 1947,
> > when the renamed Bureau of Indian Affairs moved from the War Department to
> > the Dept. of the Interior. FDR sought ways to improve the agency in the
> > 1930s, but it was this department shift that really changed its focus.
> >
> > It was this agency (OIA) that TOOK AWAY land from the Indians (because
> > whites wanted to settle on their land), brought us the Trail of Tears, that
> > fed the indians rancid meat and spoiled flour to save money (or rather, to
> > embezzle money), perpetrated massacres and summary executions, introduced
> > diseases such as cholera, and generally tried to accomplish genocide against
> > the indians. It doesn't get much worse then that.
>
> Oh, it gets worse than that alright.
>
> It gets to where the aggressors start throwing up settlements into their
> territory.
Americans did that to the indians.
> To where the movement is restricted by border guards.
Americans did that to the indians.
> To where no-one can have a job or make a living unless you strap a suicide
> bomb.
The americans did worse then that - they made genocide an official policy.
Forget about getting a job, the indians were just trying to survive at all!
> To where a life is controlled by foreigners whose only happiness is to see
> you vanish from Earth.
Yep, that's what the americans were doing to the indians.
> Where you are denied a land to make a home and where the foreigners can run
> their tanks and gunships up and down your place anytime they want.
Americans vs. indians, check.
> And when you lift a finger against this oppression then they label you as a
> terrorist deserving of even harder repression and oppression.
Check.
So, you see, the US government did do all these things, and worse, to the
indians. Yeah, we don't do these things any more (haven't for almost 100
years, really), but it has happened.
The difference is: the jews, under the right conditions, would be willing
to co-exist with the arabs. Compare that to the US Government, which at one
point wanted every last indian dead as a matter of policy.
Edward Glamkowski
> to the history pattern of Israel and Palestinians.
Many differences.
First, the US was able to just constantly relocate the indians to increasingly
marginal lands. There isn't anyplace to relocate the palestinians to, and the
land is already very marginal.
Second, the indian population declined steeply through most of this period
of oppression, while the palestinian population is booming.
Third, the american economy had zero need for the indians, while the arabs
are important to the israeli economy.
Um, there were others, but I got distracted while writing this and forget them
:-/
> I wonder if there is something in the Jewish religion in the Torah about
> "land".
It sure does, and that's really the whole point of conflict between the
jews and arabs. Read Genesis. The point of contention is: who is the
true inheritor of the land? God promised the land to the descendents of
Abraham, but does it belong to Abraham's descendents through his wife Sarah
(the jews) or through the slave Hagar (the muslims)?
While it would seem obvious enough to any rational person that the land
should belong to the wife's children (the jews), not the slave's (the
muslims), since slaves generally don't have rights, unfortunately, the
situation is a bit more tricky. Sarah was barren and so children were had
through Hagar exactly because of that fact. Only, later, after Hagar had
had some kids with Abraham, Sarah finally had a baby too....
Normally, I would not include biblical arguments in discussions, but
since both parties to the conflict recognize the old testament as valid
history and integral to their lives (religion and politics both), I'm
willing to drag it in in this case.
So, if this was a simple civil case and you were Solomon presiding over
the case and deciding the law, who do YOU give the land to? Sarah's kids
or Hagar's kids?
Historically, in most places around the world, Sarah's kids would have been
given the land. Indeed, in biblical times, that's exactly what happened,
and is why the Jews consider the land to be theirs today (by divine right).
> > Historians have studied the question. While I can't point you to a
> > convienient link, and while your numbers may be off a bit, your
> > assessment is essentially correct.
>
> Otto, do you know what the first major incident between Israelis
> and Palestinians were after the 1947 UN Accord? I mean did either
> side try to be friends with one another or did they clash. And can
> one be blamed as a "first aggressor"?
The Egypitans, Labanese, Iraqis and Syria invaded Israel first, on the
very day the Zionists declared the state of Israel: May 14, 1948. The
arabs were very clearly the aggressor, though obviously declaring the
state of Israel was a provocative act.
> One of the problems here in the USA is the large sway of control of
> education and news media by Jewish sympathizers and Jews.
Ok, now you're wandering into conspiracy crap.
Americans are ignorant of most foreign issues, not just Israel/Palestine.
Don't chalk it up to a jewish conspiracy to silence the schools, it's just
the standard willful ignorance that pervades most americans on most issues.
> > Or, we could make the West Bank a state and use our military might to
> > resolve their land claims in the Palestinians favor. The US religious
> > right would love to have the holy land as part of the US.
I've always been a bit curious at the Pope's seeming disinterest in the
land. It is, after all, where (according to the Christians) God manifested
himself in the form of Jesus. You'd think the Christians would want the land
even more so then either the Jews of the Muslims.... Yeah, yeah, they tried
(Crusades), but they gave up on it. Still seems like the Christians ought to
be fiercly interested in the land regardless.
Edward Glamkowski
> >silen...@hotmail.com (Silentotto) wrote in message
> >> eglam...@angelfire.com (Edward Glamkowski) wrote in message
> >> > Archimedes Plutonium <a_plu...@dtgnet.com> wrote in message
> >> > > Edward Glamkowski wrote:
>
> There are people who live there and who are willing to fight to keep
> what is rightfully theirs.
But is it rightfully theirs? Both the muslims and the jews recognize the
old testament as valid history and as God's law. Since God said (in Genesis)
that the land belongs to the children of Abraham forever and ever, and since
both sides recognize the authority of God as lawgiver, the land belongs to the
children of Abraham regardless of whoever is living there now.
So the real question is: who are the children of Abraham?
The Jews are descended from Abraham through Sarah, his wife.
The Muslims are descended from Abraham through Hagar, his slave.
Do we grant land to slaves, or to the family?
Answer that question, and we've solved the middle east crisis!
Neither side would deny God's word as law.
Historically, Sarah's children got the land, so it belongs to the Jews by
divine right.
There's your rights argument.
