Israeli airstrike into Gaza kills fighter

[piercehawkeye45]

http://www.twincities.com/national/c...nclick_check=1

Originally Posted by Pioneer Press

Israeli airstrike into Gaza kills fighter
Israelis accused of breaching truce
BY RICHARD BOUDREAUX and RUSHDI ABU ALOUF
Los Angeles Times
Article Last Updated: 04/07/2007 11:58:27 PM CDT

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - An Israeli helicopter fired into the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing a member of a militant squad that was clashing with Israeli forces in one of the most serious breaches of a 4-month-old cease-fire, Palestinian officials said.

The Israeli military said the air attack was aimed at militants planting a bomb along the border fence. It denied sending ground forces into the coastal territory.

But Palestinian officials who monitor the border said fighting erupted before dawn when plainclothes Israeli special forces slipped across the fence and were discovered by a squad of fighters from two small militant groups that refuse to honor the Nov. 26 truce.

The helicopter attack, apparently aimed at covering the special forces' retreat, was part of a more aggressive Israeli policy that itself is straining the cease-fire. In the previous two weeks, Israel had staged an airstrike and a brief ground incursion against Palestinian gunmen, killing one in each operation.

Palestinian witnesses who described Saturday's 90-minute battle said the Israeli helicopter fired at least four missiles between the border fence and the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Islamic Jihad said they had been firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at the Israeli special forces and setting off explosives along the fence.

On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority said Egypt had handed Israel a list of prisoners the captors want freed in exchange for Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized from his post along the Gaza border last year.
"The procedure for a (prisoner) exchange has started," Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti said. "If the Israeli government is serious, there is now a very good opportunity to end this chapter."

The Gaza clashes are a setback for a U.S. effort, pressed during three visits to the region by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice since November, to extend the Gaza truce to the West Bank.

Israeli officials have rebuffed the proposal, demanding full compliance with the Gaza truce first. They say militant groups in Gaza, including Hamas, which shares power in the Palestinian Authority government, have been exploiting the cease-fire to smuggle explosives, missiles and other weapons into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt.

Israeli officials say their recent incursions into Gaza have been to check for bombs or strike at militants about to launch attacks, and do not amount to cease-fire violation.

Another one of the "he started it, no he started it" debates from Israel and Palestine.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

I just blame the kind of Palestinian who can't think of anything better to do about it all than to be at feud with the Jews.

Presumably there are some other Palestinians who are smarter than that, and I wish they'd get busy shooting the other ones. Then the survivors can start making a ton of money trading with the Israelis. Shekels spend as well as dinars...

Was anyone paying attention to that portion of the British Mandate (or the Ottoman empire) before a bunch of Jews moved in and made a success of the place?

The root of the Palestinian problem is that Syria and Jordan won't allow them to be or to live in Syria and Jordan. Instead, these regrettable Middle Eastern Entities require the Palestinians to fester in their current condition.

Peoples have been shoved out of old territories before by the migrations of others; the Palestinians are in no unique case. Here, though, they have been forcibly prevented from resettling in some friendlier place by agencies external both to them and to Israel. That's about all the difference I can find.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I just blame the kind of Palestinian who can't think of anything better to do about it all than to be at feud with the Jews.

I blame the Zionists who can't think of anything better than do then settle Palestinian land and kick them out of their home because they think they are more worthy of the land than they are.

Presumably there are some other Palestinians who are smarter than that, and I wish they'd get busy shooting the other ones. Then the survivors can start making a ton of money trading with the Israelis. Shekels spend as well as dinars...

Or maybe everyone should work together to combine Israel and Palestine into one country.

Was anyone paying attention to that portion of the British Mandate (or the Ottoman empire) before a bunch of Jews moved in and made a success of the place?

By raping the Palestinian people? Maybe there are reasons for this sudden economic improvement? Oppression?

The root of the Palestinian problem is that Syria and Jordan won't allow them to be or to live in Syria and Jordan. Instead, these regrettable Middle Eastern Entities require the Palestinians to fester in their current condition.

No, the root of the Palestinian problem is that Israel won't allow them to be or to live in their home country. Instead, these regrettable Israelites require the Palestinians to fester in their current conditions.

Peoples have been shoved out of old territories before by the migrations of others; the Palestinians are in no unique case. Here, though, they have been forcibly prevented from resettling in some friendlier place by agencies external both to them and to Israel. That's about all the difference I can find.

Israel should open its borders to Palestinians and use the one-state solution. It is the only one that will work and help both sides. It is obvious you like Israel more than Palestine but you have to take the interests of both countries or the country, either one, you ignore will start strapping bombs to themselves and cause even more problems.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

I blame the Zionists who can't think of anything better than do then settle Palestinian land and kick them out of their home because they think they are more worthy of the land than they are.

