> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > Van: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Verzonden: Thursday, December 27, 2001 20:41 > Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Onderwerp: RE: Tragedy in Israel
> Jeroen: > Then what is enough? I get this feeling that people like you believe > that we should fully and unconditionally support Israel and its > actions, and fully and unconditionally condemn the Palestinians. > Anything less than that seems to be unacceptable. > > Me: > Oddly enough, no. Your behavior, though - of fully and unquestioningly > condemning Israel while making all efforts to justify anything done by > Palestinians - up to defending terrorists who have, in fact, sought to > murder children against the "cheap shot" of calling them people who > seek to murder children, is what I am criticizing here. <sigh> For the umpteenth time, on the off-chance that you might finally realise it, I am NOT defending terrorists. What I DID do was criticising the fact that you made it look as if children were the *only* target. That is NOT "defending terrorists". By your logic, I would be defending Nazi Germany when I say that the Nazi�s did not persecute only Jews. As for Israel, give me one reason why I should NOT condemn occupation and oppression. > But you condemn the free democracy that accords its people religious > freedom and basic civil rights but barely even make a token effort to > attack the suicide bombers. Rights? Such as, for instance, the right of Palestinians who live in the Occupied Territories but work outside them to be able to go to work -- something that is made impossible regularly because Israel regularly seals off entire areas? The right of Palestinians to have demonstrations against the way they are treated, without being shot at by the Israeli army? The right of Palestinians to live in freedom, without oppression? And what do you mean, "barely even make a token effort"? Do the US media filter out anything that puts Israel in a bad light perhaps? Because every time we hear of a terrorist attack, very soon afterwards we hear of Israeli retaliation attacks on Palestinians... Nitpick: it is impossible to attack suicide bombers. By the time you know there is a suicide bomber, he has already blown himself up and therefore is already dead. > > Should Israel be at its 1967 borders? Its 1948 borders? > > Jeroen: > Definitely its 1948 borders. I am pretty sure that the people who in > 1948 decided on where the Israeli borders should be gave it a lot of > thought. I do not think they just threw a few darts at the map of the > Middle East to decide where the borders should be. > > Me: > Actually, Jeroen, Israel's 1948 borders were established by conquest. Nope. In 1947 or 1948, Resolution 181 (in which the founding of independent Jewish and Arab states is demanded) was accepted. On May 14th 1948, the British mandate over Palestine expired and the State of Israel was founded. You cannot found a country without giving it borders. Those are the borders Israel should stick to, not the borders it got through several wars. > Assume for a moment that back in 1948 we had done the right thing and > not only mark an area on the map and call it "Israel", but > simultaneously had marked another area and call it "Palestine". Would > the US have accepted it if the Palestinian government would promptly > have invaded other countries because it was not happy with the borders > it was given? This is a yes/no question. > > Other example. The Dutch/German border is more or less a straight line > running north/south. However, some way down from the top it looks as if > Germany has taken a bite out of The Netherlands, which resulted in a > more or less rectangular piece of Germany that is surrounded on three > sides by The Netherlands. Would you find it acceptable if the Dutch > would occupy that area because it would make the Dutch border better > defensible? Again, a yes/no question. > > Me: > I'm so glad you said that, Jeroen. After the defeat of Germany in 1945 > the victorious allies redrew the map of Europe. One of the things they > did was take Alsace-Lorraine (previously disputed French-German > territory) and make it exclusively French. They took a large part of > Germany's Eastern border and ceded it to Poland. I believe that the > Netherlands picked up some territory in this process, although I'm not > sure about that. Why were these things morally justified? Because > Germany had attacked its neighbors repeatedly, so its neighbors had to > have borders that they could defend against Germany. So the answer to > your question is that no, it's not okay to conquer someone else to give > yourself defensible borders. But that's not what happened in the > Middle East, nor is it what happened in Europe. You are contradicting yourself here. You say in the above paragraph that border adjustments through conquest did not happen, but earlier on in the same post you say: > Israel's 1948 borders were established by conquest. The pre-war of > pre-war of independence borders were indefensible. When every Arab > state attacked with the explicit and declared purpose of eradicating > the state of Israel - they were smashed by Jewish forces and the size > of Israel was doubled. So the borders of Israel - like those of pretty > much every other state in the world - were decided by force of arms. I also note that you did not answer that other yes/no question, the one about a Palestinian state attacking its neighbours because it was not happy with the borders it was given. > I don�t hear you complaining about the injustice of the German border > adjustments. Why not? Why should I? Unlike Israel, Germany is not waging war against its neighbours. > Jeroen: > Since we are accusing those