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Why the Jews are always to blame!
The Spectator ^ | 2002-04-20 | Melanie Phillips , Daily Mail columnist.

Posted on 04/28/2002 6:31:59 PM PDT by dvan

Melanie Phillips says that the Israelis are victims of terror but are being portrayed as cold-hearted, fascist thugs It has come to something when the Sun becomes so alarmed at the firestorm of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred blazing daily out of the British media that it feels the need to publish a full-page leading article telling its readers, ‘The Jewish faith is not an evil religion’.

Not evil? Why should anyone even think such a vile thing? After all, aren’t the Jews in Israel the victims of terror? Aren’t they being blown to bits by suicide bombers who are deliberately targeting elderly Holocaust survivors at Passover Seders and children in pizza parlours? Haven’t they suffered casualties that would be equivalent in Britain to some 4,000 dead and many thousands more injured since this intifada began in November 2000?

But Israel has committed a heinous crime. That crime is to seek to defend itself against the attempt to annihilate it. For this effrontery, a torrent of lies, distortions, libels, abandonment of objectivity and the substitution of malice and hatred for truth is pouring out of the British and European media and Establishment.

The authorised version, from which there is barely any deviation, goes as follows: The Palestinians, denied a homeland by Israel and understandably driven to terrorism in their despair, are now under murderous assault by Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who is using the suicide bombings as an excuse to destroy the Palestinians.

This will understandably produce more suicide bombings; so, if more Israelis are blown to smithereens, it will be their own fault. Indeed, all this mayhem is their fault anyway because they won’t negotiate. If only they would give the Palestinians what they want, the violence would end, and the world would be a safer place. As it is, the whole region may go up in flames, Israel included. That, too, will be Israel’s fault.

The double standards, twisted history and hate-imbued moral blindness in this analysis defy belief. Imagine if a terror organisation camped out in, say, Wales, were sending suicide bombers into English towns and cities every day, murdering dozens of people every week and injuring thousands more. Would anyone seriously suggest that Tony Blair should not use the army to stop the killings but instead should negotiate the terrorists’ demands while they continued to murder British citizens?

But for the British and European media, Israel doesn’t do self-defence, apparently; it only does revenge and collective punishment. Because, hey, doesn’t everyone know from their cradle that vengeance is the Jewish thing?

Thus the battle in Jenin was an Israeli massacre. The media know it happened because the Palestinians said so, and that must be true because everyone knows that Israel is awful and Sharon is a butcher and, oh yes, a Jewish Nazi. So they tell the world about the undoubted suffering in Jenin and the brutality of the Israelis, often without even recording the Israeli version of events. This was that Jenin was riddled with men ready and armed for suicide missions; the Israelis had offered the gunmen in Jenin safe passage if they surrendered, but the terrorists had booby-trapped their houses and were determined to make a deadly last stand.

The devastation in Jenin is indeed dreadful. But war is not pleasant. If terrorists hide among civilians, there will obviously be countless human tragedies; this is a war, however, not a massacre. If the Israelis had really wanted to kill Palestinians indiscriminately, they would have carpet-bombed them. Instead, they engaged in the tactic most dangerous to themselves — house-to-house searches. Some 23 Israeli soldiers died in Jenin, a grievous toll for this tiny country.

Israel, for all its faults, is a democracy and an open society. The Palestinian Authority is a corrupt despotism which has brainwashed its people into believing mediaeval blood libels against the Jews. But Western journalists and intellectuals automatically assume that the Israelis are telling lies. For everyone knows that the Israelis cannot be victims because they are always to blame.

In the same fashion, everyone knows that Chairman Arafat is not a terrorist. He is a statesman with the support of such world figures as EU commissioner Chris Patten. The worst Arafat is guilty of, according to Patten, is failing to denounce suicide bombings with sufficient vigour. Israel, by contrast, as a democracy ‘contradicts much of what it stands for’. Dear me. So just what do Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority (PA ) stand for?

Many of the suicide bombings carried out in the last few weeks have been the work of outfits connected to Fatah, the PA’s terror department. Israel has produced seized documents bearing Arafat’s signature relating to payments for bombs made to men who they say were orchestrating suicide attacks. If anyone doesn’t believe Israel, they should look at what the PA itself has said. In December 2000 Sakhr Habash, a Fatah official, told the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida that the intifada was being orchestrated by Arafat. ‘The leadership of the PA remained the source of authority, and it alone was the factor capable of leading the operations of the intifada throughout the homeland. I can say for certain that brother Abu-Ammar [Arafat] is the ultimate authority for all operations, and whoever thinks otherwise does not know what is going on....’