They gave back Gaza. They gave back the sections of Lebanon they had occupied. Then they were attacked on exactly those fronts. Can you explain?

No, the root of the Palestinian problem is that Israel won't allow them to be or to live in their home country.

Q: How many days after the UN declared the borders of Israel were they attacked?
A: One.
Q: How did most Jews wind up in Israel?
A: They were forced/coerced out of the surrounding Arab countries.

Can you explain?

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

They gave back Gaza. They gave back the sections of Lebanon they had occupied. Then they were attacked on exactly those fronts. Can you explain?

Once you explain about the 380,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0514-04.htm

Q: How many days after the UN declared the borders of Israel were they attacked?
A: One.
Q: How did most Jews wind up in Israel?
A: They were forced/coerced out of the surrounding Arab countries.

Can you explain?

1. The neighboring countries already knew of the Israeli state and were not going to accept it from the beginning. How many days before they attacked doesn't mean anything since this conflict has been going on for a half century. The British knew a conflict was coming and the British tried to compromise with the Zionists but they refused to go anywhere else. It does not justify the Arab attack on Israel but it means we could have done something to avoid it.
2. I might go a little off-topic with this but right now, but the Jewish immigration was in the best interests of the Jews for obvious reasons but it is the part of them kicking everyone out and keeping them in poverty is what I extremely disagree with. A single Israeli state will only cause conflict because both sides will never accept the other but if we join them together, it leaves room for compromise and a new step forward. Not all Arabs want the Israelis dead, it is just an extreme view taken by few. These few are the ones committing the crimes against Israel so they get more attention.

[Undertoad]

Can you explain?

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Once you explain about the 380,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

You can't explain. Got it.

I might go a little off-topic with this but right now, but the Jewish immigration was in the best interests of the Jews for obvious reasons but it is the part of them kicking everyone out and keeping them in poverty is what I extremely disagree with.

You can't explain. Got it.

This is an extremely complicated situation and you appear to know dick about it, yet you want to make sweeping suggestions about what should happen. Let's continue, more homework.

1) 10% of Israel's government is made up of Arab Israelis. What percent of the surrounding Arab countries' governments are made of Jews?

2) Why did Israel invade and occupy the West Bank?

3) In a 2003 poll, 76% of Israelis would give up the West Bank in exchange for lasting peace. What would similar polls in Palestinian territories find?

4) When Jordan was created in 1923, what happened to the Jews who lived there?

5) Why do Palestinians demand a single state solution? Why don't Israelis want that? (Hint: same reason)

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Seems you have a little problem here with doing right by the Jews, as the great bulk of your solutions to the problem will shortchange them. You do comprehend, do you not, just why doing right by the Jews is something we want to do? You do comprehend, do you not, just how offended decent Christians were at the excesses European antisemitism had created? The death camps, the ovens? After the death camps' proof that inhuman savagery is the lot they could expect for being stateless outsiders in Europe, just what do you think they ought to have done?? If it were up to me, I'd find a permanent, yes a final, solution! And how should I behave if I find someone determined beyond life itself to impede it, do you think?

And how about doing right by a democracy, eh? Have you a mustard seed's faith in democracy? Most of the people who bitterly dispute with me on this point have no faith in democracy as a social order at all -- their posts evidence this. That manifests a want of thought, a want of morals, a want of human decency, and with it, a surplus of fascist sympathies. I have no fascist sympathies whatsoever -- none, that is, beyond such sympathy as is needed to choose for them and their lackeys a swift death over a slow one. Look, sometime, into the fascist roots of the Ba'athist Party -- these guys modeled their ideology on the examples of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, and that was how they invented their party. Such things offend my libertarian sensibilities.

I take my stance as a decent man who is offended by pogroms -- and I lash out at any who would give pogroms slack.

In Europe, statelessness is, long-term, dangerous. Were not the Jews harried from pillar to post by varying levels of prejudice among Europe's rulers? And were they not being punished for -- well what? -- being Jewish? Sheeyit.

Back in the nineteen-teens, British Prime Minister Balfour offered Europe's Jews a choice for land in which to reestablish a state: the Holy Land or a swatch of Uganda. The Jewish representatives discussing the matter with him -- this had to do with getting Europe's Jews generally allied with England in WW1 -- said thanks but no thanks to Uganda: in effect, promise them the Holy Land or promise them nothing. I think the desires of the Jews for a homeland, a state, do rather come into this for consideration.

