Friedman on Jews and Arabs

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: Genie
Date: 12 Feb 02 - 04:08 AM

Midchuck,
I, too, thought the thread was about Kinky...and was disappointed to find out it isn't!

Genie

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: John Gray
Date: 12 Feb 02 - 03:28 AM

Yes 'spaw, that wonderful man - stayed on the bus!
From now on that phrase will stay with me with a meaning that has little to do with the words.

JG / FME

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: Jack The Lad
Date: 12 Feb 02 - 01:07 AM

Truth Teller seems to me to be a vulgar mindless anti semite, and ought to be ignored. However there is some truth in what he says. The lad who "collapsed and died" was later discovered, in the autopsy, to have been shot up the rectum. He was a criminal fleeing the scene of a murder- shots were fired and he was hit. At first this was not discovered, and I stated in good faith, what I had heard.As soon as it was discovered ,the results of the autopsy were made public, and announced on the radio.(yesterday) In many countries this information would probably have been covered up. Jack The Lad

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: GUEST,MISOPHIST
Date: 11 Feb 02 - 05:16 PM

Sorry, Feder is German. It means 'pen'. Note to Truth Teller; Please go away.

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: M.Ted
Date: 11 Feb 02 - 04:09 PM

Feder is a Slavic name--

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: gnu
Date: 11 Feb 02 - 03:53 PM

Words escape me. This is the fifth time I have tried to write something fitting.... I cannot. Tears fill my keyboard. Peace and hope.

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: GUEST,Truth Teller
Date: 11 Feb 02 - 03:51 PM

According to Jack the Lad (Israeli), "one collapsed and died during the chase."

More likely scenario: He was shot in the back by the Israeli police.

As for the Friedman crap that Guest,Feder (a Jewish name) keeps reprinting here from the New York Times, do not forget that Friedman is an American Jew writing for a zionistic newspaper. That tells you where the bias is coming from.

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: Jack The Lad
Date: 11 Feb 02 - 03:36 PM

Thank you, M.Ted and Spaw. JTL

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 10:48 PM

But Jack, you stayed on the bus.

I don't and can't imagine the flood of emotions that went through you, but you stayed on the bus and went to the demonstration.

You stayed on the bus with Jews and Arabs and went to the demonstration.

I am so sorry for your loss and for the loss of good and vibrant people but I am heartened because you stayed on the bus. It takes a particular type of courage and a quality of understanding to do what you did and for what little it may be worth to you, I am in awe and humbled by that one fact alone......You stayed on the bus.

Real peace may be long in coming but it will only arrive when more people stay on the bus. My very best, sincerest, and deepest, respect to you and to the other heroes who stay on the bus.

Thanks for sharing the story.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 10:23 PM

Thanks for sharing your story Jack--I am sorry that this happened--

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: Jack The Lad
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 01:58 PM

I'll tell you something about Jews and Arabs. Last night I took part Peace demonstration in TelAviv. Some 10,000 people took part- from various organisations- all loosely under the term "The Peace Bloc" Jews and Arabs shoulder to shoulder.Families, oldsters, youngsters- workers, academics- just folks. Songs were sung, speeches were made- telegrams read out, promises made- hope was laid. On the way there I travelled in a bus which picked people up from town and village- Jewish and Arab- you mostly know who is who by the place you pick them up, and the language spoken friend to friend. As we were stuck in a traffic jam, the news came on the radio. The daughter of friends of mine had been brutally murdered while jogging in a Jerusalem wood. Four masked Arab teenagers , stabbed her repeatedly and left her to bleed to death. They were caught by the police, three confessed- one collapsed and died during the chase. Moran was 25 years old, a student at the university, highly intelligent, popular and pretty. I have no conclusion, no analysis to make at this time. I just wanted to share this with you. Jack The Lad

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 01:25 PM

I think you're wrong Ted, at least on the groceries. I remember that somewhere.....Let me go have a look.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 11:40 AM

Some have the feeling that everything that Friedman writes is posted here--that is wrong! His laundry list, his grocery list, and his holiday greeting cards have NEVER been posted !!

