Don't you just love the French?

[OPTIONAL777]

Quote from traderfut2000:

It is good to talk about Gandhi and Luther King but I don't think that they would have accepted the behavior of Israel.
I am not trying to rationalise but ask people to be measured when asserting things. One cannot say look at the suicide bombers and forget all the context in which suicide bombing happens.

Do you think that if the palestinian did not react they will still be alive??? I doubt it. Do you think that if nobody reacted in the planet humanitarian associations, amnesty .. there will still be a palestine state. I doubt it.

Nothing justifies suicide bombing but also nothing justifies the terrorist behavior of Israel. Israel is the single state that violated the most numerous UN resolutions and all of them. If instead of Israel you had Iraq, it's certainly long time ago that it would have been erased from the surface of planet earth.

Peace anyway

AS if.....as if you could possible know what Ghandi or King would think......

You can justify the suicide bombers any way you like, but in the end it is just that....a justification process.

You response just strengthens my point that you have bias, not objectivity.

Anytime anyone says, "Well, yes it is wrong, but....."

You can rest assured that if someone makes a statement, and then follows it with but....yada yada yada, they are minimizing the first wrong.

Minimize, rationalize, justify all you want. These were not the ways of either Ghandi or King.

But you know what they would think, what they would have accepted, and how they would act in the present situation.

Your vanity and myopic view is staggering.

 

[traderfut2000]

Your point of view is certainly the one I feel is the more non biased. However, don't forget that you cannot compare apples and oranges. Israel is the state that is violating the international law and Israel is also the super power.

So before even starting when you say you are neutral is like watching a cat fighting an elephant and say look I am neutral they are both doing silly things. We all know that hatred calls for hatred and that there was enough killings. But once again remaining neutral is like giving a pass to Israel. And we all know what they want to do. Colonize all the region and create the great Israel.

Any person that is concerned about human rights and human freedom should say NO to that.

Peace

 

[vvv]

Quote from traderfut2000:

However, don't forget that you cannot compare apples and oranges. Israel is the state that is violating the international law and Israel is also the super power.

alas, too often yesterdays terrorist is todays statesman.

Sharon: A terrorist then, a terrorist now

by Stephen Gowans

In a December 5 paean to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Globe and Mail journalist Paul Koring writes, Sharon "has been a fighter since the age of 14, when he first joined the Haganah, an underground military group that opposed British rule."

If your eyes pass over the sentence quickly, nothing seems amiss. But pause for a second, and ask yourself this: How is Haganah, "an underground military group that opposed British rule," different in principle from Hamas, the Palestinian military group that opposes Israeli rule? And why is Haganah, a terrorist group, called an underground military group, when Hamas, a terrorist group, is called a terrorist group?

Here’s another question: Why is Sharon, once a member of a terrorist group fighting British rule, called a "fighter," while Osama Bahar and Nabil Halabiyeh, the two Palestinians who blew themselves up and took 15 others with them, are called "terrorists"? Both belonged to terrorist groups, yet Sharon is admired as a "fighter" while Bahar and Halabiyeh are reviled as terrorists. Shouldn’t all three be reviled as terrorists?

The contras, the mujahadeen, the KLA, and the KLA offshoot in Macedonia, the NLA, are called freedom fighters, rebels, an underground military group, never terrorists -- until they change sides. Whether terrorist or rebel depends on who the target is.

The KLA was once a terrorist organization in the eyes of the US State Department, until it became one of Washington’s principle tools in ousting former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Then it became a band of fighters, defending itself against the Serbs (who, themselves, had been made-over from the vigorous antifascists they are into the Nazis they never were.)

The mujahadeen, Washington’s tool to bog the Soviet Union down in a military quagmire, were freedom fighters. The mujahadeen were responsible for expunging the pre-Taliban days that Laura Bush now waxes lyrical about. Some former mujahadeen are now decried for sponsoring terrorism (the Taliban), while others are admired as liberators (the Northern Alliance.) Yet, whether Taliban or Northen Alliance, their tactics are the same. The difference is the interests they serve.