The one-state solution, a reversion to the borders of the British Mandate, would perhaps be a stable one -- if anyone on either side actually wanted it. I keep in mind that politics is the art of the possible, not the Graustarkian: I say it's bootless to even say that they should, when absolutely no such thing will happen unless they want it, and there isn't enough motivation for those there on the ground to even start wanting it. For differing reasons, neither side does, and no visible bloc in either Israel or Jordan wants such a union. The situation is this: the Israelis do not want to be put in a minority, and the Jordanians and other Arabs prefer being aggrieved to sharing in the wealth that could make the entire Eastern Mediterranean bloom. Culturewide, the Arabs underperform at generating wealth, and equally culturewide, the Israelis overperform. Guess which side I think is likely to be the better.

The one Arab response to the return of the Jews to their ancient home has been murder, and only murder. Mass murder. This was going on long before 1948. The Arabs cannot cry to me that they are the victims when their invariable behavior is that of the perps! They have utterly deceived you, Pierce, and you've been made a fool of. Never, never come down on the side of the perps, unless your life's goal is solely to be a perp. I, for one, cultivate better ambitions, uncontaminated by such nastiness.

I see the evils of Israel's opponents just a little too clearly to be fooled. The Jews are NOT the ones feuding with the Arabs: it's all one way.

If you're going to blame the Zionists -- and that's too close to antisemitism to be palatable, and Jewish antizionists strike me as a lot of culturally suicidal misplacers of priorities -- I should hope you'd lay equal opprobrium on the Huns for pushing the Lombards and Vandals west and south, pushing the Visigoths into Iberia, et cetera, in the fourth and fifth centuries, and the Celts going west beginning about in the fifth century BC, absorbing or displacing previous occupants, until eventually they set up shop in the British Isles -- which weren't empty then either. And while you're at it, want to reprehend the Cro-Magnon replacing the Neanderthal population?

Nah, to me that line of thought is all hooey. Remember that some ideas are so bad that only left-wing intellectuals can hold them.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Seems you have a little problem here with doing right by the Jews, as the great bulk of your solutions to the problem will shortchange them. You do comprehend, do you not, just why doing right by the Jew is something we want to do? You do comprehend, do you not, just how offended decent Christians were at the excesses European antisemitism had created? The death camps, the ovens? After the death camps' proof that inhuman savagery is the lot they could expect for being stateless outsiders in Europe, just what do you think they ought to have done?? If it were up to me, I'd find a permanent, yes a final, solution! And how should I behave if I find someone determined beyond life itself to impede it, do you think?

What a pathetic argument. Yes, what happened to the Jews in the holocaust was beyond horrible but it doesn't give them any excuse to do the same thing to the Arab people. Choosing them over Arabs is racist (or the equivalent term for discrimination by religion), which is borderline doing what Hitler did. We need to learn from our mistakes and not pick a certain race or religion over another. That is racism or whatever the fuck discrimination of religion is called and it should never be tolerated.

And how about doing right by a democracy, eh? Have you a mustard seed's faith in democracy? Most of the people who bitterly dispute with me on this point have no faith in democracy as a social order at all -- their posts evidence this.

How does a faith or lack of faith in democracy have anything to do with this? I am calling for equal treatment of both Jews and Arabs, nothing more nothing less.

That manifests a want of thought, a want of morals, a want of human decency, and with it, a surplus of fascist sympathies. I have no fascist sympathies whatsoever -- none, that is, beyond such sympathy as is needed to choose for them and their lackeys a swift death over a slow one. Look, sometime, into the fascist roots of the Ba'athist Party -- these guys modeled their ideology on the examples of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, and that was how they invented their party. Such things offend my libertarian sensibilities.

I can't tell but if you are calling me a fascist, you might as well hang it up right now because you are losing it. What the Zionists are doing right now is one of the closest things to fascism we have now and you are sympathizing with them making you a hypocrite.

In Europe, statelessness is, long-term, dangerous. Were not the Jews harried from pillar to post by varying levels of prejudice among Europe's rulers? And were they not being punished for -- well what? -- being Jewish? Sheeyit.

I am just as against prejudice against Jews as I am prejudice against Palestinian Arabs. Putting all the Zionists in one place will only cause, and it already happened, one thing, racism and a feeling of supremacy. By having a one-state solution we get rid of that racism. I don't think any religion should have its country but a country should be for the people that have lived there. We can not force all the Jews out of Israel just as we can not force all the Europeans and Mexicans out of the United States so we will have to learn to deal with the problem with integration of the two different cultures.