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 11:31 AM

Typical Friedman analysis. Completely useless.

Subject: RE: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: Midchuck
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 10:34 AM

Sheeit! I thought you meant Kinky. He'd probably have more useful ideas.

Peter.

Subject: Friedman on Jews and Arabs
From: GUEST,Feder
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 10:30 AM

In today's NY Times, Thomas L. Friedman offers another astute examination of the Middle Eastern conflict. I applaud his efforts to bring the correct context to these issues.

---

LONDON — We were just finishing a lunch hosted by a U.S. diplomat for Arab editors in London when one of the editors turned to me and said: "I hope you will not be insulted, but I have to ask you this question because it's around: Are Jews in the media behind the campaign to smear Saudi Arabia and Islam?"

Wow. It is not a question I often get over coffee, but it was asked sincerely, by a serious Arab journalist who wanted a serious answer. I said that I was not insulted and that I knew this question was everywhere — everywhere — in the Arab-Muslim world today, so let me take a stab at it.

My first instinct was to ask a question back: When Jewish reporters in Beirut and Israel were at the forefront in covering such stories as the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians, why did no one in the Arab world ask whether they were part of a Jewish conspiracy? When Jewish congressmen and commentators led the campaign for U.S. intervention to save the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo and to roll back the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and protect Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf war, why did no one in the Muslim world complain about a Jewish conspiracy?

The truth is that Jewish commentators and lawmakers have probably been more outspoken in support of using American force to rescue Muslims in the last 15 years than any other group — including American Muslims.

So, to begin with, maybe — just maybe — there is no Jewish conspiracy against Muslims or Saudi Arabia at work here. Maybe, just maybe, many Americans are upset because 15 Saudis took part in the Sept. 11 attacks, private Saudi charities financed Osama bin Laden and hundreds of Saudis fought with Al Qaeda against America in Afghanistan. And these hard facts have hardened U.S. opinion against them.

It will be a tragedy if Arabs and Muslims adopt the position that there is no conceivable reason why Americans might be upset with them today and that any criticism they face in the U.S. media is entirely the result of some Jewish campaign of vilification.

Why a tragedy? First, because it will reinforce all the reasons why the Arab-Muslim world has fallen behind in economic development, education, science and democratization. Because whenever a people reduces all its problems to a conspiracy by someone else, it absolves itself and its leaders of any responsibility for its predicament — and any need for self-examination. No civilization has ever prospered with that approach. (And several courageous Arab journalists have started to point that out.)

Blaming someone else is not a substitute for analyzing or coping. (That also applies to Israelis who say Yasir Arafat, alone, is the source of all their problems.) Only in a society that embraces self-criticism can the political process produce real facts to cope with real problems. Look at the excruciating process of analysis, self-criticism and accountability that America went through after Vietnam. Few Arab-Muslim countries have ever done anything like that after a war, let alone after 9/11. Until they do, their conclusion that America or the Jews are behind all their problems is escapism, not analysis.

Second, persisting in this will only widen the gulf between America and the Muslim world because such conspiracy theories are based on a total misunderstanding of America. The standard view of America in the Arab-Muslim world is that America is rich and powerful because it is crass and materialistic. And since America is just about material interests — not values — why can't it understand that its real material interests are with the Arabs, not with Israel? The Jews must be manipulating things.

The truth is exactly the opposite. America is successful and wealthy because of its values, not despite them. It is prosperous because of the way it respects freedom, individualism and women's rights and the way it nurtures creativity and experimentation. Those values are our inexhaustible oil wells. Americans naturally gravitate toward societies that share those same values, and they recoil from those that don't.

There are two kinds of blame: one that is a result of self-analysis and self-criticism, and one that is an attempt to avoid self-analysis and self- criticism. We have all known people who endlessly blame their mothers or fathers for all their shortcomings, never themselves. Some eventually grow out of it and thrive. Some never do — and they go through life angry, miserable and never achieving their full potential.