Even worse is the PA’s incitement to children to become ‘martyrs’ and suicide bombers. It puts out sickening, mesmeric television appeals which glorify the sacrifice of children, urging them to come forward and blow themselves up, and their families are paid blood money for the terrorist deaths of their brainwashed children.

On the basis of such facts, Arafat should be put on trial as the fount of terror. But of course we cannot expect our media to report such evidence. After all, has not the Nobel Peace Prize committee shown the proper response to Arafat’s terrorism by calling not for Arafat but for Israel’s former prime minister, Shimon Peres, to be deprived of the 1994 peace prize they shared? Clearly, for the Europeans, if suicide bombs are going off, the right response is to attack the victims.

The reason everyone gives for blaming Israel is the running sore of the West Bank and Gaza. There is no doubt that Israel has behaved badly to the Palestinians in these territories. It was wholly wrong to settle them; those settlements should have been dismantled and the territories returned years ago.

But the territories are a monumental diversion from the issue, which is that the Palestinians want the Jewish state destroyed. They do not want a ‘two-state’ solution. That was offered in 1948 and — with only a few brave exceptions — has been rejected by the Arabs from that time onwards. Their demand for the ‘right of return’ of all Palestinians to Israel — in addition to their own state — which would destroy the Jewish homeland, makes that clear. Sakhr Habash has said, ‘When we declare the establishment of a state and independence, we will have the right to liberate the rest of the occupied land....’ The leading Palestinian dove Faisal Husseini told the Egyptian daily Al-Arabi in July 2001 shortly before he died that the peace process was a ‘Trojan horse’ and that the long-term goal was ‘the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea’.

The territories are not the issue, above all, because Israel did offer them back. At Camp David and then at Taba in 2000 Israel offered back some 96 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza, plus half of Jerusalem, a gesture widely agreed to be startlingly courageous.

The Palestinians claim that this still didn’t amount to a viable state. But anyone negotiating in good faith would have presented an alternative peace proposal. Instead, Arafat responded by starting the intifada and unleashing the suicide bombers. Imad Al-Faluji, the PA communications minister, was reported on more than one occasion as saying that the intifada was a premeditated response to the Palestinians’ failure to achieve their goals at Camp David.

But everyone knows that giving back the territories would bring peace. Just as they knew that when Israel withdrew from Lebanon there would be peace there because Sharon was to blame then too, big time. So Israel withdrew and what has been the result? Armed by Iran (from whom a shipment of arms was intercepted en route to the non-terrorist Arafat), Hezbollah now has 8,000 Katyusha rockets trained on Israel’s northern towns, and has been lobbing mortars at Israeli targets.

Have the media acknowledged this? Did they report the fact that journalists had to flee for their lives after trying to take footage of Palestinians who had been shot and strung up as Israeli collaborators? Did they report that ambulances were being used to harbour terrorists? Did they report that the Palestinian ‘victims’ holed up in the Church of the Nativity had shot the locks off the church and desecrated it by taking it and its inhabitants hostage? Did they report Israel’s list of the terrorists in that church? Of course not; because everyone knows that whatever terrible deeds the Palestinians commit, it’s always the Israelis who are to blame.

There is a widespread view that the Middle East impasse has to be solved before the assault on terror can proceed. This is precisely the wrong way round. There will be no prospect of the Palestinians making peace until their terrorist sponsors in Iran, Iraq and Syria are dealt with.

Israel’s incursions are said to have inflamed Arab grievances and made terror attacks more likely. When the Americans launched their attack on al-Qa’eda, their action was conceived as an attack on Islam, thus justifying further outrages. So it is with the Palestinians. They view Israeli self-defence as an unjustified assault. The response of Britain and Europe is not to acknowledge that this is a monstrous inversion of moral reasoning but to agree that such self-defence is an act of brutality.

This is in part because the mind-twisting of the terrorist feeds the moral confusion of the West’s corrupted liberal orthodoxy. This sees a moral equivalence between terror and measures to protect against it. Believing there is no such thing as truth, it embraces lies instead and cannot distinguish victims from their victimisers. And, of course, Israelis can’t be victims because they have the power of America behind them. After all, everyone knows that the Jews run America.