Back in the nineteen-teens, British Prime Minister Balfour offered Europe's Jews a choice for land in which to reestablish a state: the Holy Land or a swatch of Uganda. The Jewish representatives discussing the matter with him -- this had to do with getting Europe's Jews generally allied with England in WW1 -- said thanks but no thanks to Uganda: in effect, promise them the Holy Land or promise them nothing. I think the desires of the Jews for a homeland, a state, do rather come into this for consideration.

Do you see a pattern in history? Which modern political figure used "you are with us or against us" and "my way or the highway" and what did that get him? That way of thinking can only cause problems and it is clearly evident now.

The one-state solution, a reversion to the borders of the British Mandate, would perhaps be a stable one -- if anyone on either side actually wanted it.

I'm sure a lot of people on both sides want it but we just don't hear from them. The one-state solution is the only one that doesn't promote racism, controversial borders, and everything that comes with that.

I keep in mind that politics is the art of the possible, not the Graustarkian: I say it's bootless to even say that they should, when absolutely no such thing will happen unless they want it, and there isn't enough motivation for those there on the ground to even start wanting it.

Yes there is. The Palestinians are living in extreme poverty and no way to get out because all their resources are taken from them by the Israelites.

For differing reasons, neither side does, and no visible bloc in either Israel or Jordan wants such a union. The situation is this: the Israelis do not want to be put in a minority, and the Jordanians and other Arabs prefer being aggrieved to sharing in the wealth that could make the entire Eastern Mediterranean bloom. Culturewide, the Arabs underperform at generating wealth, and equally culturewide, the Israelis overperform. Guess which side I think is likely to be the better.

You are getting borderline racism here and you know just as well as I do that race has nothing to do with the economic boom but outside resources. America and the west have never helped an Arab nation like we have Israel, don't even go there.

The one Arab response to the return of the Jews to their ancient home has been murder, and only murder. Mass murder. This was going on long before 1948. The Arabs cannot cry to me that they are the victims when their invariable behavior is that of the perps! They have utterly deceived you, Pierce, and you've been made a fool of. Never, never come down on the side of the perps, unless your life's goal is solely to be a perp. I, for one, cultivate better ambitions, uncontaminated by such nastiness.

Maybe you should look at yourself the same way with the Israelites. Both sides have committed genocide on each other and now it is time to stop.

I see the evils of Israel's opponents just a little too clearly to be fooled. The Jews are NOT the ones feuding with the Arabs: it's all one way.

What the fuck are you talking about?!?!?! Israel has been expanding its border and occupying its surrounding countries, kicking the local Palestinians out of their homes forcing them into poverty. Yes, Israel did get attacked first but that is because the western nations illegally put a nation in their neighbors land kicking out the neighbor population. It is both ways and you are either in denial or too stupid to realize that.

If you're going to blame the Zionists -- and that's too close to antisemitism to be palatable,

No, I don't hate the Jews or most forms of Zionism (even though I disagree with it), just the extreme form we have now. The Zionists in control are racist and are killing the Palestinians just as Hitler did to them. I can say I hate Hitler and the Nazi regime without saying I hate Germans. Stop using that pathetic argument.

and Jewish antizionists strike me as a lot of culturally suicidal misplacers of priorities -- I should hope you'd lay equal opprobrium on the Huns for pushing the Lombards and Vandals west and south, pushing the Visigoths into Iberia, et cetera, in the fourth and fifth centuries, and the Celts going west beginning about in the fifth century BC, absorbing or displacing previous occupants, until eventually they set up shop in the British Isles -- which weren't empty then either. And while you're at it, want to reprehend the Cro-Magnon replacing the Neanderthal population?

Haha, you are putting words in my mouth now, another one of your pathetic argument styles. I do not want to displace the Israelites but just let Israel-Palestine to become one state. If I lived back then I would want the two societies to live together peacefully just like I want both Israel and Palestine to do now.

Nah, to me that line of thought is all hooey. Remember that some ideas are so bad that only left-wing intellectuals can hold them.

I can just say the same thing about right-winged neocons.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

What a pathetic argument. Yes, what happened to the Jews in the holocaust was beyond horrible but it doesn't give them any excuse to do the same thing to the Arab people.

They aren't, though the Arabs will incessantly tell you they are -- but again, you can't convincingly claim you're the victim when you're so busy killing Jews in bunches. Arab propaganda sways you, but not me. I'll say this just once: the Arabs are the ones indulging in genocidal ideas for Israel; the Israelis are not indulging in genocidal ideas towards any Arabs. Understandably.

Choosing them over Arabs is racist (or the equivalent term for discrimination by religion), which is borderline doing what Hitler did.