Whether you think it is valid or not isn't necessarily relevent, since
we are talking about the old testament, which BOTH of the sides involved
recognize, even if you personally do not. What matters is not what is
important to you, but what is important to them. They recognize it, they
live by it, it should be used to solve their problem.
> We have been arming and supporting Israel since it's inception.
And we've also been supply arms to the arabs. For decades we have been
giving MORE to the arabs then we have to the muslims. Though the total
amount given to the arabs is divied up among a number of nations while
the jewish money goes to one. Still, it's not as clear cut as you'd like.
> But, I'll also point out that Israel doesn't independently have the
> military might to insure it's survival or maintain it's conquests.
>
> Their source of power is and has been the US.
If they can get the support, more power to them.
Don't like it? Right your congressmen!
Many in this country feel the US should not be supporting Israel, so
you could probably find a number of receptive congress critters.
> You act like there was no third party intervention in the situation.
>
> Well, your wrong. There was third party intervention.
>
> It was by the US on behalf of Israel.
And Russia intervened for the arabs. And more recently, China.
The arabs have been getting plenty of third party support as well.
Including US support. So you're right, there has been third party
intervention, but it has occurred on both sides.
There's a lot more to warfare then military hardware. The jews are
also better soldiers. In the early wars, the Jewish tanks were taken
from US excess, and Shermans and Pattons were really not very good
against the Soviet tanks that the arabs were using. However, the
arab tank crews were really that bad, and the jewish tank crews were
really that good, that the difference in hardware did not work against
the jews.
> If we cease to intervene in the situation then Israel will have no
> other choice than to come to an equatable solution.
Especially as Russia and China and France and others would continue
to fund the arabs. All outside powers need to stop, not just us.
> Having said that, we have been using our might to protect Israel from
> the logical consequences of it's actions.
To protect it? If the US government *wanted* those results, then of course
its going to protect it. Maybe the jews played the US for fools, using the
Holocaust to get their way, but regardless, the US government supported
"the logical consequences", so *of*course* it protected Israel.
> >ANYWAYS, if you look at the modern history of the area, you'll find
> >that the original League of Nations solution from 1922 was to
> >implement the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which called for the creation
> >of a JEWISH state in the region, not an arab one. It is convenient
> to
> >say that because the UN called for an arab state, there should be an
> >arab one. But who is the UN to make such a declaration?
>
> Who were the British to call for a Jewish state?
Who is the UN to call for a palestinian state?
> Why do you give what the British plans precedence over what the native
> people wanted?
You mean what the UN wanted. The locals didn't really have much say at
the time. I'm sure they supported anything that gave them a chance at
a good life, but that doesn't mean it was their plan.
> It's not like the Arabs living in the region didn't have a vision of
> their own for their future.
Did they?
> Finally, Israel was formed, not under the League of Nations, but under
> the UN, which clearly gives the UN precedence in the matter.
Israel was formed in spite of the UN. In fact, a LOT is done in spite
of the UN. Like our recent actions against Iraq...
The UN isn't always the best arbiter of what is good and what is bad.
In fact, it is often down right disasterous. It took YEARS for the UN to
get power and water going in Kosovo, while the US military did the same
thing in Iraq in a matter of weeks. Even if damage in Baghdad had been
far more extensive, it still wouldn't have taken 5 years to get done.
The UN has been a nightmare in everything it has tried to do (and failed).
> The Arabs wanted\want the same thing the Jews did.
>
> Land.
>
> The Jews were\are stealing it and the Arabs wanted\want them to stop
> and leave.
It all goes back to Sarah vs. Hagar.
> There is a potential solution to every problem in the world.
>
> The problem is getting people to agree to that solution.
Yep.
> >If the other 49 states decided New Mexico had to go, what are the
> >peopel of New Mexico gonna do? They can't force the US government to
> >keep them. And they can't get the UN to force the US government to
> >keep them. People who lived there that didn't want to be a part of
> >Mexico would no doubt all get out and move elsewhere. But at the end
> >of the day, they couldn't stop it from happening.
>
> You're missing the point.
>
> The point is that the people of the other 49 states would never agree
> to such a thing.
>
> Further, there is no mechanism in the constitution to allow for such a
> thing.
>
> While the constitution could be altered to allow it, the chances of
> such a thing happening are so remote that it isn't even worth
> speculating about.
Sure it is. There has to be SOME way to get out of the union. Territories
and protectorates can withdraw at any time, by plebiscite of the locals -
the federal government can't stop it. Why shouldn't states be able to,
IF it is agreed upon by ALL the other states?
It is an interesting question to speculate, ESPECIALLY on a group like
talk.politics.theory
^^^^^^
:-)
> We would likely go along with the '67 borders. There is broad
> international consensus for an Israeli state along those lines.
But does God approve of those borders? ;-)
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Glamkowski wrote:
This is the trouble with Organized-Religion. People want to commit greed of
land stealing and acts of atrocity and then they excuse themselves by quoting
their bible. Jews point to some passages of the Old Testament and excuse them
of destroying the Palestinian people and taking away their land.
One of the reasons the USA became the superpower and not Russia or China
was because the people of the USA were not going to be governed by Organized
Religion and that we separated that noise out of our politics. The Founding
Fathers of the USA were smart enough to realize that this country would be good
only if Organized Religion was marginalized out of politics and separated out of
politics and decision making.
The reason so much of the world is primitive is because organized-religion runs
too many countries.
The trouble when organized-religion runs countries like Israel is that they then
go ahead and steal the land of the Palestinians, oppress the Palestinians, even
think of genocide of the Palestinians and they excuse themselves of their evil
acts by pointing to a passage of their organized-religion-bible that God promised
them this land.
If the Jews are stupid enough to believe that God promised them Israel, then the
airplaning of the twin towers of 11Sept01 was a divine intervention of God for
the believers of Islam. Ed, do you see the equality of that? The Jew belief that
God granted Israel to the Jews via divine intervention then the 11Sept01 was
another divine intervention by the act of God in the name of Islam. And pushing
this to its logical ends. The Holocaust of the Jews by Europeans in particular
the
Nazis was another act of God's divine intervention in that God felt like
punishing
the Jew. I do not beleive any of that except Superdeterminism and that God is
Science.
