> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > Van: John D. Giorgis [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Verzonden: zondag 24 maart 2002 5:48 > Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Onderwerp: Re: This week in the Middle East
> >Can anyone explain to me why the Palestinians have responded to the > >current attempts to set up peace talks by stepping up the rate of > >suicide bombings to about one every day this past week? One would > >(perhaps naively?) think that if they want peace talks, they would > >take a break from terrorist attacks rather than increase them. The > >following article suggests that I'm not the only one who thinks that > >increased Palestinian violence means that the peace talks should be > >postponed. > > Could it be because the international community insists upon > negotiating with terrorists? Indeed, the international community > seems to consistently respond to increased terrorism from the > Palestinians with euphemastic worries about "violence" and indeed calls > for *even more* negotiations with terrorists? In other words, could > the Palestinians be responding to the peace effort with more terrorism > because they have been conditioned to believe that terrorism is > consistently rewarded by what they want? Only in the minds of people with a black-and-white view in which Israel is the poor innocent victim and Palestinians are the evil terrorists. I know it is popular among the rabid pro-Israel crowd to equate "Palestinian" with "terrorist", but unlike what those people think, the international community is *not* calling for negotiations with terrorists; they are calling for negotiations with what they see as the legitimate Palestinians leadership. What those people fail to see is that there is a difference between the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian terrorists. The terrorists are fundamentalists who do not care one bit about what Arafat thinks, says or does. Demanding that Arafat stops terrorism is therefore ridiculous: the terrorists are not listening to him. It is not the Palestinian Authority who does not want peace with Israel; the militant fundamentelists of Hamas are the ones who do not want peace. > I'm starting to think that the fundamental political failure in the > Middle East is the moral equivalence placed by the rest of the world > between Israelis and Palestinians as if they were just two squabbling > children. Sure both sides kill the other, but one side at least takes > reasonable steps to avoid killing civillians (like evacuating buildings > before it targets them), the other blows up 12-year old girls' bat > mitzvahs and sends young children of @10 to throw grenades at Israeli > Tanks. You know, if there is one thing I find sickening, it is the neverending hammering on "Israeli girl killed" and "Palestinian child throws grenade". Why do people like you keep hammering on that, but conveniently never mention all those Palestinian children killed by Israel? <sarcasm> Oh, let me guess, if an Israeli child is killed by a Palestinian terrorist, it is murder, but if a Palestinian child is killed by an Israeli soldier, it is collateral damage. </sarcasm> > (The footage was shown on ABC News last week - not that the Europeans > will even issue a token statement about child soldiers!) But then, those children are not members of a regular army, so technically they are not soldiers. > In such a topsy-turvy moral environment, I don't see how peace is > *possible* because the international community is continuing to reward, > indeed, incentivize evil actions. > > And sure enough, this sort of policy produces events exactly like we > witnessed yesterday - Yasser Arafat releases a man from prison who had > been jailed for plotting a terrorist attack on Israel, the man promptly > goes and blows up an Israeli bus, and the international community > praises Arafat for actually condmening the attack! Then what do you propose the Palestinian Authority should do with their prisoners? Jail them all for life because they *might* use violence against Israel once they are released? Or maybe execute them all? <sarcasm> Hm, executing them might be a good idea; it would be completely justified, since all Palestinians are really terrorists anyway, and life would become soooo much safer in Israel... </sarcasm> Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com Tom's Photo Gallery: http://tom.vanbaardwijk.com
