Albert,
during wwii Catholic church saved a lot of Jews by helping resistance rather than by prayer
Was there any real resistance in Poland? The reason I ask is because there wasn't any in Czechoslovakia, and when there was a minor uprising late in the war, it was so unsuccessful and disastrous result, that it wasn't worth it. I think same thing in Hungary.
But I know that there were people from Poland and Czechoslovakia who somehow made it to the other side, and fought alongside with British and Russians, and they actually contributed something.
Rather than trying to break a concrete wall with your skull, some people used the gray matter inside the skull, people like Schindler and Walenberg (I hope I have the name right) who saved a lot of Jews without ever lifting a weapon.
One of the reasons it was a bad idea to join resistance is that Germans were very effective at suppressing it. For example, they killed every single one in a village when they learned that people from that village helped the resistance. Or another example, they killed everyone in another village as a payback for assassination of a high ranking German official.
This actually is an illustration why Israel will not succeed with their current tactics of surgical attacks directed against insurgents. The average Palestinian knows that he is safe, as long as he stays away from trouble. On the other hand, every Israeli is at risk.
One possible road to peace or truce is for Israel to succeed and suppress the uprising. But the way they are doing it is not going to work. Israel would have to respond with violence that is one or 2 orders of magnitude stronger than the acts of violence of Palestinian suicide bombers, which they are not going to do.
Unfortunatelly, since this may be the only way to achieve truce (and Israel won't do it), this is why I am very pessimistic. Powell mission is a very long shot. And the end of suicide attacks is probably not going to happen, since the radicals think they are succeeding with them, so why stop? Because Arafat said so? (wink wink)
Joe |
