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Greetings, Arthur,
This
discussion seems to have spilled over into the Futureworks list. I suggest we
return it to the informal email list we were using earlier. Does this make
sense?
Concerning the seizure of Palestine, here are
several references for you:
Menachem Begin, THE REVOLT
Pablo
de Azcarate, MISSION IN PALESTINE, 1948-1952
David
ben-Gurion, MEMOIRS
Gordon
Thomas, GIDEON'S SPIES, THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MOSSAD
Tom
Segev, 1949 THE FIRST ISRAELIS
I.F.
Stone, UNDERGROUND TO PALESTINE
I can
provide you with many more sources that cover the period 1939-1950, but these
will give you a fairly broad and diverse understanding of it. They are all
pretty readable and important. Most of these are pro-Israeli, so you
should feel comfortable with the authors.
Will
you now respond to my questions about the UN charter and the partition
resolution, as well as the three questions in my last email to you, below, or
are you going to ignore them? They are essential to any assertion about the
UN's role in the matter.
Best
regards,
L
OK
Lawry . Tell me again how the Israelis seized Palestine.
Arthur, just how did the UN 'seize'
Palestine?
And, if it or any other body seized Palestine,
would that not be cause for Arab and Palestinian
resistance?
What do you mean by a UN 'settlement' in 48?
What 'settlement'?
L
Lawry,
Arabs dislike Israel not because Israel is rich,
but because the Israelis seized Palestine
arthur
As Pres. Reagan
would have said, "there you go again." Funny I thought the UN
settlement in 48 did that.
The Arabs are not as poor or as ignorant as you
suggest, Ray. They listen to lots of news programs, from all sources.
Remember that these are countries that readily receive the BBC, the
French channels, USIA programs, Radio Moscow, etc., to say nothing of
their own channels. More newspapers are read per capita in the Middle
East than the US. Do you know who the single most
politically astute person was that I ever met outside Washington,
DC? It was an illiterate Moroccan Berber. He lived in a mud house
with his wife and three children, and had electricity. He had two
appliances. One was a naked light bulb hanging from his ceiling. The
other was a short-wave radio. He listened all day, when he wasn't
roaming around southern Morocco, to many radio news broadcasts. It was
at the time that Dukakis was ruinning for the Presidency. He knew far
more about US primary politics than most Americans did. Muhammad
al-Ahd, was his name and we spent a week or so together. He had learned,
in addition to Berber and Arabic, French, English, German, and a
smattering of Spanish and Russian. I do not suggest he is typical,
but he does shatter the stereotype of the ignorant Arab. Arabs are
just as smart as Americans. And they are no dumber about Americans than
Americans are about Arabs. In fact, Arabs probably know more,
because America has been a preoccupation to Arabs for decades, whereas
Americans generally have only bestirred themselves to learn about Arabs
and Islam since September 11. Can you guess what percentage of
Arabs know a passable English? And what percentage of Americans have a
passable Arabic? So rather than seek for the cause of Arab
anti-American sentiment in some shortcoming of the Arabs, let us seek it
in America, and our attitudes and our polices and our behavior: let us
make sure that we ourselves are clean before we go around trying to
clean up others.
Arabs dislike Israel not because Israel is
rich, but because the Israelis seized Palestine. Arabs (and many others)
dislike the US more and more because of US arrogance and bullying, not
because they are ignorant about the US.
I am not saying that poverty can't ever be a
source of political revolution -- it has at various times and places,
like the French Revolution. But I don't believe that it is a significant
factor in anti-US or anti-Israeli sentiment, and it would be a massive
mistake and distraction for us to think otherwise.
Cheers,
Lawry
I question that Lawry,
This is what I heard about the ideology
of the Communists States for years. I think their
backwardness and poverty based upon the fact that they were a peasant
society less than 80 years before they fell was only held at bay
by virtue of their lack of information. As the West
outspent and flooded the East with information about choices and
market plenty, those ideologies were hard pressed to proved their
ultimate success. Once the question was asked the hole was
in the dike and the ocean was not far behind.