Oh really. For your information, Israel is a democracy, and there is not a single democracy among Israel's foes. I choose to support a democracy, and the undemocracies can all go hang, for all of me. Neither race nor religion enters into this. You're attempting to find fairness in neutrality, but between these two ways, I'll pick the better one -- according to my experience of which way is the better. Remember that I've had both. Too, if you're unable to make a value judgement, you're largely unable to really live -- because you don't count for anything. I should think not counting for anything would at least offend your ego.

How does a faith or lack of faith in democracy have anything to do with this? I am calling for equal treatment of both Jews and Arabs, nothing more nothing less.

I think it has everything to do with it; see the remark on value judgements above. I am calling for choosing the best, and nondemocracy isn't it. The neocons you rave against (ever so ignorantly, I think) have one idea that is so right, so magnificent, so transcendental, that nothing can stand against it morally: democratic republics prosper best in a world full of other democratic republics. (Was it not PNAC that gave this idea expression?) When these republics prosper, the peoples prosper. You prosper. I prosper. Who would speak against prosperity?

I can't tell but if you are calling me a fascist, you might as well hang it up right now because you are losing it.

Then I'll be blunt: you're a fascist sympathizer, and I'm not. Your own words condemn you, and they hang you up, all right -- nailed to the cross.

What the Zionists are doing right now is one of the closest things to fascism we have now and you are sympathizing with them making you a hypocrite.

Let's see if I have this straight: the Arabs have been screaming genocide and reading Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, in translation, under the impression it's nonfiction. They've launched war after war after war, and lost every one of them, without paying very much of a penalty in territory or anything else that can't be rebuilt or replaced. I see in this that the weed of bigotry is bearing toxic fruit, and it's keeping the failing states of Araby in a condition of social wreckage.

And you call Israel's defensive efforts to deal with this menace one of the closest things to fascism we have now? Boy -- you're less than half my age and of far less experience of this world -- are you quite certain you know anything at all of fascism?

I am just as against prejudice against Jews as I am prejudice against Palestinian Arabs.

This would be defensible were all else being equal. Unfortunately for this we have one side full of enthusiasts for genocide, and another side that suffered genocide and is quite allergic to it. Which side is then on the higher moral plane? And if they're on the higher moral plane, wouldn't I like them better? You see, I make value judgements confidently: eschew moral relativism; it's popular with the young (and the careless) but it's a snare and a delusion.

Putting all the Zionists in one place will only cause, and it already happened, one thing, racism and a feeling of supremacy.

The supremacy is more than a feeling: it's engendered by winning all the wars, not by assembling the Zionists. They've done that both without and with our aid, remember. We're a mighty ally and nice to have, but Israel doesn't necessarily need us to keep itself propped up: the Jews have turned tough and they've turned heroic. In the face of their enemies who know no restraint, the Jews keep such restraint as they can. When the Arabs cease their genocidal madnesses, the Jews will take no revenge upon them. Such is their character, and you are most reluctant to admit it. Now picture yourself surrounded by chronically murderous foes. Are you going to like these peoples? Let's just understand that any attitude the Israelis cop is pretty understandable.

By having a one-state solution we get rid of that racism. I don't think any religion should have its country but a country should be for the people that have lived there. We can not force all the Jews out of Israel just as we can not force all the Europeans and Mexicans out of the United States so we will have to learn to deal with the problem with integration of the two different cultures.

In this case, it is not we who must learn to deal, but they. The Israelis were always willing to deal. The Arabs: conspicuously not. Read Israel's history, particularly in its early days.

Who could be sympathetic to the unwilling ones? I sure can't.

I'm sure a lot of people on both sides want it but we just don't hear from them. The one-state solution is the only one that doesn't promote racism, controversial borders, and everything that comes with that.

I can't be anywhere near so sure until I do hear from them. They've had sixty-nine years to speak up, and in Israel they actually could. As for the other, one state -- or perhaps three states. But we can both think of how either solution could collapse into yet another war -- the one-state into a civil war, the three-state into a general war.

Yes there is. The Palestinians are living in extreme poverty and no way to get out because all their resources are taken from them by the Israelites.

You're blaming the wrong party here: Jordan could have resettled every displaced person, either in Jordan or elsewhere, AND helped them to prosperity. There is absolutely no effort by any Arab state, far or near, to succor their displaced coreligionists, either by government programs or private charitable ones. Zero. Zip. Nada. They'd rather have their cats-paw to fight proxy wars with. The Arabs are the warmongers, and my sympathy for these warmongers is, well, scant. Yours is too great.

. . .you know just as well as I do that race has nothing to do with the economic boom but outside resources. America and the west have never helped an Arab nation like we have Israel, don't even go there.

