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

To: Bilow who wrote (32829)	6/21/2002 12:45:14 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Watch what happens when the combined country of Israel / Palestine begins doing stuff like fielding a combined athletic team at the Olympics or competing in international soccer. VERSUS "No amount of appeasement will make any Arab State love us; they hate us; but worse, they despise us. We should not mind hatred, but we can make them respect us." Carl, your posts the last few weeks have really confused me. Maybe I misunderstood your point of view before, but the "Pollyanna" posts from you lately have surprised me. The hatred between the Arabs and the Jews in Israel had been heated up to a roaring fire in the last century. When you combine that with the fighting that has gone on between the "West" and the Arabs since the dawn of Islam, you have a force that will never, in our lifetimes, be peaceful. It is not only Jew versus Arab, it is the modern West versus the barbarian East. About all we can hope for, IMO, is to hold them at bay while they modernize, even if it is against their will. The individual Arab wants what we have, but he will never accept it from us. He has to get it in spite of us. It is going to take a long, long, time for this culture, tied to its religion, to westernize and accept us. I am sure my grandchildren will not see it. It is interesting to look back and realize that we thought the Asian cultures were going to be the tough ones to westernize. But they never had the Religious hangup that Islam does.

To: Bilow who wrote (32829)	6/21/2002 1:01:58 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

As a further example of how far Islam has to go, try this column from today's NYT. June 21, 2002 Watch What You Say By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF RAWALPINDI, Pakistan ? Before recounting how President Clinton burned alive dozens of Christians (this feint is known in the column trade as baiting the right), let me offer a quick historical quiz: What religion were Muhammad's parents? You might think that they, like most people in Arabia in the sixth century, probably worshiped tribal gods and idols. It might seem difficult for anyone to have been a Muslim before Muhammad. If that's what you think, bite your tongue, if you visit Pakistan. Dr. Younus Shaikh, a teacher at a medical college, sits in a brick prison here, after being sentenced to death for blasphemy last year. I couldn't interview him because the warden caught me trying to slip into the prison as a visitor (I didn't look like a family member). But the issues are clear. During a lecture, Dr. Shaikh digressed and allegedly speculated that Muhammad's parents may not have been Muslims, and that before receiving God's revelations at the age of 40, Muhammad might not have shaved his pubic hair. That was a scandalous charge: pious Pakistani men shave their armpits and pubic hair but not their faces. As for the speculation about Muhammad's parents, that was held to be blasphemous because of Koranic verses suggesting that prophets like Abraham (and thus why not others?) could be considered Muslims, in the literal Arabic meaning of the word, which is people who submit to God. Dr. Shaikh is one of several hundred people facing execution in Pakistan from this modern Islamic Inquisition. Many are religious minorities who sometimes are sentenced to death simply for using the standard greeting of the Islamic world, "as-salaam aleikum." That means "peace be with you," but militants say the phrase is reserved for Muslims. The West is full of irresponsible vituperations about Islam being no more than a religion of violence and hatred. The vitriol amounts to an unrecognizable caricature to anyone who has lived in the Islamic world, enjoyed its hospitality and admired the dignity it confers on its humblest believers. Yet the bottom line is that nobody so distorts, denigrates and defames Islam as radical Muslims themselves, particularly the mullahs who try to have people executed for saying "peace be with you." Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a thoughtful, well-educated imam in Islamabad, asked me why the fuss over Dr. Shaikh, one man, when America has killed thousands in Afghanistan. I replied that blasphemy raises a larger concern for Islam itself: like Christianity in the Middle Ages, the Islamic world today suffers from a stultifying closed-mindedness and intellectual rigidity that impoverishes Muslim countries and in some cases endangers their neighbors. Fundamentally, Pakistan's biggest problem today is not India but this close-mindedness. Pakistan has an industrious and often entrepreneurial people, a well-educated elite, a modernizing leader who could be another Ataturk, and mullahs who try to block discussion about emerging from the Middle Ages. Most Pakistanis would like to see blasphemy laws repealed and seem aghast at the mullahs' effort to cripple the Pakistani economy by banning interest payments. But while the religious parties win less than 5 percent of the votes in elections, they command huge influence because few dare disagree with them publicly. One of the few public figures who took on the fanatics is Moinuddin Haider, the interior minister. The radicals responded by shooting his brother to death. So while there are many sensible Pakistanis, few pipe up to counter the weird lies, conspiracy theories and claptrap that ensnare Dr. Shaikh, and all of Pakistan. That leads me to how I heard about President Clinton executing the Christians. One of the mullahs I interviewed, Abdul Wahid Qasmi, asked: Since America executes blasphemers, why shouldn't Pakistan? After what happened to Daniel Pearl, journalists these days try not to be too impertinent when interviewing Pakistani clerics. But I politely suggested that he might search his belfry for bats. Mr. Qasmi still insisted that America burns heretics. As evidence, he plucked an Urdu book and began reading aloud about the Clinton administration burning scores of Americans after they blasphemed Jesus. "The leader of the heretics," he said, "was named David Koresh."