What is more likely the truth is that the Jews are greedy people who want to
steal the land of Israel and never want to give any land to the Palestinians and
who use the Old Testament as an excuse for their evil actions on the
Palestinians.
I believe the 11SEP01 was a act of evil committed by Islamic fundamentalists
who thus hide under the excuse of the Islam religion. The Jews hiding under
the excuse of the Old Testament to commit evil upon the Palestinians in no
different than the 11SEP01 hijackers hiding under the excuse of Islam religion.
All people know and sense when they have done wrong and done acts of evil and
acts of bad. When these evil people then run to their organizedreligion for
excuse
and cover and hide, then they have done even more evil.
And the true God of the world which is a Spinoza pantheism God, which is the
AtomTotality, because we are tiny parts of God, and God will dispense justice.
OrganizedReligion has become a modern day disease and has not helped. People
know what is right from wrong, what is evil and good, they know it from their
heart, and not from some ancient books called bibles written by delusional men
in desert climates of old.
I am afraid that if the Jews do much more horrible acts on the Palestinians that
the Jewish race will be punished by the true God which is Science, and another
Holocaust will visit the Jew of the future. OrganizedReligions blind people
from seeing true God, and organizedreligions give people excuses to commit
acts of evil.
Archimedes Plutonium
(most snipped)
(snip)
>
>
> And, if it's the biggest stick that counts, then I don't like the
> Israelis beating the Palestinians with my stick, because that is what
> is going on now to the tune of $5,000,000,000 a year.
>
Otto, I am beginning to have pangs of guilt in that some of my tax
dollars
goes to the annual Israel aid of 5 billion dollars. Guilt in that I know
the
Israelis are using that 5 billion to oppress the Palestinians.
It is not a guilt of association as if I were to aid bank robbers. But a
pang
of guilt nonetheless because I know I will be judged in Heaven when I get
there.
And this would be a sticking point in that I should have done more to
help an
oppressed people such as the Palestinians and yet I was aiding and
abetting
the Opressor of Israel. So that some of my tax dollars is going into the
bullets
that killed some Palestinian or tanks that removed the homes of
Palestinians.
Otto, I wonder if a Internet ongoing post calling for the USA Congress to
halt aid to Israel until they show signs of ending this land squabble of
Palestine. Instead of millions of Americans writing solo letters to
Congress
have an ongoing list of names with a brief caption saying that we are fed
up
with our tax dollars going to Israel to fund their stealing of
Palestinian land
and the oppression of the Palestinians.
Otto, I vaguely remember some philosopher saying that " A good person is
one that does not ignore evil, and that if you ignore evil you slowly
become
evil."
So I wonder if we can start a Thread to the Internet in these 3 above
newsgroups
titled "Stop aid to Israel until they make progress on a Palestinian
Homeland"
And where someone eloquently writes a preamble and then those of the same
spirit sign the Internet document calling for our Congress to stop
monetary and
military aid to Israel until they show proof of a Palestinian Homeland.
I do not want to get to Heaven and have bad points against me for having
ignored
the Palestinian Oppression which was funded ever so small by some of my
tax
dollars. I do not want the death or removal of a Palestinian on my
conscious.
Doctrine:
Preamble:
What the cause is for:
Name of all people in favor:
(1) Archimedes Plutonium
(2)..
(3) ..
.
.
.
Silentotto
> silen...@hotmail.com (Silentotto) wrote in message
> > >silen...@hotmail.com (Silentotto) wrote in message
> > >> eglam...@angelfire.com (Edward Glamkowski) wrote in message
> > >> > Archimedes Plutonium <a_plu...@dtgnet.com> wrote in message
> > >> > > Edward Glamkowski wrote:
> >
> > There are people who live there and who are willing to fight to keep
> > what is rightfully theirs.
>
> But is it rightfully theirs?
They were living there and they were using it before the massive
influx of Europeans before and after WWII, so yes, it is.
>Both the muslims and the jews recognize the
> old testament as valid history and as God's law. Since God said (in Genesis)
> that the land belongs to the children of Abraham forever and ever, and since
> both sides recognize the authority of God as lawgiver, the land belongs to the
> children of Abraham regardless of whoever is living there now.
Muslims consider themselves people of the Book. In that sence they
have as much right to the land as the Jews do.
> So the real question is: who are the children of Abraham?
> The Jews are descended from Abraham through Sarah, his wife.
> The Muslims are descended from Abraham through Hagar, his slave.
I've never heard a muslim subscribe to this theory. Nor have I ever
seen any evidence that it is true.
> Do we grant land to slaves, or to the family?
We recognize the ownership of the people who lived there, not the
people who immigrated from Europe, no matter what their particular
religious beliefs are.
> Answer that question, and we've solved the middle east crisis!
> Neither side would deny God's word as law.
Perhaps not, but there is no consensus on what the word of God is, is
there?
If God want's to come down and sort it, that's fine with me. But,
until he does so, I'm going to use a more secular means of making my
determination.
> Historically, Sarah's children got the land, so it belongs to the Jews by
> divine right.
Only if one believes in the Bible and only if one agrees on the
interpetaton that your applying.
It's quite clear that there is no consensus on your interpetation.
> There's your rights argument.
Obviously not, else the Arabs wouldn't be fighting to to regain the
land, would they?
> Whether you think it is valid or not isn't necessarily relevent, since
> we are talking about the old testament, which BOTH of the sides involved
> recognize, even if you personally do not. What matters is not what is
> important to you, but what is important to them. They recognize it, they
> live by it, it should be used to solve their problem.
But it's clear to me by what is going on over there that both sides
don't recognize it, or at least recognize your interpetation of it, or
else they wouldn't be fighting it out.
> > We have been arming and supporting Israel since it's inception.
