BS: What is Anti-Semitism?

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: GUEST
Date: 19 May 03 - 07:16 PM

So why did Israel fund Hamas?

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 03 - 07:45 PM

When CarolC lies by ommiting this information, she becomes nothing but an appologist for terrorist murderers.

This is bullshit.

What she fails to tell us is that to Hamas, the "occupation" extends to every inch of historical Palestine, that is to say, all of Israel proper within the pre-1967 borders.

I have not seen or heard any quotes from Hammas that support what you are saying. If you can show me some from credible sources, I'll be happy to stand corrected.

I'm ashamed that I once actually kissed her as a friend. Never again.

You're quite the drama queen. You have a very deep need to see the worst in people, don't you? If I knew who you are, I might be able to respond appropriately, but since I don't, there is no way to even know if you're telling the truth, or just yanking my chain.

The Hamas leaders have made this clear time and time again. They have told Arafat that should he make peace with Israel, he will be executed.

Again, if you show me some actual quotes, I'll be happy to stand corrected.

And that, CarolC, is probably why Arafat has never missed an opportunity to sabotage the peace process.

It wasn't Arafat who sabotaged Oslo. That was Netanyahu, and the Jewish extremist who killed Rabin. And as we have seen, there were no Israeli deaths from PLO terrorism for at least two years while the Palestinians still had hope that Israel would honor it's agreements. You can't blame the failure of Oslo on Arafat, or the Palestinians, or on me, no matter how much your need to hate all of us makes you want to do it.

You can try to hold me responsible for all of the evils of the world if you want. But that's not going to change a thing. Even if I never type or speak another word on the subject, the number of innocents, both Palestinian and Jew, will continue to increase until Israel ends the occupation, or until all Palestinians are gone from Israel and the occupied territories. And if the latter happens, expect a lot of innocent Jews all over the world to be targeted with terrorist attacks, along with a lot of innocent Americans.

This has nothing to do with me or anything I might or might not want. It's just the reality that you and everyone else who cares about Israel has to deal with. As I said before, the numbers back me up on this.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 03 - 11:09 PM

An excerpt from A Gaza Diary

By Chris Hedges

Arafat loyalists in the camp, such as Faqawi, concede that Hamas is ascendant. If Oslo had led, as many had hoped, to a two-state solution, and thereby given Palestinians some glimmer of a better life, it is a fair bet that Hamas would be a marginal force in Gaza. But Israel's occupation and Arafat's mismanagement have made it only a matter of time before the militants come to power. They already rule the street. If Sharon unleashes Israel's might, as he did in Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority will be his first victim.

"What has happened since the Palestinian Authority came to power?" the sheikh asks. "Everyone is poorer. The Israeli occupation has not ended. Hardship always brings people back to God. It is like sickness. To quote the Prophet, peace be upon him, a believer should never be afraid of being poor but of being rich. When you become rich you think only of things. This kills your soul. Islam has given Palestinians cohesion. We feel as one body, in our dreams and our agony. And Islam distinguishes us in that it prepares people to die for the sake of Allah. They are always ready to die for Allah. They are ready to spread the message of Islam, ready to rescue someone weaker than they, even animals."

Hamas is primarily known outside Israel for its suicide-bomb attacks against Israeli civilians. The sheikh tells me that Hamas orders suicide bombers, under its military wing, the Iz al-Din al-Qassam, to attack Israeli civilian targets because Israeli troops and armed settlers routinely attack Palestinian civilians.

"As long as they target our civilians we will target their civilians," he says. "When they stop we will stop."

From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements. It began to attack individual Israeli civilians after a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, gunned down twenty-nine Muslim worshipers in the lbrahimi Mosque in Hebron. But these attacks have had the added benefit of discrediting and weakening Arafat's authority, of exposing his helplessness in the face of settlement expansion, closures, and the shooting of unarmed Palestinians. Still, even the sheikh has used his time during Friday prayers to implore the young boys not to go out on the dunes.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: AggieD
Date: 20 May 03 - 11:51 AM

The problems that so many Palestinians have with Israel is that if Hammas did not keep on bombing innocent Israeli citizens, then the rest of the Palestinian people would not have such a hard time of it.

