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

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (54145)	10/23/2002 2:49:48 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hey, SFD, calm down, hmmm? I am a Jew and I also know the code -- and you've been using it. If frank's responses have been a little intemperate, imo you've been outpacing him. Had your answers not been moderate and rational in part, I would have taken you for another garden varienty anti-Semite for some of the terms you've used and not bothered to even answer you.

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (54145)	10/23/2002 3:07:00 PM
From: Condor	Respond to of 281500

I'm done with you. And now, you are dismissed. Wow. Bold elitism. C@minedoesn'tstink.pft

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (54145)	10/23/2002 9:27:55 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I'd rather spend my time on the issues, than tangling with a dufus who cannot abide by civilized rules of discourse. I'm done with you. And now, you are dismissed. Not up to you to dismiss me. I don't like what you write. It has an ethically nasty edge and I'll answer it the way I please. You write: the only thing you've proven is just how clearly absurd your slander is, and just how exactly it fits with the dirty trick of calling any criticism of Israel automatically anti-semitic, a tactic thoroughly discredited in civilized discourse You see, I don't automatically call any criticism of Israel anti-semitic, I called yours anti-semitic. Let's look at your reply to me. Just one small bit: "an indefensible evil" = genociders, baby eaters [SFD: huh? Come again? Any regime, including the THE WHOLE COLONIAL SYSTEM of countries like Britain, France, Spain, Portugal etc., can become an indefensible evil, which does not imply "baby eaters" - that's your demagoguery and your words, not mine; Israel has become a colonial power - is it OK to say the colonial system and regime has become an indefensible evil when it comes to other countries, but suddenly becomes ANTISEMITIC when applied to Israeli colonialism? RUBBISH!] There is such a thing as indefensible evil and we should take it very seriously. I do. You use the term indiscriminately here and it either becomes meaningless, or worse. What did some of those colonial regimes you mention do that may be seen as an indefensible evil? These things surely qualify: The British forced opium on the Chinese. The British in India put down rebellions by killing whole villages; they used rape as a punitive tool. The British in their punitive expeditions to Afghanistan used to tie recalcitrant folk to mouths of canons and blow them up in front of their fellows. The Belgians enslaved the Congolese for the benefit of its royal family under conditions so horrific even the British imperialists were shocked. (Conrad only scratched the surface in Heart of Darkness). There is no doubt in my mind these crimes qualify as indefensible evil. And they were done as a matter of policy. The Israelis have put themselves into a quasi-colonial position in the territory they took from the Jordanians and have imposed curfews, expelled folk from their homes, placed them in demeaning, even degrading situations, sometimes appropriated their water (an evil thing in an arid place), destroyed their olive groves for lines of fire. The majority of the Israeli population is extremely uncomfortable with this; the whacko 10% probably glories in it. Some of what the Israelis have done is indefensible amongst civilized people. I no way excuse it. But the Israelis have not murdered whole villages, they do not rape as a policy instrument, they do not enslave the palestinians, they do not have barbaric mass public executions and they have no policy promoting these crimes.. You have managed to equate the dreadful things british and Belgian colonialists did with the extremely bad things the Israelis have done and they are not the same. In the universe of ethical discourse this is wrong, in material logic is false, and in the field of everyday speech, is called a lie. Read the above paragraph again. Let's move further. You used the term 'indefensible evil', which is open and refers to no particular thing but is open to lots of references in the minds of readers with any imagination or education. The most recent references which might come to mind for them could be the nazi effort to exterminate jews and gypsies, starvation of the kulaks, Rwandan genocide, or atrocities in the Balkans. None of these legitimately can be compared with things the Israelis have done, but you have set up a false equivalence between the Israeli deeds and the immeasurably more dreadful things done throughout history. You smeared the Israelis with the brush of all the slavery, institutional rape and genocide committed in recent history. I say you are writing anti-semitic stuff. You don't like it. Tough. Clean up your act.