>
> And we've also been supply arms to the arabs. For decades we have been
> giving MORE to the arabs then we have to the muslims.
The Arabs are the Muslims, for the most part.
And, we have not been giving, we have been selling.
And, it is not our first line equipment like we give to Israel.
>Though the total
> amount given to the arabs is divied up among a number of nations while
> the jewish money goes to one. Still, it's not as clear cut as you'd like.
We sold second rate arms to some Arab states on a very selective
basis.
We GIVE Israel $5,000,000,000 dollars a year.
That is a pretty clear difference to me.
> > But, I'll also point out that Israel doesn't independently have the
> > military might to insure it's survival or maintain it's conquests.
> >
> > Their source of power is and has been the US.
>
> If they can get the support, more power to them.
> Don't like it? Right your congressmen!
> Many in this country feel the US should not be supporting Israel, so
> you could probably find a number of receptive congress critters.
That support is begining to errode right now, as we speak.
That's one of the reason Israel is scrambling to build the wall
seperating Israel from the West Bank. They are trying to make the
future boundries a fait accompli.
> > You act like there was no third party intervention in the situation.
> >
> > Well, your wrong. There was third party intervention.
> >
> > It was by the US on behalf of Israel.
>
> And Russia intervened for the arabs. And more recently, China.
> The arabs have been getting plenty of third party support as well.
> Including US support. So you're right, there has been third party
> intervention, but it has occurred on both sides.
But by far the greater support has been from the US to Israel.
No contest. Not even close. We have made certain that Israel is
stronger than all the Arab powers combined.
While I don't have a problem with supporting Israel per se, I don't
feel our support should be so unconditional that Israel is able to
avoid resolving the problems it's creation caused and to comptemplate
grabbing even more land.
> There's a lot more to warfare then military hardware. The jews are
> also better soldiers. In the early wars, the Jewish tanks were taken
> from US excess, and Shermans and Pattons were really not very good
> against the Soviet tanks that the arabs were using. However, the
> arab tank crews were really that bad, and the jewish tank crews were
> really that good, that the difference in hardware did not work against
> the jews.
What's your point?
The Israeli Army was better trained.
The most basic fundimental of training is having the money to pay for
it.
The money came from us.
It's all part of the same package.
> > If we cease to intervene in the situation then Israel will have no
> > other choice than to come to an equatable solution.
>
> Especially as Russia and China and France and others would continue
> to fund the arabs. All outside powers need to stop, not just us.
Again, you're comparing sales to gifts.
Not the same thing.
Were Israel forced to rely on what they could afford to buy as opposed
to what we can afford to give them, they would have come to equitable
agreements with their neighbors long ago.
> > Having said that, we have been using our might to protect Israel from
> > the logical consequences of it's actions.
>
> To protect it? If the US government *wanted* those results, then of course
> its going to protect it. Maybe the jews played the US for fools, using the
> Holocaust to get their way, but regardless, the US government supported
> "the logical consequences", so *of*course* it protected Israel.
Yes, we did.
And the culmination of that support was 9/11.
That is my point.
Supporting Israel with a blank check was and is a mistake, and we
should stop doing it. While such support may be good for Israel, it
is detremental to our interests.
> > >ANYWAYS, if you look at the modern history of the area, you'll find
> > >that the original League of Nations solution from 1922 was to
> > >implement the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which called for the creation
> > >of a JEWISH state in the region, not an arab one. It is convenient
> to
> > >say that because the UN called for an arab state, there should be an
> > >arab one. But who is the UN to make such a declaration?
> >
> > Who were the British to call for a Jewish state?
>
> Who is the UN to call for a palestinian state?
It's the Palestinians who are calling for a Palestinian state. The UN
just happens to agree with them because it's the only just solution to
the problem.
> > Why do you give what the British plans precedence over what the native
> > people wanted?
>
> You mean what the UN wanted. The locals didn't really have much say at
> the time. I'm sure they supported anything that gave them a chance at
> a good life, but that doesn't mean it was their plan.
No, I mean what the native peoples wanted.
They didn't have much say in the world of power politics, but that
doesn't mean that they didn't have a vision and it doesn't mean that
they don't posess the means to try and make that vision a reality.
That is why they have been fighting for so long.
> > It's not like the Arabs living in the region didn't have a vision of
> > their own for their future.
>
> Did they?
Yes, they did.
> > Finally, Israel was formed, not under the League of Nations, but under
> > the UN, which clearly gives the UN precedence in the matter.
>
> Israel was formed in spite of the UN. In fact, a LOT is done in spite
> of the UN. Like our recent actions against Iraq...
Not so.
The origional plan for the partition of Palestine was formed in the
UN. In the resulting war, Israel gained most of their current
borders.
Then the UN recognized that area as Israel.
Then in the 67 war Israel picked up the occupied terrtories and Sinai
and Golan in the 73 war.
They made peace treaty with Egypt and gave Sinai back in '78.
The rest of the occupied terrtories they attempted to incorporate into
Israel. They denied it, but it's the only logical explaination for
the settlements.
That part of the plan has thus far failed, and it doesn't look like it
has much chance of succeeding at this point.
> The UN isn't always the best arbiter of what is good and what is bad.
> In fact, it is often down right disasterous. It took YEARS for the UN to
> get power and water going in Kosovo, while the US military did the same
> thing in Iraq in a matter of weeks.
We did? You may want to do a little checking of your facts. We still
haven't gotten the power and water restored.
Further, Kosovo was subjected to a far longer period of warfare than
Iraq was, and the infrastructure was more severely damaged.
Further still, we threw a lot less money at Kosovo than we're throwing
at Iraq.
The UN only has the resources that it's member states give it. If the
UN fails at something, then we, as a member of the UN, share in that
failure.
>Even if damage in Baghdad had been
> far more extensive, it still wouldn't have taken 5 years to get done.
> The UN has been a nightmare in everything it has tried to do (and failed).
So what?
Do you have a better plan than the UN's for resolving the conflict
between Israel and the Palestinians?