fundamentalists of being terrorists, I do > not have to provide evidence of their numbers. If someone believes that > those fundamentalists make up a large part of the population, it is up > to him/her to prove it. I do not have to prove that a large number of > people are NOT terrorists. > > Me: > Dan M. has proven it before I could, and he can do a better job > anyways. You mean that poll he mentioned? Then you probably also noticed that a some of us questioned the validity of polls, and probably also noticed that we are still waiting to see the underlying data. > There was quite a lot of terrorism in Germany (1970's mostly, by the > left-winged Rote Armee Fraktion). Several RAF members fled to Eastern > Europe. Do you think it would be acceptable if Germany had invaded and > occupied Eastern European countries in order to find the terrorists? If > so, why? If not, why not? > > Me: > It would have been unwise, but not immoral. German democracy was > attacked by terrorists who were sponsored by the Communist states on > its border. Of _course_ it had the right to defend itself against > them. If those Communists states refused to help, then it had the > right to attack them. > Sponsoring terrorists is an act of war. India is threatening to attack > Pakistan right now for sponsoring terrorists within India. I hope that > it does not - at this moment in time, that would be unwise. But it > clearly has the _right_ to do that. > The United States just destroyed the government of Afghanistan for > harboring the terrorists who attacked us. Yet, despite all the money you spend on it, all the troops you send there, and all the bombs you dropped (and are still dropping) you still have not managedf to capture the one man you were after... > You appear to feel that if terrorists attack a country then take refuge > in another that refuses to extradite them, then the attacked country > should do nothing. I do not believe it would be justified to attack a country for that, no. You would be dragging the population of two countries into a war, just to capture a few terrorists. To me, that is like blowing up your house to kill a mouse. Let�s say a bunch of Israeli�s with a hatred of Arabs cross the border with Jordan, blow up something (or some people) and then return to Israel. Jordan then rightfully sees this as an act of terrorism and demands that the terrorists be extradited. Israel refuses to do so. Jordan then invades Israel to destroy the Israeli government and get the terrorists. You yourself say that it would not be immoral, and that a country has the right to do that. Yet, do you really believe that the US would allow that to happen? Do you really believe that the US would either stay out of it altogether, or join forces with Jordan? > The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are not part of another country. The > most you can say is that Israel has launched attacks in disputed > territory to which it also has a claim and over which it has de facto > authority. Wrong. The Gaza Strip belonged to Egypt, the Golan Heights belonged to Syria and the West Bank belonged to Jordan. All three were occupied by Israel in 1967. Those territories do therefore not belong to Israel. Besides, if they would belong to Israel, why would the rest of the world call them "Occupied Territories", huh? > Me: > > If I understand it correctly, you're saying that you believe that > > Israel's behavior in the Middle East is so bad that when a country > > randomly launches missiles at Israeli cities - that's okay with you? > > Jeroen: > That is not what I said. I did not say that is was okay for Iraq to > launch missiles at Israel -- I said we should not have defended Israel. > Israel�s military might is such that it can defend itself. > > Me: > And so, to you, that excuses you of the moral duty to aid someone else > unjustly attacked? I note with interest that the US has a twisted sense of moral duty when it comes to helping people who are unjustly attacked. The Turkish government is still waging war against the Kurds in Eastern Turkey. Why are the US not bombing Ankara? China is still occupying Tibet. Why are the US not bombing Beijing? > Jeroen: > What I said was that we should not send our soldiers to Afghanistan to > fight your war. I have no problem with our Intelligence Agencies > working together to find the terrorists and bring them to justice. > Me: > So, what happened in Afghanistan was just our war? The invocation of > Article V, that doesn't mean anything to you? Oh, it does mean something to me: a huge mistake. There has been terrorism in several European countries for decades. Yet, none of them ever asked NATO to invoke article V. Yet, when terrorism hit the US for a change, suddenly we are supposed to join you in fighting terrorism... Terrorists in Europe regularly fled across the borders, and not necessarily the borders with Eastern Europe. If any European country would have attacked any other European country to which a terrorist fled, Western European countries would still be waging against each other. > You have, on many occasions, criticized the US for not moving faster in > Bosnia. That was clearly not our war. Why then do you blame us for > failing to send soldiers fast enough to fight in what was very clearly > someone else's war? That was an entirely different situation. It was not a war of Western Europe against former Yugoslavia, our intervention was a peace mission to help the civilian population and seperate the warring factions. Since America always boasts of being a defender of peace, human rights etcetera, it made perfect sense that you would join us. Yet, we had to drag you in kicking and screaming. Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com Tom's Photo Gallery: http://tom.vanbaardwijk.com
