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

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (47513)	9/27/2002 10:40:56 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

First, what causes the swamp? There are many, many reasons, and we can go down the list starting with corrupt, despotic and ineffective Arab goverments and an Arab civilization that has failed to adapt. But forget that - let us see what makes it a "swamp" for the U.S. Well, you've got that part straight... SFD But then you let your anti-Israel bias show by claiming that somehow they are an "apartheid" society and the rest of the Arab world isn't.. Very clever, but not quite correct: Israel happens to be an colonial apartheid regime occupying a nation. Apartheid - a significant number of Israeli citizens are second class based on race (Arabs without all rights given Jewish citizens). The reality is that the only reason you can even claim that Israeli Arabs are somehow "second class" is because people in Israel actually HAVE RIGHTS... And they have rights because Israel is a democracy. NO other citizen of a middle-eastern country can claim that they are all equal to everyone else. NO Saudi Shiite is "equal" to any member of the Saudi royal family. The rights incumbent to their citizenship exists solely because their rulers "grant" them certain rights, which can be rescinded at any time at the discretion of the monarchy/dictator. Israel is trying to annex territory from another nation. What other nation?? Jordan?? Didn't they annex it back in 1948?? And didn't it "belong" to the British as a result of conquering the Ottoman Turks in 1917?? If you are referring to the Palestinians, please tell this board exactly what differentiates the "nation" of Palestine from any other Arab in the region.. Language?? Religion?? Culture?? Please be specific... Since I can be VERY specific with regard to what quantifies the Jewish nation... (and I'm not even Jewish). I just don't want you to throw around terms like "nation" so loosely. Nor do I want you to ignore the fact that most of these Arabs are neither united in culture, religion, or purpose, nor in their family ties. One only has to look back a mere 80 years to see that the majority of the region consisted of clans and sultanates, not nations. And many were bedouin tribes, roving around beating up on one another (much as American Indians did), taking land, surrendering it, and scraping out a meager living herding goats, sheep, and conducting trade. So don't fall prey to this propaganda that the Arab nations have always existed and that somehow the Jews took something away from them... They were taking it away from each other for hundreds of years. And when the Ottoman Turks were defeated they SCRAMBLED to take land from one another... The Saudis took the Hijaz from the Hashemites. The Hashemites were then given Syria, but the French opposed this so they were given the eastern portion of the British Mandate, present day Jordan.. In addition, they were given rulership over Iraq... So if you're going to gripe about the land the Jews were granted in exchange for their support of betraying and overthrowing the Ottomans in Palestine (who had let them settle previously), I expect you to equally gripe about Jordan.. And I expect you to defend the rights of the Sunni majority in Syria, currently brutally ruled by the Alawite (Shiite) minority.. To point out how 20,000 Sunnis were massacred at Hama in 1982, and their town completely obliterated by Hafez Assad. To point out that these Sunnis, despite being the majority population, are "second class" citizens who have little political say in how they are ruled. I expect you to point out how Syria has been constantly attempting to annex Lebanon in order to form "greater Syria", and to this day have 30,000 troops stationed in that country, as well as supplying groups like Hezbollah. Many Sunnis consider this Iranian colonialism due to the strong ties between the Alawites and Shiites. So SFD... let's truly try and understand the politics of the middle east rather than merely feeding the anti-Israel frenzy... Look at the historical context involved in the region, and the basis for any country to claim they have some "special right" to their sovereignty or monarchical claims over the people within their geographical borders. At least in Israel, there are Arabs serving in the Knesset, in the IDF, and possessing the right to vote. Show me where a Jew, let alone an Arab in Saudi Arabia, has such "rights"... And Israel is a democracy... And THAT is what truly worries the rest of the Arab world. It worries them because democracy is anti-thetical to their dictatorial and monarchical legitimacy and aspirations. Bottom line.. you went to some length to parade your list of "atrocities" that Israel has apparently been guilty of. However, you seemingly went to equal effort to avoid describing the imperialism, atrocities, and outright agression perpetrated by Arab nations in the region. And that just ain't condusive to properly understanding the region. Israel possesses nuclear weapons SFD.. Were they so motivated by the imperialist agenda you claim they have, they could EASILY turn every capital in the region into an obsidian parking lot. But they haven't done so. They could have said, politics be damned, and forced out every Jordanian on the West Bank (since the West Bank was part of Jordan until 1989) when King Hussein foolishly decided to participate in the 1967 war and attack Israel. After all, they were Jordanians and this was captured territory. But they didn't. But is Israel perfect?? Heck no... Do the Zionists amongst them "like" Arabs? Not particularly. But are they willing to find some measure of detente with the Arabs?? ABSOLUTELY. Does the entire population of the West Bank depend upon Israel for jobs, markets, as well as utilities and infrastructure?? ABSOLUTELY. The bottom line is that ALL the people in the region have more to gain from cooperating with one another, than spewing their hatred of Jews as a means of distracting their own people from the corruption and ineptitude of their own rulers. (btw, I've been SCUBA diving at your gravesite down near Portobelo Panama..... pretty nice plot you have there... :0) Hawk

