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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: runes who wrote (70727)	10/17/2003 5:56:39 PM
From: Fred Levine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Read the prior 1947 resolution; yale.edu Notice also, that not only were the boundries violated by the Arab League, but after boundries were determined by the cease-fire, the Jewish Holy places were desecrated. The League of Nations did not exist in 1947, but the UN did. Israel accepted the UN partition. fred

To: runes who wrote (70727)	10/18/2003 11:38:00 AM
From: Fred Levine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Runes-- We both agree that the current strife in Israel has atrocities on both sides. That is obvious. We disagree on the moral equivilancy of a policy of indiscriminant revenge on civilians and selected targting of terrorists when civilians have been killed. We probably agree of the provocation of having settlements. We disagree whether there are social differences between the Arab culture and the Western, and that one difference is individual responsibilities. We disagree on the legal status in 1947 of the League of Nations vs. the UN. Indeed, the L of N's did not even have the US among its members. I think you could not believe that they have equal status. However, my views changed profoundly when Arafat rejected, out of hand, the Barak peace proposal. Arafat was reported to claim that he would be dead if accepted the proposal. Clearly, the proposal was not the end point of negotiations, but it was the beginning of an honorable settlement. I never thought Barak would politically survive that proposal. It was not even mentioned in the Palestinian newspapers! Arafat's rejection led to the election of Sharon. Israelis thought there could be no negotiated settlement after the out-of-hand rejection. Recently, even Sharon accepted the cease-fire and did not respond to an act of terrorism. More terrorism occurred and the destructive cycle began again. Do you doubt that there are significant factions in Palestine that cannot accept peace? These groups are overt about their goals, and they are not controlled by Arafat. There is no subtlety about this. I know you will cite the Jewish extremists who want Judaea and Samaria, but they are well controlled. Your case of symmetry belies the degrees of differences. More importantly, in my mind, the events of 9/11 were an eye opener. That was a declaration of war-- much more destructive than the Cole, and the embassy bombings, the Achilla Laura, Munich,etc. I wish you were right that retaliation wasn't necessary. According to my Arab friends (all of whom hated Saddam), a joke went around the mid-east: What would the US do if we bombed them? Answer: they would sue. Bin Laden did not anticipate the intensity of the response. Altho I wish you wer right that peaceful solutions would work, I view your judgement to be one-sided and, unfortunately, dangerous. fred