The facts are, as ever, somewhat different. The Jews are merely one lobby among many. The biggest and most uncritical American supporters of Israel are the evangelical Christians. America gives as much aid to Arab states such as Egypt as it does to Israel. The biggest funder of the PA is Commissioner Patten’s EU. Does he ever stop to ponder the fact that this has funded the guns and explosives with which the PA is murdering Israeli families? Of course not; because Commissioner Patten knows that Israel is to blame.

The view that America is run by Jews is a classic anti-Semitic trope. And here comes the really vicious bit: just as everyone knows Arafat cannot be a terrorist, so everyone also knows that the Jews always start whingeing about anti-Semitism to cover up their own misdeeds. A.N. Wilson has told us so in the Evening Standard. Indeed, he mused, he was no longer sure that he was against terrorism at all. Because, after all, it was Israel that was committing the ‘wilful’ burning of church buildings and massacring the innocent.

For the real crime of Israel is this: to have fought back. Jews aren’t supposed to do this. They are supposed to go passively to their deaths. If the Jews do fight, they should lose. What they must never do is to win.

People who think that the Jews are all-powerful cannot imagine that Israel could ever be destroyed. But it is all too possible. Continuous terror through suicide bombing — the weapon that tears up the rules of human behaviour — could so demoralise it, cripple its economy and sap its military strength that it could finally become vulnerable to the Arab states that have always wanted it gone. An armed Palestinian state imposed by Chris Patten’s EU would then really be revealed as a Trojan horse.

But if all those who believe the Jews run America really think that the world would be better off if only those dreadful Jews would kindly disappear, they should think again. For radical Islam, the West is next on the list.

The question is whether the West will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel in its war against terror or whether it will side with terror against it. At present the signs are ominous. The leitmotiv of the state of Israel, forged after the world looked the other way from the Holocaust, is ‘never again’. The West has now given its response: ‘Yes, again’; and if they are destroyed, the Jews, as ever, will be to blame.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Israel
KEYWORDS: europeans; israel; palestinians; terrorism
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To: Ancesthntr
10. And I am particularly ashamed at the way my fellow Jews attacked the World Trade Center, Pentagon and civilian aircraft on September 11, and danced in the streets to celebrate the act.

Why were those Jewish employees of a moving company cheering, laughing and celebrating the attack? It seems they may have associations with Israeli intelligence.

Another question: didn't the Israeli people resort to terrorism to found their state? The attack on the King David Hotel and other attacks on Arab villages?

I'm not claiming to be an expert here, I'm just curious.

21 posted on 04/28/2002 9:31:50 PM PDT by UnBlinkingEye
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To: American in Israel
For some reason the Jews mistrust the new masters...

I don't trust the b---ards either.

22 posted on 04/28/2002 9:33:34 PM PDT by Mark17
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To: dvan
I don't understand why so many people (even a few here on FReepers) continue the blame Israel for defending itself. Apparently they condone homicide bombers and car bombs that deliberately target civilians as being the only way the Palestinian under-dogs have of striking out against a superior military force. These pro-Palestinians simply ignore the fact that Arasplat has walked away from several negotiations that offered "his people" (he was born in Egypt, so go figure) a separate state.

Either the liberal media has not done a historical background check on Israel/Palestine, or they choose to ignore the blatant facts: That Arasplat emerged as a terrorist against neighboring Arab states, and he now continues his murderous ways, believing that Israel will be driven into the sea -- with the aid of the Arab countries that continue to subsidize his terrorist activities against the Jews. There is only one group these Arab countries hate worse than Arasplat, and that is Jews.

23 posted on 04/28/2002 9:55:32 PM PDT by bjcintennessee
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To: dennisw; TopQuark; Alouette; OKCSubmariner; veronica; weikel; EU=4th Reich; BrooklynGOP...
Middle East/news of Israel list.

If people want on or off this list, please let me know.

24 posted on 04/29/2002 3:02:46 AM PDT by knighthawk
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To: UnBlinkingEye
Why were those Jewish employees of a moving company cheering, laughing and celebrating the attack? It seems they may have associations with Israeli intelligence.

Another question: didn't the Israeli people resort to terrorism to found their state? The attack on the King David Hotel and other attacks on Arab villages?

I'm not claiming to be an expert here, I'm just curious.

I will take you at your word that you are just curious, rather than a disruptor or an apologist for the Arabs.

