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Arafat has no interest in peace because as soon as the Palestinians have peace, the flow of un-regulated funding will dry up!Arafat will gladly trade Palestinian lives for dollars for as long as he can get away with it.I believe Golda Meir phrased it something like this, "We will have peace with the Palestinians when they decide that they love their children more than they hate us."Beach,Apparently you took exception to something in my first post on this thread! (that means you didn't like it very much.) And rather than present facts to substantiate your opinion, you resorted to name calling and personal attacks.However, to demonstrate my desire to rise above all that, I would like to offer my outstretched hand in friendship! And as proof of my complete sincerity, I shall construct a tasteful edifice for your immediate occupancy!Would you like that a one-holer or a two-holer?
My wife?.........Sure!My dog?..........Maybe!MY GUNS??........NEVER!!!
Stanman...."you resorted to name calling and personal attacks?" Not at all, I merely reported the fall of your shot....it was way off target. Your simplistic and one sided view of the situation in the Middle East is worthy of one of the more intellectually challenged members of the JDL. Stanman, to what temple do you belong in Ridgeway? The Palestinians see every Israeli as a combatant. Israeli civilians routinely carry firearms and are permitted to use them on Palestinians without fear of reprisal.("Honest officer, I thought he was a terrorist'!!) Is the Palestinian view right? I'm not sure but given the arrogance and distain that the average Israeli shows for members of other races or religions I'd have to think that there might be more than a little truth embedded in the belief. If you recall more than once an over zealous Israeli patrol has gone out and eradicated entire villages of Palestinians. If Hitler-like Israeli Nazi soldiers goose stepped into my peaceful village and laughingly razed it; I too might take a dim view of their activities. When that has happened Israel has issued a luke warm apology along the lines of "they had it coming...we're sorry". Sometimes I think that Goebbels didn't die at the bunker....he must have joined the millions of concentration camp survivors and headed to Israel where his talents at propaganda could truly be appreciated by the new Israeli government. And that Stanman is truly the crux of the Middle East situation. Millions of Jews from all over Europe showed up in the Palantate after WWII and say, "Lucy,we're back!" Now after being away for say eight hundred years, suddenly the world(ie Europe) has a soft spot for them(as long as it's not in their country) and says "Go to Palestine your homeland!!" The Balfour Declaration of 1920, which all true Zionists believe guaranteed them a country of their own, did nothing more than offer up a homeland to Jews around the world. Now whether England even had the right to offer the homes and farms of millions of Palestinians to Zionists in the 1920's and 1930's could certainly be debated. I'm sure though if your family had been living on your farm for five hundred years and some fast talking Jew from Dachau showed up in 1946 and said, "get the hell off my land it's not yours anymore!" and he had a gun and you didn't.....you'd be pissed. You might even, after years of continued Jewish repopulation efforts at the expense of the native Palestinians, want to express your displeasure. While I'm sure one of our more responsible Jewish members of the forum could correct me if I'm wrong technically in the Jewish faith there is no afterlife. You live, you die, that's it! Now while you live you try and live as well as you can. But the Jewish preoccupation is in the material and present world. When you die you are worm food. Muslims, like Christians, believe in an afterlife and thus that their actions on earth truly will have an impact on achieving everlasting salvation or damnation. There is therefore a great deal to be gained by becoming a martyr. When you see thousands of Palestinians rejoicing in the streets of Palestine for the latest Palestinian Martyr(aka suicide bomber) you realize that mere labeling them as terrorists doesn't and won't work. That kind of dedication has a different name...it's called fanaticism and these young men view themselves as "holy warriors". You have to start thinking outside of the box and develop a new paradigm to deal with it. Did Arafat create it? Yeah he probably did....and it's here now. Both Sharon and Arafat have to start thinking outside of the current paradigm. And they both may be incapable os seeing outside of their own view...If they don't the results will be easily predicted. Israeli soldiers killing two or three Palestinians at a time followed by a Palestinian detonating himself and lots of Israelis in a shop, cafe, theater, bus station etc. will continue as long as there is a perception of injustice to one side or the other. I personally think the recent Saudi proposal had merit. The Saudis and other rich Arabs have been funding, subrosa, the various Palestinian causes for years. This recent proposal might have dried up some or all of that funding. Now you still have to undo 50 years of hatred by native Palestinians for the Nazi-like rule of the Israelis and that would be hard to do(and I really am not sure it could be done in just one or two generations); but if by some chance the situation was defused a little it might be a start. And giving back those lands shouldn't be that difficult for the Israelis.....if the plan didn't work out they could (and would) just take them back again by military force.Stanman.....I'll pass on your generous offer until I know that you too can think outside of the JDL box. The radical Jewish Nazis are as bad as any Palestinian. Beach
What beach said.And some of you bozos really should learn the difference between an Arab and a Palestinian and a Muslim. You look like a bunch of damn fools.Clouder..
