At 12:48 24-12-01 -0500, Gautam Mukunda wrote: >Jereon, I think what bothers those of us who read your opinions on the >Middle East
I believe that the phrase "some of us" is more appropriate here than "those of us"... >is that you seem to refuse to acknowledge that a lot of Arabs - >perhaps even a majority of the Palestinians - _do_ want to destroy Israel >and will do everything they can to achieve that. Arab terrorists attack >Israeli children. Israel attacks Arab terrorists. Also, Arabs attack other targets as well; Israel also attacks innocent people and jails members of her own population for publicly disagreeing with the Israeli government. Now, I realise that sometimes children get killed in terrorist attacks, but to make it seem as if they are the only targets of Arab terrorists is a cheap shot IMO. >And you seem to prefer the terrorists. No, I do not prefer the terrorists. As I have pointed out repeatedly, I do not support actions that kill innocent people. In the conflict as a whole, however, I do side with the Palestinians. I do not advocate the destruction of Israel, but I do believe the Palestinians have as much right to their own country as the Israeli's have. I do believe that Israel has no right to treat the Palestinians in the way they are treating them. >Do you acknowledge that a powerful segment of the >Palestinians _does_ intend to destroy Israel? That's a yes or no question. I know there is a segment of the Palestinians that want to destroy Israel. Their power is, however, limited. Hamas does not equal the Palestinian Authority; as usual with fundamentalists, they are very vocal but also relatively small in numbers. I was not, BTW, saying that *all* Palestinians are peace-loving people who would be quite happy to live with their Israeli neighbours. I was trying to get the point across to Ilana that, despite her apparent beliefs, not all Palestinians (and not all Arabs) want to kill her and destroy Israel. >Do you believe that Israel has a right to defend itself from those who wish >to destroy it? That's _also_ a yes or no question. Yes, but within certain limits. Israel occupies foreign territories, punishes innocent people for terrorist attacks, and arrests and jails people whose only "crime" it is that they speak out against the Israeli government. The first one is not an act of self-defence, it is an act of aggression. When a country engages in the second and third activity, it is not acting in self-defence but is committing war crimes. >Jeroen: >We do? How? We still do business with Israel. We still maintain diplomatic >relations with Israel. We aided in the defense of Israel during the Gulf >War. We do not round up and deport Israeli's when Israel launches another >attack against the Palestinians. Heck, the Dutch Minister of Defense even >supported Israel's most recent actions against Yasser Arafat. > >Me: >Every so often I feel like calling you on things like this, Jeroen. _How_, >exactly, did the Netherlands aid in the defense of Israel during the Gulf >War? Give us an example of an _action_, nor rhetoric (if there was even >that). As was obvious from the part you snipped, the "we" did not refer to The Netherlands, but to Europe. I do not know what exactly the other European countries did, but I do know that the Dutch did deploy mobile ground-to-air-missile launchers to take out Scuds. The numbers and exact locations were (for obvious reasons) kept secret at the time; I do not know if that information has already been made public. >And notably, you don't point out whether you _supported_ that >defense or not. Was it correct for the US and Britain to take steps to >stop the Scud launches on Israel? IIRC, the US has an agreement with Israel that it will defend Israel against attacks. Under that agreement, the US were correct in trying to stop Scud attacks. I am not sure if Britain has a similar agreement with Israel, but I am pretty sure the rest of Europe does not have such an agreement with Israel. Given Israel's behaviour in the Middle East, I do not believe we should have defended her. >And doesn't it tell you something that >when Israel was attacked by Iraq during the Gulf War - with no provocation >whatsoever - it was met by celebrations in Arab cities? It only confirms what we already knew: that part of the Arab population wants to see Israel destroyed. It does not prove that all Arabs want to see that goal achieved. After the Sept. 11 attacks, there were people in the US who would have been happy to see Afghanistan nuked. Does that mean that *all* Americans thought nuking Afghanistan was a good idea? Guess not. Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com Tom's Photo Gallery: http://tom.vanbaardwijk.com