How much television from the West in
Arabic is there in the poorer Arab countries? It
doesn't really matter whether the censorship is from the KGB or the
local religious organization, ignorance is ignorance and if that
ignorance keeps them in squalor it is not long before change reasserts
itself.
If you don't know that you are as poor
as American conservatives call "sinful" here, then you have
little to be angry about or at least to focus your anger
on. I've been there too. The expectation is what
you have - where you are. Once
information flows into those countries in Arabic with Western
products, do you really believe it will not make a
difference? Especially if these are products that
have to do with illness, life and death and other ultimate
issues. Affluent Israel is an abomination
to them because the Palestinians don't realize that they are the
poorest of the poor and their elites have been flowing in and out of
the West's stores and businesses on the backs of their people's
poverty. Am I wrong? I can
only tell you what I see. I don't have good feelings about
people who do such things here either as is clear, I hope, by what I
have said thus far on this list. People who are my own
relatives and who do it to me are the most abhorrent of all.
If they are kept in ignorance by
their religion and their leaders then they don't know any
better. In fact there is a kind of childlike quality
about many of the people that I have been on panels
with. They are subtle, clever and as good - as
any American minority ethnic Neo-conservative - at Aristotilian
argument tactics. But when they are not allowed
to set the parameters on the argument they are not as
sophisticated as America's laziest news junkies. I would
add that there are people of similar naivite's on the Israeli side as
well. People who would put their children and
families in a Wild West situation on the West
Bank. That Brooklynite that walked into
the grave of Moses and started firing cared little for
his family IMHO. Such people often are
troublemakers and every group has them. Our version
is urban Indians who move back to a reservation and then try to "fix"
the locals. Our locals usually send them
packing no matter how much blood quantum they happen to
have. I think the Israelis believe that they can
show the way for these people and that is a kind of chauvinism as
well. I believe it will have to come from
within and Israel may be able to help if they can get over their anger
and stop the tendency towards looking for a King that is a part of
their manual and was posted a couple of days ago in an
editorial from an Israeli Newspaper on this list.
But all you need to do is watch your
child die for want of medical attention that is available
elsewhere. Fanatacism can carry you so far but
reality is a great teacher especially if you realize that those who
claim to be your friends, relatives and fellow citizens are playing
you for the fool. The psychology of the bombers
could have been predicted when the great peacenik Rabin started
breaking peoples bones for playing David and throwing
rocks. There is something about situations like this
that makes people incompetant.
They have trouble with "Wannabee" issues
that are the same as trap Indian people here. What
needs to be remembered is that Jews will not forget that Israel
is the birthplace of their relgion and that the other two groups grew
out of the Jewish Genesis. It would be easy to do
away with these three group myths being propogated.
Just have an Internationla scientific body come in and dig up the
countries and tell the truth about what they
find. But that won't happen because all three
groups have told lies about the past. The Christians
about their lineage and their selective choice of which rules they
follow, the Moslems about their lineage and who gave birth to whom, as
if the prophet didn't appear centuries after the death
of Jesus and the Jews about their treatment of women in their
male oriented and canonized texts.
Every religion does
what it must to survive but there comes an accounting and which
myths would each of these groups be willing to give up in order to
achieve peace? They should all remember
the root of the word "sacred" in English.
Sacrifice and unless there is a serious willingness on people of truth
and good will are willing to accept what is found then we will
continue to have Christians praying for the end of the world and
helping the Israelis to do that. Have Moslems
who use their texts to create old governments that don't work and are
incapable of International cooperation and Jews who tramp
into shared sacred places as if they were the only people in the
world that mattered. That is the opposite of the meaning
of the English word "Sacred." There is no
sacrifice, just arrogance and insensitivity.