Regarding the alleged celebrating by the "Jewish moving company," I would like to see the evidence of this - and not just "tinfoil hat" evidence, but real evidence, like numerous non-retracted stories in reputable US newspapers and magazines, as well as the same on numerous reputable US television and radio stations. I don't believe that you'll find any of that, but you will find lots of such stories about Arabs here and the Mideast celebrating the WTC massacre. Also, don't you think that the thousands of FBI and CIA employees, to say nothing of the NYPD investigators, would have gotten to the bottom of this. After all, if the real enemy was Israel, don't you think it would be easier to wipe them off the map than 21 Arab nations with over 300 million people? As for the alleged ties to Israeli intelligence, the same analysis applies. By the way, I strongly believe that this entire premise, that Israel is responsible for the WTC massacre, is simply part of the BIG LIE being perpetrated by various Arab nations and their sympathizers for the purpose of shifting the blame to the Israelis.

Regarding terrorism and the founding of the Israeli state: the King David Hotel was, indeed, a target. However, it was a target because it was British military HQ, not because it was a civilian target. Furthermore (and far more important from the perspective of morality), those responsible for that action called the British in advance to warn them of the impending explosion. They only wanted to destroy the building, not commit an atrocity. The British chose to disbelieve or ignore the warning, so dozens died. Regarding Arab villages, I will only say that the Israelis wanted to live with the Arabs, that they offered to do so before 1948 and virtually continuously since. There may have been individuals, or even relatively small units, that engaged in atrocities, but this was never official policy. Contrast that with the actions and policy of the Arabs today. Contrast that with the Arab massacres of Jews in Hebron in 1929 and throughout the area in the 1936-1939 riots. Contrast that with the Arab governments' repeated threats from 1948-1967 to "push the Jews into the sea." I think that you should get the point, if you are actually just curious.

Getting back to the topic of this thread, don't you think it rather unusual that the Israelis/Jews are blamed by virtually all of the press and most world governments merely for defending themselves? Well, it is not unusual when the nations opposing Israel are led by the Arab world, which controls much of the world's oil. It is also not unusual to see rampant anti-semitism, masquerading as anti-Israel (or anti-Sharon) statements from Europe, a continent that has brought us such wonders of morality as the Crusades, the Inquisition, multiple pogroms, expulsions and outright attempts at the genocide of not only Jews, but many other "undesireable" peoples. This miserable continent, which brought the world the "benefits" of Fascism, National Socialism, Communism and Socialism - this continent has not completely changed its stripes in only 2 generations. To be fair, many individuals have, and many governments there have expressed their unwillingness to replay the past, but you have much more of the contrary.

But let's get down to brass tacks, let's discuss whether their actions since March 29 were justified (or even long overdue): What would this nation do in similar circumstances, especially given our reaction to the WTC massacre? What would we do if terrorists from Mexico came into this country and started murdering American citizens? Oh, wait, that already happened - go back to your history books and see what we did when Pancho Villa and his henchmen started murdering Americans. To save you the time, I'll tell you: we sent half the Army into Mexico looking for the SOB, that's what. And we'd do it again. This is no different than what Israel is doing now.

25 posted on 04/29/2002 8:32:13 AM PDT by Ancesthntr
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To: American in Israel
bttt
26 posted on 04/29/2002 10:59:46 AM PDT by Travis McGee
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To: Ancesthntr
Your #25 well worth a read. ;^)

I really don't get why so many folks have a deep-seated need to blame 'the jews'.

Always...'Blame the Jews'...it's a puzzle to me...I'm serious! It is a genuine puzzle!

I can understand ignorant Arabs being caught up in the propaganda war, but supposedly civilized and educated Europeans and Americans??!

The only minor consolation is that these Western dupes are too witless to be truly evil.

27 posted on 04/29/2002 11:36:08 AM PDT by headsonpikes
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To: headsonpikes
The "puzzle" of anti-Semitism (really, Jew-hatred) is a major one, perhaps one of the greatest of all time. I am not a Bible-quoting person (tending to be more reason-based than faith-based in my arguments), but there are passages in the 5 Books of Moses that reference the fact that in the "last years" every nation will be against Israel. It is almost becoming scary, especially for a non-Bible-thumper like myself. One only needs to have someone like Pat Buchanan or Hillary in charge here, and the prophecy will be true. If so, watch out for what comes next!
28 posted on 04/29/2002 12:51:10 PM PDT by Ancesthntr
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To: Ancesthntr
Thanks a lot!