The Israelis started without us, and they can continue on their own initiative. They are not the American economy's sock puppet, you know. The Arabs never showed the same degree of initiative. Our foreign aid to Egypt, for one example, is of the same order of magnitude as our foreign aid to Israel. It is less, yes, but two billion dollars annually isn't pocket change.

Maybe you should look at yourself the same way with the Israelites. Both sides have committed genocide on each other and now it is time to stop.

It's always time to stop genocide, but the Israelis, knowing restraint, don't think genocidally, and the Arabs, based on the evidence of their own literature and newspapers, clearly do. The Israelis are allergic to genocide and will remain so. It's ingrained in the culture, I believe ineradicably.

What the fuck are you talking about?!?!?! Israel has been expanding its border and occupying its surrounding countries, kicking the local Palestinians out of their homes forcing them into poverty.

Ask why the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan does nothing to eradicate or alleviate their poverty, but keeps them right there on the Middle Eastern equivalent of reservations. No Palestinian is allowed to seek his betterment in friendlier climes, is he? There, I say, is the problem.

We expanded our borders in a mighty migration of smallholders. Are we in the wrong by reason of migration from a worse situation to a better? If your ancestors didn't figure it was all to the good to come here, you'd be writing from Europe. If Cro-Magnon early modern humans didn't migrate into Europe, we'd all be ... miffed at GEICO.

Yes, Israel did get attacked first but that is because the western nations illegally put a nation in their neighbors land kicking out the neighbor population.

There's a law forbidding the establishment of new nations? New one on me! Maybe it's only against the law in the Arab states.

No, I don't hate the Jews or most forms of Zionism (even though I disagree with it), just the extreme form we have now.

Oh yeah? What's better? How do I distinguish the foundations of your views from outright antisemitism, then?

{Cont'd next post}

[Urbane Guerrilla]

{Continued from previous post}

The Zionists in control are racist and are killing the Palestinians just as Hitler did to them.

I don't think that stands up well to close examination: Hitler reduced the Jewish population by five or six million and there's no reduction of the Palestinian population, is there? Nor are the Israelis allocating national resources to industrial-scale killing-off of the Palestinian population. You have been listening to those screeching genocidal Arabs again. Wise up!

Haha, you are putting words in my mouth now, another one of your pathetic argument styles.

I'm not putting words in your mouth; I am putting ideas in your head. I'm not here to steer you wrong, Pierce, but to call you to repent from fascist sympathies. Surely this is right.

I can just say the same thing about right-winged neocons.

And you'd be 102% wrong, too. Those guys are smart. Read The Neocon Reader and see. I did, and now I am well inoculated against believing the slanging the fascists of the Left give them. You could be cured too. Plenty of room over here on the side of the angels.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I don't think that stands up well to close examination: Hitler reduced the Jewish population by five or six million and there's no reduction of the Palestinian population, is there? Nor are the Israelis allocating national resources to industrial-scale killing-off of the Palestinian population. You have been listening to those screeching genocidal Arabs again. Wise up!

It is genocide nevertheless because they are deliberately killing Palestinians, even forcing them to stand in front of tanks when other Palestinians are throwing rocks at them, and they and they are still displacing them, leaving them homeless and in poverty. They are building walls to keep them out of Israel.

I'm not putting words in your mouth; I am putting ideas in your head. I'm not here to steer you wrong, Pierce, but to call you to repent from fascist sympathies. Surely this is right.

Since we are calling each other names that don't make any sense I will start calling you a commie, or maybe an anarchists.

And you'd be 102% wrong, too. Those guys are smart. Read The Neocon Reader and see. I did, and now I am well inoculated against believing the slanging the fascists of the Left give them. You could be cured too. Plenty of room over here on the side of the angels.

This is why I hate your side.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

They aren't, though the Arabs will incessantly tell you they are -- but again, you can't convincingly claim you're the victim when you're so busy killing Jews in bunches. Arab propaganda sways you, but not me. I'll say this just once: the Arabs are the ones indulging in genocidal ideas for Israel; the Israelis are not indulging in genocidal ideas towards any Arabs. Understandably.

First, what propaganda? The media takes a pro-Israel side and I don't really read far left newspapers so I don't know what propaganda you are talking about. Israel wants every Arab out of their homeland and will kill them to do it. By your standards, the US never committed genocide on the Native Americans.

Oh really. For your information, Israel is a democracy, and there is not a single democracy among Israel's foes. I choose to support a democracy, and the undemocracies can all go hang, for all of me. Neither race nor religion enters into this. You're attempting to find fairness in neutrality, but between these two ways, I'll pick the better one -- according to my experience of which way is the better. Remember that I've had both. Too, if you're unable to make a value judgement, you're largely unable to really live -- because you don't count for anything. I should think not counting for anything would at least offend your ego.