A good article related to this very subject, history is one thing, what needs to be done now does not need to be tainted by history, but by the present problem. This guy has too many good insights, read it. www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson040202.asp
Quemadmoeum gladis nemeinum occidit, occidentis telum est ("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands") ~~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)
When Arafat "walked away from Camp David empty-handed," Deborah Sontag recently reported in the New York Times, Palestinians "applauded him. Better to wait another generation, they said, than to accept an unjust peace after a half-century of struggle." Many Israelis have a hard time understanding why Palestinians cannot see that insisting upon, say, the right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel is enough to stop discussion before it starts. The irony here is rich, because if anybody should understand devotion to such once-and-future fantasies, it's a Zionist. In fact, although the barbaric means embraced by Palestinian nationalism have little in common with those of mainstream Zionism, the ends are strikingly familiar?_"re-establishment of a homeland in the territory between the river and the sea. And a willingness to ignore present obstacles while assuming eventual success is precisely what enabled the early Zionists to proceed with laying the groundwork for Israel rather than abandoning their entire project in despair.In The Siege, his excellent history of Zionism, Conor Cruise O'Brien quotes a letter written in 1882 by one Ze'ev Dubnov to a brother back in Russia:My final purpose is to take possession in due course of Palestine and to restore to the Jews the political independence of which they have now been deprived for 2,000 years. Don't laugh, it is not a mirage ?_? there will come that splendid day whose advent was prophesied by Isaiah in his fiery and poetic words of consolation. Then the Jews, if necessary with arms in their hands, will publicly proclaim themselves master of their own, ancient fatherland. It does not matter if that splendid day will only come in fifty years' time or more. A period of fifty years is no more than a moment of time for such an undertaking.When Dubnov wrote that letter, there were 25,000 or so Jews in Palestine, largely pious apolitical types who wanted to die in Jerusalem. By any rational accounting, his plan was ludicrous. Even if he and his colleagues played their parts to perfection, a vast array of unimaginable changes would have had to occur for it to come to fruition: the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian empires, the closing off of immigration to the United States, the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, two world wars, and more.
Yeah, but it was all prophesied by Isaiah, so .... ;*DSay, I think we should all rent the movie Exodus and see what Paul Newman and Sal Mineo have on the ball after all these years....
"The 2nd Amendment is about security, not hunting. Long live the gun shows, and reasonable access to FFLs. Join the NRA -- I'm a Life Member."
I can't claim it, I only cut & pasted it.If it is prophecy then it would happen even if you did nothing to cause it. It is not prophecy if you make it happen. This is what bothers me so much about the Christian fanatics that support Israel not because they believe they are right but because they see this as a way to cause a great conflagration that they believe will be the Battle of Armageden. I have no doubt that weare on the way to such a conflagration but I fear it may simply mean the end of civilization.Give peace a chance. Hand the Israelis a proposal,with some modest changes, based on the Saudi proposal & then tell them "Sign here or no more money, no more political support & no more arms sales." We could have peace within a week. As it is now we have already squandered the sympathy & support we recieved from the world after 9/11.We had a narrow window of opportunity to pursue the terrorists on one hand & appear even handed by forcing an Israeli/Palistiniansettlement at the same time. We have now lost that window & made it ever clearer that we are simply making war on Islam.[This message has been edited by gruntled (edited 04-02-2002).][This message has been edited by gruntled (edited 04-03-2002).]