Let's be honest all journalists & political writers have their own agenda,& are quite happy to bend the truth to sell their articles.


'From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements.'

Are you therefore CarolC condoning this fact? These were still human beings being killed.

This link might just interest you:
http://www.jcpa.org/art/brief1-1.htm

"Israel entered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli legal experts traditionally resisted efforts to define the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "occupied" or falling under the main international treaties dealing with military occupation. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote in the 1970s that there is no de jure applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention regarding occupied territories to the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign." In fact, prior to 1967, Jordan had occupied the West Bank and Egypt had occupied the Gaza Strip; their presence in those territories was the result of their illegal invasion in 1948. Jordan's 1950 annexation of the West Bank was recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan and rejected by the vast majority of the international community, including the Arab states."

So who was occupying whom?

And would you now evict all those people who have made their homes in these areas? Where are they supposed to go. You will now make thousands of people homeless. So what do you do about that situation?

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 03 - 12:39 PM

The problems that so many Palestinians have with Israel is that if Hammas did not keep on bombing innocent Israeli citizens, then the rest of the Palestinian people would not have such a hard time of it.

I disagree with this. I think a case can be made that if Hamas wasn't in the area attempting to defend Palestinians, and provide them with much needed basic human services, all of the Palestinians would have already died or have been removed from the occupied territories. I can't prove the situation either way, but then again, neither can you.

Let's be honest all journalists & political writers have their own agenda,& are quite happy to bend the truth to sell their articles.

Some more than others, I think. But that's why I try to get my information from Jewish human rights organizations whenever possible.

'From 1987 to 1993, during the first intifada, Hamas targeted only Israeli soldiers and settlements.'

Are you therefore CarolC condoning this fact? These were still human beings being killed.

This presents quite a problem, doesn't it? These were human beings who were harrassing and killing innocent human beings and driving them from their homes. If I was in a position to have to defend one or the other of these groups, I'd have a hard time justifying defending the aggressor in this situation.

And how about the human beings that the IDF forces were (and are) harassing and killing? Do you condone this killing? They are still human beings. And how about the people who are killed in the name of fighting terrorism? They are human beings too. Do you condone killing them?

"Israel entered the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli legal experts traditionally resisted efforts to define the West Bank and Gaza Strip as "occupied" or falling under the main international treaties dealing with military occupation. Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Meir Shamgar wrote in the 1970s that there is no de jure applicability of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention regarding occupied territories to the case of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since the Convention "is based on the assumption that there had been a sovereign who was ousted and that he had been a legitimate sovereign." In fact, prior to 1967, Jordan had occupied the West Bank and Egypt had occupied the Gaza Strip; their presence in those territories was the result of their illegal invasion in 1948. Jordan's 1950 annexation of the West Bank was recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan and rejected by the vast majority of the international community, including the Arab states."

So who was occupying whom?

Your legal experts don't have a leg to stand on. The land that was given to the Jewish State of Israel was given to them by the same body that gave Palestine to the Palestinians. If the Palestinians have no claim to their land, then neither do the Israelis.

And this kind of legalese jargon is a pretty pathetic attempt to justify something that no self-respecting Jew would tolerate if it was foisted upon them by anyone. The Jews who were expelled from their homes in Pogroms in places like Russia. They weren't legitimate sovereigns over their land. Does that make the expulsion ok? The countries whose governments oppressed Jews Were/are sovereigns. Does that make it ok for them to oppress Jews?

Even the Palestinians who live in Israel proper are treated as second class citizens. I can provide plenty of non-journalistic documentation to suppor this statement. Israel has no constitution, and it has two sets of laws. One set of laws applies only to Jews. The other set of laws applies to everyone else.

The Palestinians in the occupied territories have no rights at all. They are non-people to the Israeli government.

And would you now evict all those people who have made their homes in these areas? Where are they supposed to go. You will now make thousands of people homeless. So what do you do about that situation?

Yes. The settlers need to go. The settlements are in violation of the Geneva Convention, and they are the cause of a lot of violence and suffering for a lot of people on both sides. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would be happy to provide money to the settlers to relocate elsewhere, just as there were plenty of people who provided the money for them to settle in the occupied territories in the first place.

