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

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (47559)	9/28/2002 2:04:48 AM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Where exactly did I claim that the Arab world is not guilty of all kinds of things? Could it be that you spent maybe one partial paragraph detailing the corruption and despotism of the Arab world before launching into your 20+ paragraph indictment about how evil Israel is?? cannot divert the attention from Israeli apartheid treatment of Arab citizens by saying that Jews have it even worse in Arab countries. IRRELEVANT. Just as irrelevant as the fact Israel is in possession of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan, due to their being attacked by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, all bent upon their nation's utter destruction???? Just as irrelevant as the fact that JORDAN CLAIMED THE WEST BANK UNTIL 1989 as part of their sovereign country?? Where were the people like yourself from 1948-1967 when the Jordanians occupied that land and FORCED all of those people to become Jordanians?? Why aren't you complaining about the fact that a Hashemite Arab King is ruling over a population that is 70% Jordanian?? You see, you have to think about these kinds of nuances SFD.. Are the subjects of Hashemite Jordan "Palestinians", or are they "Arabs".. 70% of them claim to be "palestinians", but they are ruled by an Arab and treated as second class citizens. Where is your outrage there?? The bottom is that had King Hussein NOT foolishly opted to declare war on Israel in 1967, the West Bank would STILL be part of Jordan and all of those Palestinians your shedding tears over would be Jordanian SUBJECTS (not citizens) and second class citizens to their Hashemite rulers. And we wouldn't be having this discussion, now would we? But he attacked.. and he lost.. and he forfeited all right to rule over the West Bank. Now the current occupants of the territories could have a measure of autonomy.. An autonomy that their Jordanian brethren DO NOT HAVE. But they continue to seek to destroy Israel, to prevent them from being able to live in peace, or to share the territory with Jewish settlers (despite 20% of Israeli citizens being comprised of Arabs). You seem to want to just ignore the historical context of this battle for land. BUT YOU CAN'T... The fact is that power abhors a vacuum. All the powers in the region are attempting to dominate each other. There is STILL a desire to unify the Arab people on the entire peninsula, something which can only occur by one dictator/monarch dominating all of the others and subjugating them to a centralized control (as the Saudis did over the other tribes on the Arabian peninsula). And there are the Israelis.. a group of people who just want what was promised to them by the British and French, their historical homeland, but who have suddenly become the "fly in the ointment" to the Arab dictators/monarchs in the region. And they also provide a nifty political target for distracting their own population from the terrible condition they live in. And finally, the Arab leaders have every reason to try and make Israel appear "evil" in the eyes of the world. Because what they really don't want their people to focus upon are the radical democratic ideas that Israel represents in their "world". They don't want their own people to get any idea that democracy is a "good thing".. Make Israel, and it's democratic ideals, appear to be "evil" or products of western colonialism, and it's much easier to convince their subjects to accept their lot in life. The Palestinians feel just as strongly Palestinian. Don't deny people the right to self-determination and their own identity they feel. But doesn't that open up an entire can of worms here SFD?? Why are the Palestinians so "special"?? What about the Kurds? What about the Maronite Christians of Lebanon?? What about the Bedouins? What about the Coptic Christians of Egypt?? Don't they all have a right to their own country too?? Why do you feel so motivated to worry about the Palestinians and not these many other groups who have been fighting for an independent homeland far longer than the Palestinians?? All those tribes you describe... reminds me of the argument South African colonialists used: S. Africa was just a bunch of tribes running around in constant warfare against each other. So, we took the land, because it really didn't belong to anyone. And a damn good argument... Because it's true. Do you think Jews and Western nations invented conquesst and colonization?? Do you think African tribes didn't conquer one another, migrating away inhospitable areas, or their own enemies?? Look at the Zulus, do you think they originated in S. Africa? Hardly.. They migrated down there (also known as colonization and imperialism) taking the lands from those who held them before... I'm not going to spend my life feeling guilty because my ancestors were more powerful than the people they took land from. And even though I'm part indian, I have no desire to see the US return all of those lands to the tribes whom they put on reservations. Conquest, either military or economic, is a fact of life. It's the way the world has turned for thousands of years. And since I don't see the Israelis out there flinging nukes around the middle east trying to conquer their neighbors, there's nothing worth getting freaked out about. If anything, I'm more freaked out about the potential of an Arab dictator getting Nukes and using such weaponry as a means of uniting the Arabs (by dominating them) and inciting them to destroy Israel. Because that's what dictators do... Dictate.. and expand at the expense of anyone who gets in their way and isn't strong enough to oppose them. Israel has shown it can be trusted with nuclear weapons. The Arabs have not. They have too much to prove to each other as they vy for "top dog". Hawk