Let 'em fight it out together, without international intervention.Problem is, no one wants to do that. They want to saddle Israel with all kinds of rules and restrictions.Israel is already saddled by the worst burden in war: common morality. If they fought by the same rules that the Arabs use, the war would have been over and done a long time ago.Just saw on the news that a bunch of armed Palestinian militants stormed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the site where Jesus was believed to have been born.It's a great site to snipe from. They've known for years that the Israeli Army has morals: they take pains not to damage or bother a holy site unless they absolutely have to.I can only imagine the damage those savages are doing to the precious relics inside. Their mere presence there is disgusting. It turns my damn stomach.I hope the Israelis can clean them out without further damaging the building. Those animal terrorists will probably try to burn it down on their way out. Apparently respect is not something you need to learn in the Palestinian culture.
gruntled said: "If it is prophecy then it would happen even if you did nothing to cause it. It is not prophecy if you make it happen. This is what bothers me so much about the Christian fanatics that support Israel not because they believe they are right but because they see this as a way to cause a great conflagration that they believe will be the Battle of Armageden."You may be right, but Jesus was described as doing many things a certain way in order to "fulfill a prophecy." Mostly I think it is human arrogance to want to believe that great things will happen in our lifetime, or to give events more importance than they warrant, sometimes. This could turn out to be just another regional skirmish. I don't think anyone has the power to end civilization but us anymore, thankfully, and I think we'd put a stop to it if someone else tried. At least I hope so.
"The 2nd Amendment is about security, not hunting. Long live the gun shows, and reasonable access to FFLs. Join the NRA -- I'm a Life Member."[This message has been edited by offeror (edited 04-04-2002).]
Don't sell the Chinese short. Lots of 'em, lots of nukes.
Lord Lowrider the LoquaciousMember:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.
bullzeye...I know we are diametrically opposed on this issue but have you ever wondered what atrocities were perpetrated by Israel that drove the Palestinians to these actions? They really didn't just wake up and say lets blow up a couple of Jews for fun today. Don't be too simplistic in assigning blame...there is more than enough on both sides to go around. The news reports that I've seen report that some Palestinians have taken sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity. That is different from storming the church and using it as a sniper hide. As long as they don't shoot at anyone from the church Israel should acknowledge and accept that sanctuary. Do you believe Israel will honor that sanctuary? we both will soon find out. This issue in the Middle East is complicated beyond the understanding of most Western Christians. It involves cultures that are foreign to us and with much different values than our own....don't trivalize it with good guy bad guy stuff. Both groups feel set upon and wronged. Just giving you another side of the same coin. Beach
The big difference here, at least to my mind, is that the Jews would give up a lot, a whole lot, if it meant peace. The Palestinians, even if they got back 99% of all the land, would still be attacking and fighting for that last 1%. In fact, even if they got back all the land they'd still want to fight and kill Jews elsewhere. Keep in mind that Palestinians cheered and danced in the streets when they heard about the 9/11 attacks. Palestinians don't want peace; they want to kill Jews.
beach:Good points to consider. Thank you.I would have left the issue alone, too. But the news report I saw said that Palestinian gunman had "shot their way in" and were "forcing priests and nuns at gunpoint" to give them medical aid. I simply cant imagine that kind of evil.In the past, the area of the Church of the Nativity HAS been a popular sniping site. The Israelis are under strict orders to leave holy sites, especially Christian holy sites, alone unless absolutely necessary. The Palestinians have never had such a compunction.I dont like to judge people or groups of people just at face value.I look at specific events.I just cant imagine the barbarism that would drive a group of terrorists to use the site of the birth of Jesus as an impromptu siege bunker.We know how much they hate Israel and us by proxy.I just have this image in my head of golden relics being stolen and antique stained glass windows being smashed out to make machine gun nests. Wiping their gun barrels with the communion cloth. Forcing the altar-boys to make ammo runs.They've never shown that they have respect for ANYTHING anyone else considers sacred before. So why would they stop now?They've always said that there is NOTHING they wont do to further their objectives.That's at the root of terrorism, to me. A simple lack of morals, common respect, or decency.
Comments
My wife?.........Sure!My dog?..........Maybe!MY GUNS??........NEVER!!!
Quemadmoeum gladis nemeinum occidit, occidentis telum est ("A sword is never a killer, it's a tool in the killer's hands") ~~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the younger" ca. (4 BC - 65 AD)
"The 2nd Amendment is about security, not hunting. Long live the gun shows, and reasonable access to FFLs. Join the NRA -- I'm a Life Member."
"The 2nd Amendment is about security, not hunting. Long live the gun shows, and reasonable access to FFLs. Join the NRA -- I'm a Life Member."[This message has been edited by offeror (edited 04-04-2002).]
Lord Lowrider the LoquaciousMember:Secret Select Society of Suave Stylish Smoking Jackets She was only a fisherman's daughter,But when she saw my rod she reeled.