That is, of course, unless people decided to have all of Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories be joined together as one country under a secular government with one constitution for everybody and only one set of laws for everybody. I don't see this being very likely.

So since you like to frame arguments in terms of equivalences, ask yourself this... if a government of a country, right now, was doing to Jews what the government of Israel has been and continues to do to the Palestinians, would you tolerate it? Would you be silent while it happened? Would you support them and help them do it with your words, your money, your political support?

If I was silent while governments did these kinds of things to Jews, my silence would make me complicit. So what about you? Are you willing to make yourself complicit while these things are being done to human beings? Being done in your name?

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: Forum Lurker
Date: 20 May 03 - 12:49 PM

CarolC-You are misunderstanding what AggieD is saying about the occupation. The land may belong to the Palestinians, but before it was occupied by Israel IT WAS ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED BY ARAB STATES. To address other points:

Hamas is not defending the Palestinians when they bomb Israelis. You have admitted innumerable times that the extremists on both sides are equally responsible for the cycle of violence, yet you refuse to condemn the currently most violent extremists on the Palestinian side of the conflict.

When you get your information from Jewish human rights groups, that doesn't make it any less biased than any other human rights group. Their bias simply comes from a feeling of guilt rather than accusation.

As for your final question, if my fellow Jews were murdering innocents by the score because they thought it was a valid political tool, I would not support them. Regardless of who is "in the right," there is no justification for such terrorist tactics, which damage, rather than aid the cause they espouse.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 03 - 01:15 PM

CarolC-You are misunderstanding what AggieD is saying about the occupation. The land may belong to the Palestinians, but before it was occupied by Israel IT WAS ILLEGALLY OCCUPIED BY ARAB STATES. To address other points:

Whatever treaties give Israel whatever rights it has also gives the Palestinians in Palestine the same rights. You can't have it both ways.

Hamas is not defending the Palestinians when they bomb Israelis. You have admitted innumerable times that the extremists on both sides are equally responsible for the cycle of violence, yet you refuse to condemn the currently most violent extremists on the Palestinian side of the conflict.

AggieD was asking about the killing of Israeli soldiers. I do condemn, and have consistantly condemned the killing of innocents by anyone, extremist or otherwise on both sides of the conflict. The killing of soldiers is a more complicated question.

When you get your information from Jewish human rights groups, that doesn't make it any less biased than any other human rights group. Their bias simply comes from a feeling of guilt rather than accusation.

That's ok with me, because any bias in favor of human rights is, by definition, fair to all humans.

As for your final question, if my fellow Jews were murdering innocents by the score because they thought it was a valid political tool, I would not support them. Regardless of who is "in the right," there is no justification for such terrorist tactics, which damage, rather than aid the cause they espouse.

Your fellow Jews are killing innocents by the score because they think it's a valid political tool. And it sounds to me like you support them in doing this. You seem to think the Palestinians should just lay down and die, so Israel can have all the land it wants. Israel is using state supported terrorism, and it looks to me like you are ok with that. State supported terrorism is just as damaging as any other kind of terrorism.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: artbrooks
Date: 20 May 03 - 03:08 PM

CarolC said: Your fellow Jews are killing innocents by the score because they think it's a valid political tool. Bullshit. Nobody thinks this, including the Israeli government. And it sounds to me like you support them in doing this. I would have thought that even the most deluded mind couldn't come up with this. Guess I was wrong. You seem to think the Palestinians should just lay down and die, so Israel can have all the land it wants. Nonsense Israel is using state supported terrorism, and it looks to me like you are ok with that. Again, no one has even begun to imply this, except in one person's imagination. State supported terrorism is just as damaging as any other kind of terrorism. No argument. Have a nice vacation.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: Forum Lurker
Date: 20 May 03 - 04:41 PM