Osama bin Laden, elevated to the status of master terrorist, was not always so. He too was once admired as a "freedom fighter." And yet his methods have survived his transformation from hero to goat. Only his targets have changed.

Writer William Blum says a terrorist is anyone who has a bomb but not an airforce, emphasizing that those who are called terrorists use the same methods as airforces, but don't have the sanction of the state. Kill others with a bomb strapped to your chest in a suicide attack and you’re a terrorist. Kill others with a bomb dropped from 30,000 feet and you’re a fighter in the war against terrorism.

Political scientist C Douglas Lummis puts it this way: "It is a scandal in contemporary international law...that while the wanton destruction of towns, cities and villages is a war crime of long standing, the bombing of cities from airplanes goes not only unpunished but virtually unaccused. Air bombardment is state terrorism, the terrorism of the rich. It has burned up and blasted apart more innocents in the past six decades than have all the anti-state terrorists who ever lived."

Listen to Haji Khan, who fled Kandahar, which has been subjected to "around-the-clock bombing raids designed to shatter the nerves and morale of the people," as The Globe and Mail reported on December 4. "It was like being inside a nightmare. Everyone was crying. There were dead people everywhere. It never ends. It was boom, boom, boom, boom, and then boom again." This is state terrorism, carried out under the direction of the state terrorist extraordinaire, George W. Bush. Bush orders the wanton destruction of towns, cities and villages, oversees a military that commits war crimes against Taliban prisoners at a fortress outside of Mazar-i-Sharif, and is hailed in fluff pieces as having the moral courage to rid the world of the scourge of evildoers, a task that, if truly carried out, would engender a host of self-referential paradoxes.

But while there’s a double standard in excusing regular military forces for their terrorism, there’s another double standard: Who’s denounced as a "terrorist," and who’s admired as a "fighter," depends entirely on whether the target is friend or foe, apart from the issue of whether the terror is state-sanctioned or not.

The only way to avoid the double-standard is to recall Margaret Thatcher’s, "terrorism is terrorism is terrorism." In that vein, let me begin: Sharon is a terrorist. He was then. He is today. Call him a fighter, but he’s still a terrorist, no different in the days he was a member of Haganah, than Osama Bahar and Nabil Halabiyeh were last Saturday as members of Hamas; no different today, as a state terrorist, than he was at the age of 14 as an anti-state terrorist.

Mr. Steve Gowans is a writer and political activist who lives in Ottawa, Canada.

 

[traderfut2000]

Yes don't forget that israelis bombed and killed innocent British citizen and one of the terrorist became a head of state.

They did all what was possible to have that Israeli state. I can understand their despair after the Nazi crimes but overall palestinian or even british did not do anything to them. The British helped the Jews against the Nazis..

 

[rs7]

great posts by both Optional and VVV!!!!

Traderfut, I realize that you see the whole Palestinian issue from a different perspective. But please, I don't see how you can say that my statement about "disarmament" is not valid. If the Palestinians had the weapons and the fighting ability that the Israelis have now, how long (measured in nanoseconds) would Israel exist?

You say the Israelis have "stolen the land". Obviously these lands are in dispute. But for a guy that likes to use examples from hundreds of years ago to make a point about today's situation, why not tell us who was in "Palestine" 2 or 3 thousand years ago? When did the word "Palestinian" even first come to be used?

We have been going in circles about this issue for months. Obviously you consider Israel a "terrorist state". You call them today's "nazis". Yet the truth remains that Arab-Israelis enjoy more rights and freedoms than do most Arabs in the rest of the middle east. If you were an Islamic Arab woman (I know you are not), where would you prefer to live? Israel, where you could vote? Even hold political office? Or Saudi Arabia, where you couldn't even drive a car? Where you would have virtually NO rights as a human being?