To: Bilow who wrote (32829)	6/21/2002 2:08:37 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Jews are not a majority in the region, or even in the territory they occupy, probably. If the region of concern were the tiny gerrymandered country of Israel, then I'd agree with you here. What has that got to do with the price of tea in China? The Jews are not trying to conquer the whole region; they are trying to preserve their own country, a area in which they are the majority, which they have successfully defended in four major wars.

To: Bilow who wrote (32829)	6/21/2002 2:05:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Jews are not a majority in the region, or even in the territory they occupy, probably. The region is not the issue, or at least not a major one. The whole region is not in an uprising against Israel nor is Israel trying to occupy the whole region. I'm pretty sure the Jews are still a majority in the territory they occupy although they probably wont be if they still occupy all of it for another generation. But even then they will not be a small minority like the White South Africans. If the region of concern were the tiny gerrymandered country of Israel, then I'd agree with you here. But trying to analyze Israel in terms of the postage stamp sized piece of strangely shaped land it occupies, as if it were on the moon instead of in the Middle East, is silly. The main region of concern is Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The rest of the region has some effect but not a major one as long as there is no regional war. Trying to analyze an uprising in terms of the entire population of a large region, most of whom are not involved in the uprising is silly. The "gerrymandering" of the land is a red herring. Many other countries are just as oddly or arbitrarily shaped. It would have been an issue with the original (pre 1948 war) Israel. The same analysis you're using would have applied to the white regions of South Africa, but that didn't fly either. Because everyone involved considered themselves South African, and considered all of South Africa to be their country. Also I believe the population was more mixed then in Israel. In order to survive, Israel has to obtain the support of every US administration from here to 10 years after never. I'm not so sure that is true. If Israel looses US support it won't enable the Palestinians to overcome Israel, it would require a large scale Arab military effort. As long as the other Arab countries don't have major foreign support (like they used to get from the Soviet Union) and as long as they don't get their act together in terms of reforms to make their militaries more effective and in terms of effectivly coordingating the armies from different countries, I think it is possible for Israel to survice without US support, esp. if that lack of support is temporary (one administration that doesn't support Israel but doesn't support the Arabs either). Certainly a loss of US support would eventually put Israel at risk, but I think the risk is minor if the support is not lost for more then a few years, and in any case "at risk" is not the same as doomed to destruction. Re: "The heavy weapons are good to keep the cross border terror from happening." This is an interesting statement, especially in the light of the WTC cross border terrorism incident, as well as in the light of Israel's experience. I won't comment further. Armies and police can not provide an impenetrable shield against cross border terrorism but they can make it difficult. With Israel's military superiority cross border terrorism and guerilla attacks would be a trivial matter for the Arabs. (1) South Africa no longer has white rule. Israel will also eventually no longer have Jewish rule. What they call the resulting country doesn't matter. States rename themselves all the time. Its not just a matter of a name. South Africans considered themselves to be members of the same nation. The only question was who would rule that nation. The Jews and Palestinians do not consider themselves to be part of the same nation. (3) The South Africans did try to give up land for peace. That was what the Bantustans were. And you're right, it was not a realistic attempt. Israel's attempt to give up land for peace is similarly doomed. If the Israelis give the Palestinians all or at least the vast majority of the West Bank and Gaza, with control over their own borders and with decent water supplies and with control of a lot of the area that is now controlled by Israel settlers (without all the road blocks and security zones) then Israel would not be offering the equivalent of the Bantustans. The Bantustans where a small part of South Africa that was being offered to a majority of the population. Not a big percentage of the land being offered to a big but not majority group. Also the Bantustans where isolated from each other and from avenues of commerce with other nations, and they where usually the worst land in South Africa. On top of that they where often very arbitrary, it wasn't a matter of giving the areas with the most blacks to the blacks and the areas with the most whites to the whites. Israel sans west bank and Gaza will be majority Jew (And many of the non Jews are not considered Palestinians). The West Bank and Gaza will be majority Palestinian Arab. Finally and most importantly the ANC did not defeat white rule. The whites negotiated it away when they felt they could get a reasonable deal. If enough trust can be developed between the two sides at some point there probably will be 2 countries. If the the two sides never trust each other then the current situation can continue for a long time. You point out situations like South Africa and Vietnam where the side with the most military power did not win, but you don't point out any where the issue was settled forcibly by just an uprising and terrorism like that practiced by the Palestinians. In Vietnam the US lost it's desire and went home. The Israelis are home. In Vietnam after the US left the communists had the military advantage and they won with a large scale conventional military invasion, not by an uprising, or by using terrorism or guerilla warfare. The situation in South Africa was not settled by force, either an uprising or a war. It was settled by negotiation after the whites where finally convinced that it wouldn't be the end of the world if someone like Nelson Mandela became president. If half of the country was majority white and half majority black you still may have had a two country solution even with someone like Nelson Mandela as the head of the ANC. If Arafat was head of the ANC I doubt there would have been any agreement, you would probably still have white rule in South Africa. Tim