Your blinded by the thought that democracies are all good and all non-democracies are bad. Israel is the most violent country in the world right now followed closely by America. They are both democracies in your opinion, which doesn't fit with your "democracies = good" childish thought. Democracies tend to be more moral than non-democratic countries but that isn't a guarantee, and America and Israel is the exception right now.

I think it has everything to do with it; see the remark on value judgments above. I am calling for choosing the best, and nondemocracy isn't it. The neocons you rave against (ever so ignorantly, I think) have one idea that is so right, so magnificent, so transcendental, that nothing can stand against it morally: democratic republics prosper best in a world full of other democratic republics. (Was it not PNAC that gave this idea expression?) When these republics prosper, the peoples prosper. You prosper. I prosper. Who would speak against prosperity?

I will speak against prosperity when these democratic countries keep other countries in dictatorship and poverty to take advantage of them. If we are trying to spread democracy, then why did we take away Iran's democracy in the 50's, or why are we trying to take away Venezuela’s right now? Why do we trade with non-democratic countries? Why are we allies with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the two most oppressive regimes in the Middle East? Shouldn't we be fighting them since they are not democracies?

Then I'll be blunt: you're a fascist sympathizer, and I'm not. Your own words condemn you, and they hang you up, all right -- nailed to the cross.

Ummmm....how?

Let's see if I have this straight: the Arabs have been screaming genocide and reading Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, in translation, under the impression it's nonfiction. They've launched war after war after war, and lost every one of them, without paying very much of a penalty in territory or anything else that can't be rebuilt or replaced.

That is because the Israelites have been committing genocide on the Arabs. They have kicked them out of their home and left them to starve. It isn't a holocaust or a Darfur, but it is still genocide.

I see in this that the weed of bigotry is bearing toxic fruit, and it's keeping the failing states of Araby in a condition of social wreckage.

No, we are keeping the failing states of "Araby" in a condition of social wreckage by taking their resources. Why do you think we attacked Iran when they decided to nationalize the oil fields in the 50's? We obviously never put any effort into helping the Arabs so you can not say that they are not able to keep a strong economy because there are too many outside conditions to make an accurate judgment.

And you call Israel's defensive efforts to deal with this menace one of the closest things to fascism we have now? Boy -- you're less than half my age and of far less experience of this world -- are you quite certain you know anything at all of fascism?

I see Israel expanding their borders which goes with Fascism. I see Israel attacking countries for no legitimate reason (Lebanon). I see Israel considering their citizens better than the Arabs that once lived there. I see Israel building walls to keep the people that once lived there out of Israel, keeping them in poverty and then complaining when they fight back.

This would be defensible were all else being equal. Unfortunately for this we have one side full of enthusiasts for genocide, and another side that suffered genocide and is quite allergic to it. Which side is then on the higher moral plane? And if they're on the higher moral plane, wouldn't I like them better? You see, I make value judgments confidently: eschew moral relativism; it's popular with the young (and the careless) but it's a snare and a delusion.

Give proof that Israel is on a higher moral plane. Everything the Arabs have done is out of retaliation from what Israel has done.

The supremacy is more than a feeling: it's engendered by winning all the wars, not by assembling the Zionists. They've done that both without and with our aid, remember. We're a mighty ally and nice to have, but Israel doesn't necessarily need us to keep itself propped up: the Jews have turned tough and they've turned heroic. In the face of their enemies who know no restraint, the Jews keep such restraint as they can. When the Arabs cease their genocidal madnesses, the Jews will take no revenge upon them. Such is their character, and you are most reluctant to admit it. Now picture yourself surrounded by chronically murderous foes. Are you going to like these peoples? Let's just understand that any attitude the Israelis cop is pretty understandable.

Please, you refuse to see that the Israelites have started everything in this conflict. If the Arabs start committing genocide on the Jews, then I will quickly switch sides but right now, it isn't that way. Both sides are prejudice against each other, but Israel is the one with the power so they are committing the genocide.

In this case, it is not we who must learn to deal, but they. The Israelis were always willing to deal. The Arabs: conspicuously not. Read Israel's history, particularly in its early days.

Who could be sympathetic to the unwilling ones? I sure can't.

I have. They did not go to Uruguay when they were told that the Middle East would cause major problems. They did not deal with the Palestinians living there, they kicked them out. They are not compromising with the Palestinians now, they are building a wall to keep them out of the country. They are refusing to give up the Gaza Strip and West Bank which was not given to them in 1948. I don't think it is me that is blind, but you.