The UN didn't develope it's plan in a vacuum. Our input weighed
heavily in the process.
But, if you've a better plan that you think all will agree to, put it
forward.
There may be a Nobel Peace Prize in it for you.
But until then, the UN plan is the best one going.
> > The Arabs wanted\want the same thing the Jews did.
> >
> > Land.
> >
> > The Jews were\are stealing it and the Arabs wanted\want them to stop
> > and leave.
>
> It all goes back to Sarah vs. Hagar.
You may think so, and the more radical of the Zionists, but almost
nobody else does, especally the Palestinians who are blowing
themselves up.
It's what they think that matters.
> > There is a potential solution to every problem in the world.
> >
> > The problem is getting people to agree to that solution.
>
> Yep.
>
>
> > >If the other 49 states decided New Mexico had to go, what are the
> > >peopel of New Mexico gonna do? They can't force the US government to
> > >keep them. And they can't get the UN to force the US government to
> > >keep them. People who lived there that didn't want to be a part of
> > >Mexico would no doubt all get out and move elsewhere. But at the end
> > >of the day, they couldn't stop it from happening.
> >
> > You're missing the point.
> >
> > The point is that the people of the other 49 states would never agree
> > to such a thing.
> >
> > Further, there is no mechanism in the constitution to allow for such a
> > thing.
> >
> > While the constitution could be altered to allow it, the chances of
> > such a thing happening are so remote that it isn't even worth
> > speculating about.
>
> Sure it is. There has to be SOME way to get out of the union. Territories
> and protectorates can withdraw at any time, by plebiscite of the locals -
> the federal government can't stop it. Why shouldn't states be able to,
> IF it is agreed upon by ALL the other states?
I didn't say it can't happen. I said it's so unlikely that it's not
worth speculating about.
> It is an interesting question to speculate, ESPECIALLY on a group like
> talk.politics.theory
I'm posting from Sci.History
Having said that, If everyone wanted it, it would be done. The
Constitution would simply be ammended to allow for it.
But, the possability of getting the necessary majority to agree to
something like that is extremely remote.
>
> :-)
>
>
> > We would likely go along with the '67 borders. There is broad
> > international consensus for an Israeli state along those lines.
>
> But does God approve of those borders? ;-)
If God doesn't approve he's free to come down and impose whatever
solution he wishes.
If he does so, I'll not dispute his decision.
Lamarr Edwards
decide.
Both are secular, religio neutral entities.
The issue must be decided within the framework of established doctrines
of law, and simple fairness.
The state of Israel is a fait accompli, and all the would haves or
should haves are irrelevant, it is a nation, and a nation that under no
circumstances should be allowed to be obliterated by the muslims.
Israel is the greatest benificiary of US aid, but the second greatest
benificiary is Egypt.
Jordan receives US aid, as do the Palestinians.
Most, if not all Arab states use military equipment provided by Russia,
or other former Eastern block nations, and France and Germany, in that
order.
Excepting Germany, this has been the case since the early 1960's
Iran, not an Arab state, had US military equipment till the
"revolution", now they are armed by the same actors, including China.
Either the Arab states, the Palestinians, and the Israeli's are going to
have to realize that they cannot have all that they want, and must
compromise, or they are going to be murdering one another in perpetuity,
or somehow they might trigger armegeddon, and take care of us all.
It is as simple as that, and I don't have much hope. LE
Archimedes Plutonium
Silentotto wrote:
> Archimedes Plutonium <a_plu...@dtgnet.com> wrote in message news:<3EF0B96A...@dtgnet.com>...
> > 18 Jun 2003 01:43:08 -0700 Silentotto wrote:
> > (some snipping for brevity)
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > That the land wasn't organized into a soverign state doesn't mean that
> > > the land wasn't claimed and owned.
> >
> > Finally a writer who is objective and not subjective + biased.
> > Otto, I do not know what sort of land boundaries had been "imagined"
> > for the Palestinians circa the 1947 UN accord. I know the UN
> > addressed the issue of land for a Palestinian homeland but I wonder
> > if the WestBank and Gaza was floated around in that 1947 UN accord.
>
> Here is a map of the origional deal.
>
> http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/maps/M0082c.gif
>
> As you can see the Israelis have expanded their dominions considerably
> since then.
Otto, do you have a map reference site showing the 1967 borders?
Archimedes Plutonium
Edward Glamkowski wrote:
It shows where the Christian religion is less greedy and materialistic for land
than is Judaism. Christians are interested in converts. Judaism is more
interested
in material possessions.
But in response to the USA-Indian behaviour compared to Israel-Palestinian
behaviour.
One can only conclude that the USA has a ugly mean-streak in its national
character. Not only did the USA behave ugly towards the native Americans
(not sure if the Canadians or Australians behaved any better). But that the
ugly behaviour of Americans towards native Indians is being repeated by
Americans vicariously for Israelis against the Palestinians. The USA
unconditional help of the Israelis from 1947 onwards is not much different than
if the USA had done those acts itself. And that the mean-ugly-streak
of Americans on native Indians is still prominent and acting in the national
soul and character of modern day Americans.
To say that the Cold War with USSR was such a huge distraction during the
20th century is a good and valid excuse, but since the Cold War had ended
by 1991, there has not really been any change of behaviour of Americans on
the issue of the Palestinian Homeland and that the mean, ugly and evil streak
of Americans towards native-Indians of the 18th and 19th centuries is active
even today in using Israel as a proxy to treat the Palestinians in a similar
fashion as the Americans treated the native Indians.
In other words, Americans have never become better angels, but rather
milder devils from the 18th century to modern day. And the true God that
does exist (AtomTotality) will punish one of these days, not only Israel but
the USA for having treated Palestinians and Palestine in the manner that they
have.
Edward Glamkowski
> land stealing and acts of atrocity and then they excuse themselves by quoting
> their bible. Jews point to some passages of the Old Testament and excuse them
> of destroying the Palestinian people and taking away their land.