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (47513)	9/27/2002 11:50:16 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Sir Francis Drake; Great post, you're preaching to the choir, mostly, but since this is SI, I guess I have to respond with vehement disagreement to your writing, LOL. Re: "You cannot have a military solution here. You could go ahead and wipe out every Palestinian from the territories. Not realistic, but let us play a "gedanke" experiment. Let us somehow imagine that Israel (or the U.S.) managed to effect a "final solution" to the Palestinian problem. That would not wipe out terrorism, for there are still Arabs out there. There are Arabs in Israel - but maybe you can kill them all (already there are voices in Israel to expell them, just as Nazi Germany expelled millions of their Jewish citizens to Poland just before WWII). Even if you wiped out all Arabs in Israel, even if you wiped out all the Arabs in all the countries of the ME (Carl!), you'd still have many left in the U.S. and Europe and the rest of the world. This is not entirely true. There are many many examples of peoples that have been successfully subjugated. The Native Americans in the US, for example. But the process of subjugation is inherently brutal, and the brutality required is worse than proportional to the size of the population that is to be subjugated. I should explain exactly what I mean by "worse than proportional". Every odd little group on the planet wants the freedom to live in a state that is populated with their type, and under laws that they agree on, but (on average) the people who fight hardest for this (call it nationalism) are the people who think that it is easily within reach. This is a very important principle. People who are hopelessly outnumbered don't generally put up much of a fight. This is one of the reasons that, for example, the Mormons acquiesced to rule under the laws of the United States with very little violence, but the South fought hard for years. The Mormons knew that they were outnumbered, but the South was not so convinced and the resulting war was quite bloody. The reasons for these views is clear. The Mormons, in faraway Utah, were farther removed from the rest of the United States than the slave owning states were, but the Mormons were a much smaller population, and so *had fewer delusions over their ability to win a conflict.* The Arab nations (i.e. Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen, Palestine) have something a total population of around 100 million, which is somewhat larger than that of Vietnam. Their natural inclination towards nationalism is probably equal to or larger than that of the Vietnamese. -- Carl

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (47513)	9/28/2002 1:40:45 AM
From: spiral3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Sir Francis Drake, Israel happens to be an colonial apartheid regime occupying a nation. - this is almost the first line of your post. Your assumption here is that the jews are the whites and that the palestinians are the blacks. In the apartheid regime the whites in control were not jews and the blacks were not palestinians. It was the same under Colonialism. These are the facts. there are more than a couple of arguments that imo you’ve gotten wrong. here’s just a few. Firstly, if Jewish Settlement is Colonial occupation that means you think that Israel is a Colonial Host country. Please name the country that is the Colony. Secondly, if the above is incorrect and you mean that the jewish settlers arrived as Colonizers then what you mean is that Israel is the Colony. If this is the case, can you please name the Host country. Thirdly, if neither of these is correct, it is impossible for the Colony and the Host to occupy the same ground. This has never ever happenned in the history of Colonialism, in which case how can you call it that. Fourthly, during Colonialism in South Africa, there was no Apartheid, and during Apartheid there was no Colonialism. Could you please explain this. I haven’t read through all your posts because I have no intention of making a point by point rebuttal. I’ve read enough to know that I need answers to these questions before going any further. If you don’t feel like it thats ok. A just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war. --Sir Francis Bacon