Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (17604)	1/30/2002 12:22:58 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I am probably as far from mindless as it is possible to be. I'd match my credentials for mindfulness against yours any day My apologies; I did not mean anything personal by my remarks. I was addressing knee-jerk "imperialism is the root of all evil" arguments that seem to have so much currency. It is morally wrong to take other people's land by force. That's my position, and I judge everyone by it. It's a little more complicated in the Mideast as the Arabs didn't have their land beforehand and wouldn't have gotten any of it if the British hadn't helped them defeat the Turks. Remember Lawrence of Arabia? As former Senator Mitchell says, we've been trying to negotiate peace there for decades, and the hard line taken by Sharon lately is as much of a stumbling block as the suicide bombers. Arafat elected Sharon when he answered Barak's offers with a war. If you had predicted to any Israeli in Feb 2000 that in one year Arik Sharon would be elected Prime Minister by a record landslide, they would have laughed in your face. Everyone knew he was unelectable. Sure, Sharon never supported Oslo and certainly doesn't now. But he's in office because Arafat proved that Oslo was a war process, not a peace process. He was hired to fight the war. You really might as well call Churchill's hard-ass attitude an equal stumbling block to Hitler's. Churchill only became Prime Minister when it became clear that Munich had failed. Israel cannot select the Palestinians' leader. But they can refuse to deal anymore with Arafat. Arafat is a pathological liar and a terrorist, so you can't make a deal with him. If the Palestinians ever got new management that sounded at all pragmatic, even a little, Israeli attitudes would change in flash and Sharon would be expected to deal with him. If he didn't, his government would fall and he would be voted out of office. At this point, the smallest amount of Palestinian goodwill would go a long way. Like for example, admitting that Jews have some real attachment to the land and that there used to be a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. A dead baby is a dead baby, whether it's Israeli or Palestinian - that is the moral equivalence. The baby is still dead. But if a government deliberately urges boys to become martrys, sends children out to throw rocks in close proximity to gunmen firing at Israeli soldiers, then those boys will die as a result of government policy. And the PA has done this. There is no moral equivalance between this policy and Israeli policy. It does make a difference who you target.