Reply #55: This sounds like Bush rhetoric [View All]

[funnymanpants]

>>Yes; that about sums it up. It's a war, genius. Pick your side; the only thing you'll ever find in the middle of the road is yellow lines and dead armadillos.

Bush says "You are with us or against us." This is a crude representation of any situation in life. If you believe Bush, you are either for the war in Iraq, or you are for terrorism. Well, a great many DUers are both against the war and against terrorism.

Likewise, you can be against suicide bombers, for Israel, but totally against the policies of the Israeli governments.

I won't be put into your either or fallacy.

>>However, you'll find that the understanding that the surrounding peoples want to push Israel in to the sea is a sentiment shared by nearly all Israelis, mostly because they've been attacked, sometimes on major religious holidays, by serious armies half a dozen times in their 50 year history. You're not pulling the wool over anybody's eyes in suggesting otherwise.

Get your history right. In 1956, the Israelie army attacked Egypt. Before they did so, Ben Gurion visited Paris and created an elaborate plan that would carve up the Middle East in his favor. This was a purely aggressive war.

In 1982, Israel attacked Lebanon, a soveriegn country. The invasion was condemned by the UN as illegal. In the invasion, based on a completely faulty pretext, tens of thousands of people were killed. Another act of aggression.

Historiains argue who was the agressor in 48 and 67. Clearly, the Arab countries attacked Isael in 48, but that was because they wanted to resist the colonial plan imposed on them. In addtion, historians point out that Israel refused several cease-fire offers so it could grab more land, which, if you read he intentions of he founders of Israel, was their intention all along.

In 1967, some historians use Arab threats to state that Israel acted in self-defense. Others point out that Israel attacked the Egyptian air force while it was on the ground, and state that Israel used the empty Arab threats to justify war. The Israeli historian Shlaim claims that neither side wanted war.

In 1972, Egypt cleary attacked Israel--but only because Israel would not give back the land it captured in 67.

So far from suffering through a dozen attacks, Israel was as oftne the agressor as not.

Likewise, you are trying to justify the statments of the Israelis who want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians by stating that the Isarelis live in fear. Well, yes, but guess what--so do the Palestinians, who have every reason not to trust Israel, which continues to steal land even as we speak.

Your apartheid argument is absurd. Are you following the situation or not? When one accuses Israel of aprathied, they are referring to Israel's control over the occupied territories. What Barak offered Arafat at Olso was apartheid. Arafat would not have had a state, but a series of cantons with no contiguity. But don't take my word for it: Nobel prize winner Nelson Mendela, who suffered under apartheid, uses the same phrase.

Yes, the Palestinians launched two intifadas. In the first, they used stones--not suicide bombers. The Israelis responded by killing them. Don't you think natives have a right to resist illegal occupation? Do you think the Native Americans also deserved what they got?

Last, I like the way you keep using very moral and sophisticated arguments. "Boo fucking hoo." That's how you describe the brutal life Israel has inflicted on the Palestinians. And here I was thinking I wa on DU, and not that other infamous right-wing board.