Well, like I said, both the Jews and the Muslims recognize the Old Testament
as law. Otherwise I never would have even mentioned it (and had resisted
mentioning it until you asked if there was a religious context for
understanding the dispute). If both sides recognize the OT and God as
legal authority, what's wrong with using it as a way to arbiter the dispute
between them? It may not fit *our* view of things, but it fits *their* view.
As far as the Nazi holocause being an example of God punishing the Jews,
if we want to even go down that road, that could very possibly be, given the
frequency and severity of God's punishment on the Jews in the old testament.
It'd be completely in line with the OT. To accept that God exists, one must
also accept that He works in mysterious ways :-p
Edward Glamkowski
> seen any evidence that it is true.
Ok, more correctly it is Isaac (Jews) vs. Ishmael (Muslims). But
since Ishmael is the son of Hagar, and Isaac is the son of Sarah, it's
fundamentally the same thing. If you don't know any arabs that claim
descent through Ishmael (and therefore through Hagar), you must not
know any arabs. Whether they actually are or not, as a matter of
historical fact, may be up for debate, but many make the claim
regardless.
Further, God explicitly sides with Sarah on the matter of inheritence,
so its very clear in the Old Testament that the land belongs to Isaac,
hence the Jews. It is very, very clear - I recommend you read Genesis
for yourself.
God promises to make a great nation from the children of Ishmael, but
it is still so that God promised the land to the children of Isaac.
There is no requirement that the great nation of Ishmael's descendents
should need to occupy the same land as belongs to the children of
Isaac.
> > Do we grant land to slaves, or to the family?
>
> We recognize the ownership of the people who lived there, not the
> people who immigrated from Europe, no matter what their particular
> religious beliefs are.
I'm using the laws recognized by both parties to the conflict (i.e.
the law of God), not the laws recognized by external parties that both
groups would consider either heretics or apostates. Is that really so
unreasonable? Would you like to be tried in a shariia muslim court if
you violate a US law? Why should we superimpose western law on to
their conflict, when both parties recognize the same law that is
different from ours? Are you suggesting that our law is better? That
the UN's law is better? Why?
As I said before, both sides in this conflict recognize the Old
Testament and believe God's word is Law. God promised the land to the
children of Abraham through Sarah (i.e. through Isaac) for ever and
ever until the end of time. There has not been a revocation of that
covenent that I'm aware of. Unless the Muslims can claim to be
descended from Sarah or Isaac, which I've never heard anybody suggest,
they cannot legally (according to their laws, the laws of God) make
claim to that land.
Modern muslims may take exception to this, but then I would posit they
are ignoring their own laws and trying to use western law. That's
practically an apostacy! And the penalty for apostacy in Islam
is..... ??? DEATH!
> > Answer that question, and we've solved the middle east crisis!
> > Neither side would deny God's word as law.
>
> Perhaps not, but there is no consensus on what the word of God is,
> is there?
Read Genesis for yourself, it's all extremely clear. That some people
may choose to ignore it doesn't mean it isn't clear.
> If God want's to come down and sort it, that's fine with me.
That would sure be handy, no?
> But, until he does so, I'm going to use a more secular means of
> making my determination.
Why? Given that both sides recognize sacred law!
> > Historically, Sarah's children got the land, so it belongs to the
> > Jews by divine right.
>
> Only if one believes in the Bible and only if one agrees on the
> interpetaton that your applying.
Both the muslims and the jews believe in Genesis, and there is no room
for interpretation - it's crystal clear. Try reading it yourself
before saying that again.
> It's quite clear that there is no consensus on your interpetation.
It's quite clear that certain humans (i.e. arabs) are ignoring the
word of God to advance their own agendas.
> > > We have been arming and supporting Israel since it's inception.
> >
> > And we've also been supply arms to the arabs. For decades we have
> > been giving MORE to the arabs then we have to the muslims.
>
> The Arabs are the Muslims, for the most part.
Er, I meant more to arabs then to jews.
> And, we have not been giving, we have been selling.
>
> And, it is not our first line equipment like we give to Israel.
Israel doesn't buy US tanks, since their Merkava design is better
suited to their needs. On the other hand, the US does sell M-1 tanks
to arab countries. And F-16s and Patriots and Harpoons and other
modern equipment. Some of it actually MORE advanced then what Israel
has. Maybe it does sell them vs. give them, but it is billions in
equipment, and they have equal access to it. Further, the US buys
billions in oil from the arab countries, pumping up their economies
dramatically. How much does the US buy from Israel? Perhaps the
granting of aid to Israel vs. the selling of goods to other arab
countries has something to do with this gross disparity?
Further, the US does give billions in aid to arab countries. Israel
may get more then any other country singly, but arab countries
combined are in the same ballpark. Yes, some, perhaps even most, of
the arab aid is not in the form of military equipment, but it's all
the same - if Egypt doesn't have to spend $1.2 billion (e.g. the Wye
River project), that's $1.2 billion more they have available to buy
military equipment.
In any event, why would you want to take money being given to people
who like us (Israel) and give it to people who want us dead? (recall
the muslims dancing in the street on 9/11?). I'd rather support the
enemy of our enemies and have them fight our fight then support our
enemies :-p
If we can pull it off, and the Jews don't mind being used in that way,
who's to lose?
Let me preempt what I know you will ask by asking you: Do the arabs
really hate us *only* because of our support of Israel? Or there more
to it then that? Is it a cultural conflict? An ideological conflict?
Is Israel merely a symptom of a much deeper problem? Would not
supporting Israel truly make them not hate us? Really?
> We sold second rate arms to some Arab states on a very selective
> basis.
Nope, we sell them first class stuff, some of it better then what we
give to the jews. The Russians and Chinese may be selling them second
rate stuff, but we can't do anything about that.
> We GIVE Israel $5,000,000,000 dollars a year.
We buy $10,000,000,000 in oil from Saudi Arabia every year. And
that's just ONE of Israel's neighbors. They have plenty of money to
spend buying stuff. Except they (the royal families) waste it
gambling and partying and crap, and not on helping their own people.
