15 Responses to “Israel needs peace (and an ad campaign)”

1. Different Strokes to rule the world!
   January 8th, 2009 @

   This explains all you need to know about
   Israeli-Palestinian politics.

   What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?

   The Italian – throws the cup, breaks it, and walks away in a fit of rage.

   The German – carefully washes the cup, sterilizes it and makes a new cup of
   coffee.

   The Frenchman – takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee.

   The Chinese – eats the fly and throws away the coffee.

   The Russian – Drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no
   charge.

   The Israeli – sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese,
   makes a cup of tea for himself and uses the extra money to invent a device
   that prevents flies from falling into cups.

   The Palestinian – blames the Israeli for the fly falling in his coffee,
   protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European
   Union to buy a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and
   then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, the
   Chinese, the German and the Russian are all trying to explain to the Israeli
   that he should give away his cup of tea to the Palestinian. The rest of the
   world agree.

2. Hamid
   January 8th, 2009 @

   Your presumption is so typical.

3. Joel Friedlander
   January 8th, 2009 @

   The fact that a presumption is typical doesn’t make it incorrect. Now I don’t quite agree with the current actions, but I’m not being shelled night and day by psychotic terrorists. Now how exactly are you going to deal with people who fire missiles from apartment houses filled with innocent people. How are you to fight back and stop the shelling? What are you to do, follow the Syrian method and shell the entire town and kill everyone in it, or do you try and prevent the killing of innocent civilians?

   Frankly, I am a little disgusted with the European condemnations of the Israeli actions. The World knows how the Europeans feel about the Jews; they would rather that we were all dead! As to killing civilians, ask the people of Dresden about how the allies fire bombed that city into oblivion. Or, ask the people of Kyoto or Tokyo about the firebombings of those cities by our bombers. Killing civilians is an age old tradition, the Twentieth Century just gave it a new wrinkle by attacking from the air rather than with a ground attack.

   Screw the United Nations and the European community. People who could sit by while the Hutu murdered almost a million Tutsi in Rwanda have no business talking about the Jews and the Arabs.

   No, I would have done things differently, but I don’t live in Sderot or the other cities in the southern part of Israel.

4. David Levy
   January 8th, 2009 @

   Hamid-

   Please tell me precisely what’s typical about what I wrote and what’s incorrect about my presumptions. My trust in Israel is not blind and is not based on a vision of Israel as morally perfect. I’m in fact not addressing Israel’s morality at all. I’m simply saying that peace is in Israel’s best interest, strategically, that the people and the government know this, and that they need to let the world know that they know. I suppose I should add that a campaign like this would mean nothing without strict enforcement of a “no new settlements” policy.

5. Jason Ihle
   January 9th, 2009 @

   Re: David’s comment about proportionality, check out this piece in The New Republic

   http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=d6473c26-2ae3-4bf6-9673-ef043cae914f

   which makes a pretty compelling argument suggesting that disproportionality in war is not about matching death for death, an eye for an eye, tit for tat, but rather about measuring the actions of today against possible future deaths.

   If tit for tat were the yardstick by which reasonable people (and that excludes the ‘make love, not war’, ‘turn the other cheek’, ‘war is wrong’ peace lovers who are not morally serious to begin with) measured proportionality in war, then out the Allied forces of WWII were evil. As Joel points out we firebombed Dresden (and lots of other German cities) and Tokyo and Kyoto (and lots and lots of other Japanese cities, not to mention two atomic bombs dropped). Those measures were taken to break the will of the Japanese and German people and make sure that while an occupying force was on the ground after the war there would be no major insurgency operating under the belief they could beat us. Hmmm, I wonder where we went wrong in Iraq.

   To expand on something Joel touched on, I’m constantly awestruck at the world’s attention any time Israel sneezes in the direction of Palestinians. No, I’m not calling the current action merely a sneeze. But the amount of hysteria the world exhibits in the face of Israeli military action against a recognized and constant threat is dumbfounding. Where was the attention to Russian aggression toward Georgia last year? Where were protesters in the streets? How about for the real genocide that’s been happening in Sudan for the last, what, 6 years?

   The people of the world don’t give a sh-t about the Palestinians any more than they care about countless other groups of oppressed people around the world. What does pique their interest is that it’s Israelis (i.e. the perfidious JEWS) that catch their attention.