So your position would be that they may be too evil to be truly witless. ;^)

That's a disturbing option.

29 posted on 04/29/2002 1:10:48 PM PDT by headsonpikes
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To: headsonpikes
Who said that the evil-doers have to be stupid? Ever hear of the "evil genius" of comic-book fame? This stereotype comes from somewhere, namely history. The evil often think of themselves as so gifted, so great, that in their arrogance they admit nothing superior to themselves. Saddam Hussein is, IMHO, one such person. He's survived and prospered (though his people didn't) in perhaps the world's toughest neighborhood, and that coming from being a nothing member of a minority group - this speaks volumes. That he screwed up monumentally in the Gulf War doesn't detract from his wiliness, it only means that he didn't understand a foreign culture, esp. the American and English parts. He is someone that we need to really watch out for (now there's an original thought!) - if we don't, one day a couple of our cities will contribute greatly to the world's supply of radioactive slag, or else we'll have a new Black Death on our shores.

To me, Hussein is the very definition of "evil genius" in our times, and he must be eliminated ASAP.

30 posted on 04/29/2002 1:32:53 PM PDT by Ancesthntr
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To: dvan
bump
31 posted on 04/29/2002 5:16:39 PM PDT by harry palmer
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To: Ancesthntr
Bump, eloquently stated.
32 posted on 04/29/2002 5:26:49 PM PDT by Madame Dufarge
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To: Ancesthntr
I think you are stating official Israeli positions that may or may not be true. I am sorry for every person who dies in this conflict and their families. Wouldn't it be better if each side committed to peace and an acceptable solution?

My prayers for all.

33 posted on 04/29/2002 10:25:57 PM PDT by UnBlinkingEye
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To: UnBlinkingEye
I think you are stating official Israeli positions that may or may not be true.

You think wrongly. First, I don't know exactly what the "official Israeli positions" are, as I'm not an employee or agent of their government. Second, I have spent literally thousands of hours over the years reading about the history of the area, watching and reading about its then-current events, and speaking with people who know the facts first or (at worst) second hand. Unlike the media and press, I check and recheck my sources, as this area of study is filled with conflicting and biased information. I've developed my conclusions all by myself. Among those are that the Israelis, while certainly not perfect, are something over 90% correct/moral in their positions and actions, whereas the Arabs (the so-called Palestinians) and their "brother" Arabs from Egypt, Syria, etc. are, in the main, both wrong and horribly immoral in their use of means to impose their will upon Israel.

I am sorry for every person who dies in this conflict and their families.

If you refer to those who've been murdered or killed, and who've also done nothing to harm any other human being, I'm glad to hear this. You join a large group, comprised of everyone with even a shred of morality. However, I cannot share this sentiment concerning Arab terrorists who have been killed by assassination or in combat by the Israeli armed forces, or by Israeli citizens protected their lives and those of their families. I am happy that these oxygen thieves are dead, as they will murder no more.

Wouldn't it be better if each side committed to peace and an acceptable solution?

That's IT! That's the solution to the whole Mideast crisis! Boy, you really hit the nail on the head - I'm voting for you for President in 2004, because you've single-handedly discovered something that has eluded scholars of that area for nearly 100 years!

More seriously, don't you think that peace would long since have been a reality, there and everywhere else, if only each side in any conflict was committed to peace and an acceptable solution? And where have you been? How can you ignore the following FACTS?:

The Jewish leadership begged the local Arabs in the pre-1948 period to accept a shared state, with equal rights for both Arab and Jew. The local Arabs rejected this, and the non-local Arabs reacted to the declaration of Israel's independence by invading with 5 armies - armies dedicated, according to the words of their nations' leaders, to the extermination of every Jew in Israel. There is NO WAY that the Arabs of that time were committed to any kind of peace.

In 1964 the PLO was founded. Since there were no "occupied territories" to what did the "L" (Liberation) refer? Obviously, it referred to the "liberation" (i.e. destruction) of the State of Israel itself. This was and is explicitly stated in the PLO charter. By the way, Arafat committed in 1993 to change or eliminate those portions of the PLO charter that referred to the destruction of "the Zionist Entity," but has failed to even bring the matter up for a vote in the governing body of the PLO. Some committment to peace!