> > And Russia intervened for the arabs. And more recently, China.
> > The arabs have been getting plenty of third party support as well.
> > Including US support. So you're right, there has been third party
> > intervention, but it has occurred on both sides.
>
> But by far the greater support has been from the US to Israel.
>
> No contest. Not even close. We have made certain that Israel is
> stronger than all the Arab powers combined.
I haven't been able to find any figures for Russian foreign aid to the
Middle East, so I wouldn't know. So, where do you get your numbers
for Russian foreign aid? The more primary the source the better. I'd
be very interested to see the data. But until I can examine your
source for this statement, I'll pass judgment.
> While I don't have a problem with supporting Israel per se, I don't
> feel our support should be so unconditional that Israel is able to
> avoid resolving the problems it's creation caused and to
> comptemplate grabbing even more land.
Ok, I can agree that aid should be conditional.
> > There's a lot more to warfare then military hardware. The jews
> > are also better soldiers. In the early wars, the Jewish tanks
> > were taken from US excess, and Shermans and Pattons were really
> > not very good against the Soviet tanks that the arabs were using.
> > However, the arab tank crews were really that bad, and the jewish
> > tank crews were really that good, that the difference in hardware
> > did not work against the jews.
>
> What's your point?
>
> The Israeli Army was better trained.
That is the point.
> The most basic fundimental of training is having the money to pay
> for it.
>
> The money came from us.
>
> It's all part of the same package.
The arabs have far, far, far and away vastly more money then Israel.
The royal families just choose to squander it.
According to the CIA World Fact Book, Israel has $40 billion in
government revenue and $42 billion in federal expenditures, plus a
$122 billion GDP and $28 billion in exports.
Saudia Arabia alone has $42 billion in revenue and $54 billion in
expenditures with $241 billion GDP and $67 billion in exports.
I don't know if the Israel revenue figure includes US aid or not, but
given that US aid recently has been in the ballpark of $2-4 billion,
it's still comparable to Saudi revenue figures, but still leaves GDP
basically half of the Saudis.
Further, Israel spends ~$9 billion on its military.
Saudi Arabia? $18+ billion.
Saudia Arabia alone has more to spend then Israel. The other arab
countries hostile to Israel are merely icing on the cake at that
point. There's more to training then just money, cause arab countries
are outspending Israel on military expenditures. The Jews have
superior training in every respect. They also have much stronger
motivation...
> It's the Palestinians who are calling for a Palestinian state. The
> UN just happens to agree with them because it's the only just
> solution to the problem.
It's also rather interesting that the original plans for Palestine
included large parts of Jordan. Why isn't anybody today pestering
Jordan to cough up their share of land for the Palestinians? The
"refugee" camps there are not intended to be permanent, as far as the
Jordanian government is concerned. Plus, the Palestinians living in
Jordan have a vastly inferior quality of life then those in Israel.
In any event, if I understand correctly, the Palestinians living in
Israel were willing to accept the 1947 borders, but the Jordanian
Palestinians did not accept it, wanting instead ALL of the land
claimed by Israel.
> > The UN isn't always the best arbiter of what is good and what is
> > bad. In fact, it is often down right disasterous. It took YEARS
> > for the UN to get power and water going in Kosovo, while the US
> > military did the same thing in Iraq in a matter of weeks.
>
> We did? You may want to do a little checking of your facts. We
> still haven't gotten the power and water restored.
Um, I recommend *you* do your fact checking. Here's a start:
http://wwww.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/b21202645cb6c3f349256d410005f0e6?OpenDocument
From June 8, 2003:
"According to OCPA, as of last week, the power stations output has
been restored to pre-conflict levels"
"as at 1 June water provision to Baghdad was 55-70% of pre-war supply"
And even that's old news at this point, the situation can only have
improved further in the intervening three weeks.
So the water isn't completely restored, but consider the Kosovo
situation, which isn't projected to be completed until 2004!
5 years vs. 3 months. If the US had been solely responsible for the
Kosovo cleanup, I guarentee you it would not have taken 5 years. More
then 3 months, no doubt, but probably less then 1 year. Certainly not
even remotely as long as 5 years.
> Further, Kosovo was subjected to a far longer period of warfare than
> Iraq was, and the infrastructure was more severely damaged.
That's cause the UN wouldn't let its member states intervene in a
timely manner. Which was my entire point.
> Further still, we threw a lot less money at Kosovo than we're
> throwing at Iraq.
*shrug* That's the difference between the UN and the US.
I was the one making the point that the US was much better at these
things then the UN. You are merely proving my point for me :)
> The UN only has the resources that it's member states give it. If the
> UN fails at something, then we, as a member of the UN, share in that
> failure.
The US still pays more into the UN then anybody else, even if we are
behind on our payments. Proportionally vastly more then we should.
The US contributes to the UN $115 million more then China, Russia,
France and Britain COMBINED! In addition to dues, the US shells out
over $1.4 billion to various UN programs, an amount nobody else even
comes close to.
China is expected to pay a platry $24 million, even though it has the
second largest economy in the world. The Russians? $19 million.
Maybe if other member countries could cough up a proportional amount,
the UN might have enough money?
Not that I personally care, as I fully believe the UN has long
outlived its usefulness and needs to be dissolved.
> > Even if damage in Baghdad had been far more extensive, it still
> > wouldn't have taken 5 years to get done. The UN has been a
> > nightmare in everything it has tried to do (and failed).
>
> So what?
The point is that the UN is an utterly useless organization.
Restoring power and water services, heck, even building them from
scratch, is a comparatively minor thing to do, and the UN can't even
do that. And you trust them to solve the Israel/Palestine issue when
they can't solve much more fundamentally easier and vastly more
straightfoward problems?
> Do you have a better plan than the UN's for resolving the conflict
> between Israel and the Palestinians?
I think think of many that would solve the problem.
But a solution that will make everybody happy?