   My brother in Ireland tells me there’s a window around the corner from his office where someone has put up a Hamas flag. Nice. Support for a terrorist organization that lists the destruction of Israel as one of its goals. But I don’t really believe putting up that flag is a demonstration of solidarity with Hamas. That kind of crap is actually an anti-Israel statement.

   Now I think I’ve provoked a predictable response.

6. Joel Friedlander
   January 9th, 2009 @

   I am eagerly awaiting Hamid’s reply!

7. michelle
   January 9th, 2009 @

   Josh-I thought you weren’t paying attention. If not, then I recommend you read the front page story in the New York Times today about the plight of Palestinians. Can you really ignore the UN and the Red Cross? Or is it just the entire world (minus the US) against Israel?

   Maybe you should read Haaretz.

   Obviously you do not know that it was Israel who broke the cease-fire, by its incursions into Gaza, which then led to the feeble missle attacks by Hamas. This latest Israeli move is either an attempt to make a move with the ineffectual Bush administration still in power (Hey, maybe Israel thinks Obama really is a Muslim!!) or done to stoke up the Israeli public in advance of Israel’s own elections, which are coming up soon.

   No point in arguing–but there will be no military solution to this. I dont think Israel can get away with killing every Palestinian.

8. Josh
   January 9th, 2009 @

   Michelle: the story has a byline!

9. Hamid
   January 9th, 2009 @

   When I say presumption, I speak of your sense of ownership. You have formed a country on land given to you by European colonialist usurpers who had no right to give away any Arab lands.

   That you have been squatting there for 60 years is also of no importance.

   That you have developed the land better than other Arab countries have developed theirs is just more colonialist dogma and Western European biblical thinking: that God endows the world to those who use it best. That’s a very shallow conception of use. Does a wandering tribe own nothing? Does a small settlement own nothing? Must it build buildings and resorts before it has rights to the land it occupies?

   And all this Holocaust entitlement. Plenty of nations have suffered, but it makes irrelevant the need for a homeland. It’s nice that you feel you deserve one, but why should your need overshadow anyone else’s rights? Finally, you’ll say the Jews owned that land in pre-history. Good luck with that one. No one currently fighting Israel cares about your book or about unprovable claims. But people can remember 60 years ago. It will take longer than that for some of Israel’s founding crimes to disappear. And the crimes committed against you in WWII do not justify your crimes. We can go back and forth of the ends and the means, and clearly those fighting Israel see their means as justified. Do they balance? I don’t know. It is intractable.

10. Jason Ihle
    January 9th, 2009 @

    First – Michelle, Hamas never stopped launching rockets during the entire 6-month ‘cease-fire.’ I agree with you only on your point that there doesn’t really seem to be a military solution. It doesn’t matter how many Hamas security forces they kill, the moment Israel withdraws Hamas will declare victory. And Iran will continue funding them. Guess where Israel’s going next! Watch out Ahmadinejad!

    Second – as I said, predictable response. From Hamid, no less, who trots out all the usual arguments against Israel. Yaaaaaawwwwwwn.

    The land that Israel occupies has always been inhabited by Jews – since the dawn of time. The land was not stolen by anyone for anyone else. It might inform you to learn that the idea of a Palestinian national unity didn’t emerge until AFTER the Zionist movement for a national Jewish homeland began at the end of the 19th century. Palestinians were offered a two-state solution in 1947 alongside Israel which they roundly rejected because they wanted an all-or-nothing solution. They have lived with and continue to live with the consequences of their own bad choices – like electing a terrorist organization into power!

    Yes, the atrocities committed against the Jews in WWII was the final wake-up call to the world that it was time for Jews to have a place where they could go and not have to rely on the fickle benevolence of other nations. Ireland – a neutral country in WWII allowed 12 Jewish refugees entrance. The US, by the way, was not much better in the early years. Yes, Jews were free to live in France, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Italy, etc. until the Germans came marching in and started rounding them up. Why? Because the people and governments of those nations couldn’t be counted on to help the Jews. Spain is exempt because Jews weren’t officially invited back here until around 1983 – fully 500 years after the Inquisition. Thanks a lot!