I can't be anywhere near so sure until I do hear from them. They've had sixty-nine years to speak up, and in Israel they actually could. As for the other, one state -- or perhaps three states. But we can both think of how either solution could collapse into yet another war -- the one-state into a civil war, the three-state into a general war.

Yes, there will be conflict no matter what solution we use but even the though the one-state will probably have the most initial violence, it will hopefully go away after a generation or two. If we have a two-state solution, then the rivalry will stay with them for how ever long they are rivals.

You're blaming the wrong party here: Jordan could have resettled every displaced person, either in Jordan or elsewhere, AND helped them to prosperity. There is absolutely no effort by any Arab state, far or near, to succor their displaced coreligionists, either by government programs or private charitable ones. Zero. Zip. Nada. They'd rather have their cats-paw to fight proxy wars with. The Arabs are the warmongers, and my sympathy for these warmongers is, well, scant. Yours is too great.

You can expect Jordan to take care of all the people that don’t live there. The United States can house all the Mexicans but you seem reluctant to do that. Israel can also house all the Arabs. You are making a double standard by forcing Jordan to take the Palestinians when Israel can. Why don’t you want Israel to take the Palestinians?

The Israelis started without us, and they can continue on their own initiative. They are not the American economy's sock puppet, you know. The Arabs never showed the same degree of initiative. Our foreign aid to Egypt, for one example, is of the same order of magnitude as our foreign aid to Israel. It is less, yes, but two billion dollars annually isn't pocket change.

They steal resources from the Palestinians and I find it hard to believe that they aren’t the western economy’s sock puppet. Outside forces, lack of education, etc, are likely to be most of the cause of this lack of initiative.

[Ibby]

PROOF! cold, hard PROOF that UG simply is tw!

[tw]

Originally Posted by Ibram

PROOF! cold, hard PROOF that UG simply is tw!

Bizzaro tw. He posts and yet never makes a single point.

Urbane Guerrilla promised to read Thomas P.M. Barnett's Blueprint For Action: A Future Worth Creating ... since November 2006. "So far, I'm fascinated. I'll probably be talking about this book's ideas from time to time. ." Then he discovered reality is a wee too complex - especially when reality dismembers his "political agendas".

Asked why he stopped reading a book that contradicts his "political agendas", Urbane Guerrilla responded, "Tw, shut your yap. I checked Barnett back out of the library". Two months later means either the book is still too difficult (Barnett is a comprehensive military analyst) or that Urbane Guerrilla learned how erroneous his "political agendas" really are.

Demonstrated in UG’s long post is his problem. He knows only because he can post long. His long post is irrelevant to his conclusion. His conclusion is that one side is good; the other is evil. The "decent UG" (as he defined himself) can easily judge what is good and evil because UG is decent and therefore knows. His proof? That long irrelevant history of how Israel got created.

Obviously how Israel got created proves nothing about "good and evil". Since he cannot grasp that, then UG also had no idea that Thomas Barnett was also discussing stupidity and incompetence in George Jr's administration. Urbane Guerrilla said he would be discussing Barnett's book because UG had no idea what he was reading. UG again could not associate the long and complex logic with a conclusion. So UG assumes Barnett's conclusion is UG's "political agenda".

Barnett also discusses the foolishness of 'big dic' thinking; their inability to think strategically. Barnett defined UG: a person who confuses tactical perspectives with strategic thinking. 'Big dics' such as UG are a classic example of myopic thinking. Barnett's points are long, complex, and too difficult for UG to understand. UG even confuses historical stories as proof of "good vs evil". So UG applied his biases (ie he always knows what is good and what is evil), reads the conclusions he can understand, and then assumed what Barnett was saying.

No wonder UG confuses the numbers killed in the holocaust with justification of zionism in the Middle East. That simplicity demonstrates why UG could not understand even Chapter One from Thomas Barnett - who is also critical of UG types that use a simplistic 'big dic' political agenda as if that were logical proof.

Like Bizzaro Superman, UG believes superhuman long posts means he is smart. His conclusions have little relation to his posts. He could not even see that Barnett was criticizing UG's thinking. UG simplistically believes that UG is decent and therefore UG can always tell the difference between 'good and evil'.

UG, when do you discuss Thomas Barnett’s book? But you promised?

[Kagen4o4]

the jews just need to give the palestinians Palestine back to them and stop calling it Isreal. The western world needs to stop taking the side of the jews all the time just because they put them there in the first place. Jews are not bad people they just need to accept that they are in the wrong in this situation.

but of course its not that simple and both sides have wankers that need to stop blowing shit up