That's impossible.
A solution that will be lasting, without regard to who you piss off?
That's trivial.
But, since I have never said there was a good political solution, I've
already stated by willingness to accept the ultimate solution: war.
Israel won several wars. Wars where they were the ones attacked
(except for 1967, in which Israel have a clear and valid casus bellum,
and was basically preemptive as the arab countries were building up
for an imminent attack). This is enough for me. I consider the
problem solved. The rest of the world, however, in its rabid hatred
of the jews (not that you hate them personally, but the world in
general sure seems to), rejects this solution and demands the jews
give up their rightful spoils of war.
Silentotto
It doesn't matter what the Bible says, it doesn't matter how clear it
is, it doesn't matter what you think the Palestinians should think.
It's blindingly obvious that the Palestinians do NOT accept biblical
arbetration in the matter of ownership of the West Bank, even if you
think you've found a "gotcha".
If they did the conflict would have been resolved long ago.
Nor is there any way to force them to accept biblical arbetration.
As that is the case, refering to the Bible is useless for resolving
the conflict.
This is all beside the point.
In the end, it doesn't matter how much aid we give Israel or how much
aid we give the other countries in the region, nor does it matter who
gets what in the way of military hardware.
What matters is our support of Israel enables Israel to avoid
resolving the issue in the only manner that has any chance of ending
up in peace.
There are only so many potential solutions to this problem, and many
of them simply aren't acceptable to us or anyone else.
Forcing the Israeli's out of the middle east is a potential solution,
but it's unacceptable and isn't going to happen.
Forcing the Palestinians out of the West Bank and into some other
country isn't an acceptable solution and isn't going to happen. Not
to mention the fact that it isn't likely to result in the end of the
conflict. It would only change the battleground.
Killing all the Palestinians isn't an acceptable solution and isn't
going to happen.
Absorbing the Palestinians into Israel isn't an acceptable solution
and isn't going to happen.
What's left?
The bottom line is that there is really only one solution to the
conflict that has a chance of success.
That solution is for the Palestinians to have their own country based
on the West Bank and Gaza, and for the Israeli's to get their
settlements out of these areas.
Until the Israeli's remove their settlements, the Palestinian radicals
are going to continue to have the upper hand on the Palestinian side
of the issue, and until their support can be undercut the fighting
will go on.
In the end there isn't a military solution to this conflict.
Israel has to make some concessions that they don't want to make and
it is our support that enables them to avoid making those concessions.
>
>
> > It's the Palestinians who are calling for a Palestinian state. The
> > UN just happens to agree with them because it's the only just
> > solution to the problem.
>
> It's also rather interesting that the original plans for Palestine
> included large parts of Jordan. Why isn't anybody today pestering
> Jordan to cough up their share of land for the Palestinians? The
> "refugee" camps there are not intended to be permanent, as far as the
> Jordanian government is concerned. Plus, the Palestinians living in
> Jordan have a vastly inferior quality of life then those in Israel.
Origionally Transjordan contained all of present day Israel and all of
Jordan.
It was the actions of the Zionists that caused the area to be
partitioned in the first place.
> In any event, if I understand correctly, the Palestinians living in
> Israel were willing to accept the 1947 borders, but the Jordanian
> Palestinians did not accept it, wanting instead ALL of the land
> claimed by Israel.
By the time any partition plans were put forward, everything was
already in upheaval due to the actions of Zionist terrorists and the
creation of Palestinian refugees.
While there may be some truth in what you say, it's certainly not that
simple.
>
> > > The UN isn't always the best arbiter of what is good and what is
> > > bad. In fact, it is often down right disasterous. It took YEARS
> > > for the UN to get power and water going in Kosovo, while the US
> > > military did the same thing in Iraq in a matter of weeks.
> >
> > We did? You may want to do a little checking of your facts. We
> > still haven't gotten the power and water restored.
>
> Um, I recommend *you* do your fact checking. Here's a start:
> http://wwww.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/b21202645cb6c3f349256d410005f0e6?OpenDocument
>
> From June 8, 2003:
> "According to OCPA, as of last week, the power stations output has
> been restored to pre-conflict levels"
I'll just point out here that power station output isn't the same
thing as having a functional power grid, and that Baghdad is only one
city.
I'm not going to spend much time arguing about the UN.
Perhaps the US could have done better on it's own in Kosovo, perhaps
not.
But I will note this. While we give the most in real dollars, in
terms of a percentage of our GDP we're dead last among the western
industrialized states.
As to whether we should give more or not is a topic for another
discussion.
>
>
> > Do you have a better plan than the UN's for resolving the conflict
> > between Israel and the Palestinians?
>
> I think think of many that would solve the problem.
Great, let's hear them.
Perhaps there is a Nobel Peace Prize in it for you.
> But a solution that will make everybody happy?
> That's impossible.
How about one that has a chance of being implimented and being
successful then?
> A solution that will be lasting, without regard to who you piss off?
> That's trivial.
Again, let's hear it. But keep in mind such a solution should somehow
provide an end to the conflict, not simply a shift in venue.
> But, since I have never said there was a good political solution, I've
> already stated by willingness to accept the ultimate solution: war.
In this case, I don't think that there is a good military solution
either, unless you're comptemplating the extermination of the
Palestinians.
Hopefully that isn't in your thinking. But if it is, then all I can
say is that you are so divorced from reality that there isn't any
point in further discussion.
> Israel won several wars. Wars where they were the ones attacked
> (except for 1967, in which Israel have a clear and valid casus bellum,
> and was basically preemptive as the arab countries were building up
> for an imminent attack). This is enough for me. I consider the
> problem solved. The rest of the world, however, in its rabid hatred
> of the jews (not that you hate them personally, but the world in
> general sure seems to), rejects this solution and demands the jews
> give up their rightful spoils of war.
Ok, I'll play.
You feel the Israeli's are entitiled to all the conquests they made in
their various wars.
Ok.
How does that resolve the problem of what to do about the
Palestinians?