CarolC-No, not all treaties guarantee both parties the same rights. In fact, very few treaties do so. Given that the IDF maintains a universal draft, claiming that Israeli soldiers are necessarily any less innocent than any other Israeli citizen is ridiculous. A bias in favor of the human rights of Palestinians, neglecting the human rights of Israelis, is just as biased as the inverse, and by no means "fair to all humans," unless you maintain that Israelis are inhuman. Finally, I have never stated that I support the IDF's use of certain tactics, or that I support what you claim to be Sharon's goal of evicting the Palestinians. What I have stated is that the killing of civilians is not a valid political tool, and that any group which openly embraces it as such is terroristic. Regardless of what you think of their intent, the IDF does not claim that it would be justified in the mass slaughter of innocent Palestinians to further the political goals of Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, is based on the proposition that the murder of Israeli civilians is not only justified, but a moral obligation, as a political tool.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 03 - 04:42 PM

Bullshit yourself, Artbrooks.

If I make a statement like the one you're having problems with, I get criticized for making the statement. If I post documentation, I get criticized for posting the documentation. If I post indesputable proof, I get criticized for posting indesputable proof. Other than agreeing with your position or remaining silent, there is nothing I can do without being attacked.

Nobody thinks this, including the Israeli government

You're very, very, very wrong about this. But you're too deluded yourself to see it. A lot of people not only think it, they know it, including former IDF soldiers and officers, and Israeli refuseniks who have gone to jail in order to not be forced to commit these crimes agains humanity.

The level of vitriol being flung at me is reaching a fever pitch. You guys must be feeling incredibly guilty right about now. Get your heads out of the sand, for pete's sake, and do something to stop this tragedy!!! Do it for your own sake!

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 03 - 04:53 PM

A bias in favor of the human rights of Palestinians, neglecting the human rights of Israelis, is just as biased as the inverse, and by no means "fair to all humans," unless you maintain that Israelis are inhuman.

What you are describing is organizations that promote the rights of certain groups, such as the Anti-defamation league, and the NAACP. Human rights organizations state, as their goal, the promotion of the rights of all humans, regardless of their race, religion, ethnic group, or nationality. So no human rights organization would promote a bias that neglected the rights of anyone.

What I have stated is that the killing of civilians is not a valid political tool, and that any group which openly embraces it as such is terroristic. Regardless of what you think of their intent, the IDF does not claim that it would be justified in the mass slaughter of innocent Palestinians to further the political goals of Israel. Hamas, on the other hand, is based on the proposition that the murder of Israeli civilians is not only justified, but a moral obligation, as a political tool.

The IDF doesn't claim that, nor do they admit it when they engage in such practices. But that doesn't change the fact that they do engage in such practices. The main difference between Hamas and the Israeli government is the fact that Hamas freely admits what it does, while the Israeli government does whatever it wants and then denies it. Or claims that it has a right to do it, or that it is justified.

I saw an IDF officer, on television, justifying his orders to his unit to use Palestinian civilians as human shields (which they did do). He never denied that he had done it. In fact, he didn't even see what he had done as being wrong. Do you know what he used as his "justification"? He said it was for a "just cause".

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: Forum Lurker
Date: 20 May 03 - 06:31 PM

CarolC-You are thinking about an ideal human rights organization, composed solely of infallible people whose sole motivation is to improve human rights. No real group like this exists, and so we are left with organizations who may be mistaken or biased against a certain group, may be misled, or whose members may include people who are not solely interested in human rights. Nothing about the stated motives of these organizations conveys any objectivity or infallibity.

Subject: RE: BS: What is Anti-Semitism?
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 03 - 07:06 PM

Nobody's infallible, Forum Lurker. But these are the groups who have the least biased agenda with regard to how human beings should be treated, and their track records are very good overall. Since their stated agenda, and their track record, shows that they do, in fact, work very hard to promote basic human rights for all people, they are the most qualified to be monitoring these kinds of situations and reporting on them. They're the best any of us has got. The reason that I prefer to get my information from the Jewish run organizations is because they would have the least amount of incentive to be biased against Jews, but I also trust the Society of Friends (Quakers), and a few others who have excellent track records with regard to fairness. And I don't buy that "only doing it because they feel guilty" business for one minute. They do it because they are people of great courage and humanity. You sell all Jews short when you try to attribute such cynical motives to these people.

Ok. I'm going off-line for about a week and a half. Argue amongst yourselves.