In 1956 and 1967 Arab provocations and threats (a blockade of Israel's only Red Sea port in both cases, and the moving of large formations of troops into Sinai and the Golan Heights, plus an actual attack on Israel's capital in 1967) forced Israel to make pre-emptive strikes. If it had not made those strikes, it would have been incredibly vulnerable to a battlefield loss, which would have meant the end of its existence. After the 1967 war, Israel publicly offered to return ALL lands captured - even East Jerusalem - in return for peace. This obvious committment to peace and an acceptable solution was, just as obviously, not so acceptable to the Arabs, who rejected it out of hand. The Arab League of that time issued the famous "Three Nos": NO recognition of Israel, NO negotiations with Israel, and NO peace with Israel. Gee, they sounded quite committed to peace - NOT!

In 2000, Israel offered the so-called Palestinians a majority of what they claimed to have wanted, and their response was not to accept it, not to make a counter-proposal, but to massively step up the amount of terrorism against mostly civilian targets. This is a side dedicated to peace, to an acceptable solution? Are you nuts?

My prayers for all.

Well, thank you. At least you got one thing right.

34 posted on 04/30/2002 8:30:47 AM PDT by Ancesthntr
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To: Ancesthntr
Previous post: "protected" should be "protecting"
35 posted on 04/30/2002 8:33:02 AM PDT by Ancesthntr
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To: Ancesthntr
I don't think there will be a solution until the vast majority of Palestinians feel that they have been treated fairly and have a vested interest in peace and prosperity.

Do you think Palestinians would tolerate suicide bombers if they viewed their Jewish cousins as benefactors?

The current course of the Israeli government seems likely to create more support for terrorism among the Palestinians, a sad situation.

36 posted on 04/30/2002 6:29:08 PM PDT by UnBlinkingEye
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To: All

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37 posted on 04/30/2002 6:29:22 PM PDT by Bob J
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To: UnBlinkingEye
I don't think there will be a solution until the vast majority of Palestinians feel that they have been treated fairly and have a vested interest in peace and prosperity.

Blame the PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all of their terrorist brethren. Their unwillingness to deal with Israel, their poisoning of the minds of the young against all Jews (not just Israel), their justification of the murder of innocent men, women, children and infants, their acquisition of weapons and explosives and their recruitment of ignorant and easily-molded young people to carry out suicide mass murders - these are the things that prevent a solution. How is it that over 1 million Arab citizens of Israel somehow manage to get along with very little in the way of violence against Israel? The simple answer is that they don't suffer from "leaders" whose activities make the Mafia look like a mutual aid society.

BTW, did you happen to read about the Israeli town in the "West Bank" that had a medical clinic attacked by terrorists in March. It seems that it rendered aid not only to the Israeli residents of the town, but also to two nearby Arab villages. Some terrorist was quoted as having said that the object of the attack was to show that cooperation between Israelis and Arabs would not be tolerated. Haven't you seen what happens to the Arabs who are alleged to have cooperated with Israel - they are drawn and quartered, with no trial! I wish that I had a link to the story, because I'd post it here. But this shows what is really going on - the Arabs who reside near Israel have no choice, because the beasts on two legs that control them won't allow for a reasonable settlement.

Do you think Palestinians would tolerate suicide bombers if they viewed their Jewish cousins as benefactors?

As pointed out above, they have no choice. Resistance to the PA by ordinary Arabs is futile - even if a particular person was brave enough to stand up to them, his family would suffer lethal consequences.

The current course of the Israeli government seems likely to create more support for terrorism among the Palestinians, a sad situation.

Possibly. However, it may also show many more Arabs the futility of trying to fight Israel. It may be like a slap in the face, something that brings a bunch of people to their senses. By the way, notice how few suicide bombing have occurred since March 29 - it is certainly an improvement over the situation before then.

I don't know the solution, though I do know what won't work. What is your suggestion as to how the Israeli government should have handled 18 months of suicide bombings, culminating in the spasm of violence at the end of March? If the answer is to negotiate with Arafat, then I will tell you that this will not work - it never has. Arafat is not a partner for peace: either he controls the terrorists (my view) and is thus not a partner, or he can't control them, in which case why should Israel talk to him?

I think that it is past time for you to blink your eye, to come out of that stupor you are in, and to get rid of those illogical preconceptions that you've got.

38 posted on 05/01/2002 8:11:34 AM PDT by Ancesthntr
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