    But the underlying subtlety of Hamid’s argument is what is so often found in the anti-Israeli posturing. There’s this attempt to equate Israel’s actions against Palestinians with the crimes of WWII. It’s a way for people to sickly justify the Holocaust in their own minds. “See? The Nazis were right. Just look what the Jews are up to now.” It helps people wash away the collective guilt of the Holocaust – particularly here in Europe – where anti-Israeli sentiment is strongest outside the Muslim world. For everyone else, it’s a way to rid themselves of having to constantly feel bad when they’re incessantly reminded of the crimes of the Nazis.

    I mean Jesus, this holiday season saw the release of no fewer than 4 Nazi/WWII/Holocaust themed films.

11. michelle
    January 9th, 2009 @

    Some of us look at Israel and can only understand it like this: the victim becomes the victimizer. Or the abused child becomes the abuser.

    The land belongs to God.

12. David Levy
    January 9th, 2009 @

    Hamid-

    I think you’re the one being presumptuous. I have no interest in arguments related to biblical history. The birth of the Jewish state came from a complicated situation where some Jewish actions were justified and some not. I remember hearing, much to my dismay, an old Jewish guy imply that he had taken part in a massacre. But it was not all massacres and those Jews nasty enough to partake in such acts had plenty of counterparts on the Arab side. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem led what was essentially a proxy of the Nazi military, as he and his group received support and training from the Nazis, in addition to having the shared goal of ridding Palestine of the Jews. This was not just a fight for land, it was a fight for survival. I’m disgusted by the thought that there was even one massacre committed by Jews, but these were very bloody times.

    Back to having no interest in biblical history. Are you more interested in righting what you perceive to be a historical wrong than peace and prosperity for the Palestinians? Israel will negotiate much of its land, but it will not negotiate away its right to exist. The situation is only intractable until both parties accept compromise. Ehud Barak’s 2000 proposal shows that Israel is willing to compromise. We’re halfway there.

13. Essam
    January 10th, 2009 @

    It is so sad that there is some people still believe that Israel is a terrorist country,
    what is the deffernce between Hamas and Israel, if Hamas targeting Civilians in settelments, what Israel is doing in Gaza? 246children killed in Gaza, 97 Women, 89 old, 12 doctor and nurse, targeting an UNRWA school were civilians are refugees there, all of that can not be in any way self defence (except in Israeli theory). and how about not lisenting to the UN? all of that make Israel not only a terrorist country, it is a nazi too. blood of Gaza children will not forgive Israel.
    note for diffrent strokes: the old stupid joke you posted is so True….if you replace the rules between Palestinian and you innicent Israeli solder….
    what a Holocuost!!!

14. David Levy
    January 11th, 2009 @

    Essam-

    I’m sorry, there’s just very little logic to your accusations of murder and claims of a holocaust. I can think of three reasons to commit a massacre, all of them of course despicable:

    1) The eradication of a race or ethnic group. The term for this is genocide, and it was coined by a person appalled by the murder of about a million Armenians in the early part of the 20th century. If Israel is committing genocide, or a ‘holocaust’ as you put it, it’s rather bad at it. With all of those bombs it has, Israel could have evacuated the neighboring Jewish areas and killed all of the Palestinians in Gaza several times over by now.

    2) Intimidation. There is no intimidating a suicidal group like Hamas, and committing a massacre would only increase its ranks.

    3) Expulsion. Massacres often result in the persecuted group deserting their towns. This couldn’t be one of Israel’s goals either, since the Gazans have nowhere to go! Their only other neighbor is Egypt, and they will not let the Gazans in.

    So there you have it. There’s simply nothing that Israel can strategically gain from murder, and the death toll, as high as it is, is far too low to suggest genocide. The only explanation that remains is the one Israel has given all along, that it is fighting Hamas where they are, in defense of Israeli citizens. Unfortunately, Hamas operates in neighborhoods where the overwhelming majority has no interest in killing Israelis but is too afraid to speak up for fear of endangering their families. I think the following NY Times excerpt portrays the main problem quite well:

    A car arrived with more patients. One was a 21-year-old man with shrapnel in his left leg who demanded quick treatment. He turned out to be a militant with Islamic Jihad. He was smiling a big smile.

    “Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting,” he told the doctors.

    He was told that there were more serious cases than his, that he needed to wait. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.

    “Why are you so happy?” this reporter asked. “Look around you.”

    A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.

    “Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.

    “But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”

    What can Israel do to protect its citizens aside from bombing guys like that into oblivion, wherever they are?

15. michelle
    January 12th, 2009 @

    if israel thinks these bombs are the way to protect itself, then sadly it cannot be protected.

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