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

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (29441)	5/13/2002 9:47:21 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Israelis will reap what they sow. The 80% figure comes from surveys reported on this thread that were considered reliable. They believe that they had a right to self defense from the bombers that were killing them by the hundreds. So do I.

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (29441)	5/13/2002 9:56:25 AM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 281500

>> 80% of the Israelis support Sharon on his attack on the Palestinians<< If that's true (and I believe it isn't), then the Israelis will reap what they sow. Much depends, obviously, on when the question was asked and what the wording was. But, tied with the Likud vote yesterday, I'm terribly afraid you are right.

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (29441)	5/13/2002 1:09:13 PM
From: art slott	Respond to of 281500

Terror in the USA - The Palestinians Celebrate! ===> "reports in the Israeli media tell us of threats that were receievd by the foreign press agencies to destroy any and all pictures and videos taken of these celebrations." <=== gamla.org.il

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (29441)	5/13/2002 2:01:00 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Art, I find 80% support believable, and even reasonable, given the wartime footing Israel is on. I would guess it's somewhat harder for Israelis to profess doubt about the current operation than it was for Americans to express doubt about attacking Afghanistan, and I'd guess support for the war in Afghanistan was better than 80%. For a different, not entirely contradictory view, though, people might want to consider the conclusion of nytimes.com, which I linked here earlier. Perhaps most of all, however, the hesitation stems from a collective sense of what their mission here has become: for this unit on this corner of the battlefield, Operation Defensive Shield is akin to a very dangerous and very expensive police operation -- and the less permanent damage they do, the better. ''That's because this isn't about winning,'' says Gil Timor, the platoon commander. ''We cannot win this war -- at least, not the way we're fighting it. What it's about is creating an opening, lowering the violence for long enough that there can be a kind of peaceful space.'' Amid their peculiar blend of despair and cool resolve, the Palsars seem to have a very clear idea of how that space should be used: for negotiations to resume, negotiations that must inevitably lead, they believe, to the creation of a Palestinian state. To be sure, they have come to that position from very different vantage points, and they disagree mightily on the specifics -- of what is to be done with Jerusalem, for example, or the Israeli settlements on the West Bank -- but to a man, left or right, hawk or dove, their experiences on the battlefield have led them to conclude that there is simply no other way out. It's a conclusion shared even by Ofir Dvir, the soldier who considers himself the most right-wing of the platoon. ''It's the only solution,'' he says one night in the Palestinian house, ''because what's happening now, this can't go on. If we try to go on with it, it will only get worse. You know, when I go into a house to arrest some 20-year-old Palestinian who's wanted for something, I look at his 15-year-old brother, and I see that he's the next one, that in a few years, I'm going to have to come back for him. And it will just go on and on like that unless we stop it.'' The Palsars would seem to have a better idea what can and cannot be accomplished militarily than the general Israeli public. Or the general American public, for that matter.

To: Art Bechhoefer who wrote (29441)	5/13/2002 2:16:06 PM
From: Win Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Shock of Sept. 11 Is Making Americans More Supportive of Israel, Polls Suggest nytimes.com [ continuing on that topic, this rather interesting story showed up in the Times today. A little scary, W may be getting hemmed in here. Excerpts: ] Conservatives want Mr. Bush to press ahead now, to work for the removal of Mr. Arafat at the same time as the removal of Mr. Hussein. Some, like William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said in an interview last week that Mr. Bush should also be considering "regime change" in Saudi Arabia for its support of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that inspired many of the terrorists in Al Qaeda. [ Perhaps Kristol or the local Saudi-bashers could explain how, exactly, we would go about engineering a "regime change" in SA that both had some appearance of popular legitimacy and didn't result in a government more hostile to US interests. Seems like wishful thinking to me. Of course, Bin Laden's goal is also a regime change in SA, so Kristol is not alone. ] Over the months, sympathy for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation has dropped measurably, while President Bush's popularity among American Jews has soared, engendering speculation that he could pull more Jewish votes from a Democratic challenger in 2004 than any Republican president in half a century. "Israel and America are both in a war on terrorism," said Howard Kohr, who followed Mr. Dine as executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac. "It is these things coming together" and "a recognition that Israel is vulnerable" that have led to a change in public opinion, Mr. Kohr added. He said Aipac's 55,000 members and a small army of lobbyists in Congress went to full mobilization last fall to merge the Israeli and American view of the war on terror. { And no reader of FADG could possibly ever have guessed that was happening :-/ siliconinvestor.com ] In a Gallup poll in early April of 1,009 adults nationwide, 70 percent viewed Palestinian tactics as "terrorism" and not "acts of war," while 53 percent viewed Israeli strikes on Palestinian targets as "acts of war" and 39 percent called them "terrorism." Last month the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a group founded on Sept. 13 by prominent conservatives, including Richard Perle, a conservative adviser to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld; Mr. Kristol; and Frank Gaffney and Jeanne Kirkpatrick, both conservative members of the Reagan administration, began running television commercials in the Washington area warning that if a "suicide strategy" can succeed anywhere in the world, "it will succeed everywhere." Some supporters of Israel in the United States, however, say they want a more moderate approach. They hope that Mr. Bush will pressure Mr. Sharon into entering talks with the Palestinian leadership under Mr. Arafat. "What pro-Israeli hard-liners are doing that is so dangerous," said Jonathan Jacoby of the Israeli Policy Forum, "is that by making Mr. Arafat into the primary issue, particularly when Mr. Bush is seeking a role for the moderate Arab states, they are risking serious damage to America's other foreign policy interests, such as fighting weapons of mass destruction and dealing with Iraq."