Also, and this is obviously a bit off the subject, but still.....when a country wins a war, historically the lands conquered have been kept as captured territory. This is why maps change over time. Isreal was attacked unprovoked in 1967 (among other times), won, amassed land and gave most of it back. And was completely prepared to return the Golan two years ago. But the Palestinian Authority declined peace and nixed the deal. Hard to contemplate losing a war and then demanding to set the terms of peace with 100% of your objectives as the only acceptable settlement. So, it seems IMHO that the PA has no interest in peace. Get a leader that wants peace, and they will have it virtually overnight. And a heavy handed Sharon would not be necessary. As we agree, Sharon is ONLY popular because he comforts a scared shitless constituency. Give them a peaceful existence, and you will see how quickly they will elect a peaceful and compliant leader. Bomb pizza joints and discos and kill tourists and children and civilians, and that will assure leaders like Sharon. What a shame. And what a waste of blood and money and tears on both sides. All so unnecessary.

Has Israel bombed targets and caused collateral damage? Sadly, yes. But if the terrorists were not so cowardly as to hide among women and children, do you think these incidents would be so prevalent? Do you think that any of these innocents were intended victims of the Israeli army? (Don't bother answering....I know you wrongly think this....but you are seriously mistaken). But clearly, innocent non-combatants are the intended targets of these suicide bombers that are clearly encouraged by the cowardly leaders of Hamas, Jihad, and the leaderless joke we refer to as the Palestinian Authority. Hey, has Arafat just not had enough time to work for peace? Does he need a little more time to settle into his position? He is just too new to have things under control so far???? How long would this guy have to fail with any other constituency on the planet. He is a laughingstock in the eyes of the entire world. He has set his cause back at every opportunity. So, what exactly is his cause? What are his goals? (other than the annihilation of Israel, which I think has come to be realized as unachievable.....but not for lack of effort).

Peace,
rs7

 

[MondoTrader]

rs7, optional, vvv, and traderfut, all the same person talking to himself and congratulating "each other". Dude, get some therapy. It would be funny except that you obviously are trying to antagonize people.

 

[OPTIONAL777]

Quote from MondoTrader:

rs7, optional, vvv, and traderfut, all the same person talking to himself and congratulating "each other". Dude, get some therapy. It would be funny except that you obviously are trying to antagonize people.

Sure seems like they got to you....

 

[stu]

Quote from MondoTrader:

rs7, optional, vvv, and traderfut, all the same person talking to himself and congratulating "each other". Dude, get some therapy. It would be funny except that you obviously are trying to antagonize people.

if that were true, it's an Oscar he needs not therapy

 

[rs7]

Quote from OPTIONAL777:



Sure seems like they got to you....

I was thinking the same thing. But of course I would be since we are the same guy

Quote from stu:



if that were true, it's an Oscar he needs not therapy

Yes, and it would be presented by Fasterpussycat....(where is that guy????)

 

[traderfut2000]

I am not talking hundred of years. Till the late sixties there was a discrimination against black people and the colonisation of many countries ended only in the sixties.

Now if you say your favourite argument that is if Arab had the arms then they would destroy or kill all the Jew. Just wrong..

During the inquisition and even during the second world war jews were protected and not killed by muslims. Justifying the occupation of a land because it was inhabited by people of the same religion 2 or 3 thousand years is just a big nonsense. Even if I can understand the aim behind the creation of Israel.

Why wasn't it created much earlier. I can be a bit chocking by saying wasn't it because of some oil. You know that many jews were forced to go to Israel. Rotshild filled boats of North african Jews and they left their countries of origin for a country they did not know. Today you have some influent Jews that contest that forced immigration. While the Jews of eastern europe, Poland, Germany... were prosecuted and killed massively those of arab and north african countries were not. So the target is wrong.

What I think is that the most influent Israelis except a few (such as David levy) are not from North Africa or arab countries but from eastern europe and The USA. So that may explain their behaviour...