This is complicated but that is no
excuse. America is about to blow one of the world cultural
treasures off of the face of the earth. Children have been
murdered in the hoarding of medicine and for political purposes on
both sides and the sacrifices of our gallant soldiers covered with the
same spent uranium shit that still haunts the countries where it was
used for economic and expediant reasons. It is time
that we grow up and tell the truth. When did the
concept of social justice become a curse word and a person who wishes
to see both sides of an argument in order to make a wise judgment
become a disloyal "liberal."
REH
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003
4:34 PM
Subject: [Futurework] RE:
Towards a sustainable balance
Greetings, Ed,
I think you are essentially correct in your
assessment that a US attack on Iraq will aggravate the situation in
he Middle East, and create a greater impetus for action against the
US.
Westerners sometimes make the mistake of
assuming that poverty and its alleviation are the keys to reducing
anti-US sentiment. To the extent we are seen as imposing poverty on
people, then, yes, the US is held accountable. But the terrorism
with which we have become preoccupied is not motivated by poverty,
it is motivated by our political policies and actions in the Middle
East. Friedman would have us follow the red herring of poverty, when
the cause of anti-US sentiment is much more proximate to US behavior
toward the Middle East.
Cheers,
L
With all due respect to Thomas Friedman, the situation is a
little more complicated than that. Yes, indeed, the Middle
East is replete with young people who are willing to turn
themselves into missiles rather than tolerate life as it is.
However, how many regimes throughout the region will have to be
taken out, and how many countries democratized, before conditions
are improved to the point where young people see life on earth,
not in paradise, as their best hope? It is just possible,
more likely probable, that Saddam Hussein is something of a hero
to the non-Iraqi young because, unlike their regimes, he has stood
up to the Americans. The Egyptian government receives $2
billion a year in civil and military assistance from the US as a
good-behaviour reward for having signed a peace treaty with
Israel. How much of this money goes to alleviating the
staggering poverty of the country versus the pockets of the
rich? The House of Saud has grown enormously wealthy by
pumping oil to the west and, even though it has done little for
Saudi Arabia's ordinary citizens, it is well able to meet its
historic obligations to the Wahhabist movement, one of the world's
most potent generators of terrorism. Kuwait is seen as
totally under the American thumb while Jordan, which lies
immediately east of Israel, is supposedly an American ally,
but with its large, impoverished Palestinian
population, it is a potential powder keg. How will any of
this be solved by taking out Saddam? It is far more likely
that it will be greatly aggravated.
Ed
Ed Weick
577 Melbourne Ave.
Ottawa, ON, K2A
1W7
Canada
Phone (613) 728
4630
Fax (613) 728 9382
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 26,
2003 12:46 PM
Subject: Towards a
sustainable balance
Greetings from the Pacific
Northwest, where the East winds have
abated and we are socked in with gentle rain.
Everyone is trying to get
their two cents in print before the President’s speech writers
are finished with the final copy of the State of the Union
speech, hoping to influence the thinking and presentation of an
important, time-sensitive public policy moment that will be
gleaned for the smallest details between the lines. Friedman puts a lot of
things into perspective we can understand while raising some
contentious issues that need to be
aired.
We are discussing
consequences here, not just morality about preemptive
force.
Conservatives used to have a strong voice on the intended
and unintended consequences of government. Today, with this White
House, they have lost that edge. Karen Watters
Cole
The earlier column is at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/22/opinion/22FRIE.html I urge you to read it
also if this subject is important to you.
Excerpt
from that:
“What
liberals fail to recognize is that regime change in Iraq is not
some distraction from the war on Al Qaeda. That is a bogus
argument. And simply because oil is also at stake in Iraq
doesn't make it illegitimate either. Some things are right to
do, even if Big Oil benefits.
Although President Bush has
cast the war in Iraq as being about disarmament — and that is
legitimate — disarmament is not the most important prize there.
Regime change is the prize. Regime transformation in Iraq could
make a valuable contribution to the war on terrorism, whether
Saddam is ousted or enticed into exile.”
Thinking
About Iraq (II)
By Thomas L. Friedman, NYT,
01.26.03 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/opinion/26FRIE.html
In
my column on Wednesday I laid out why I believe that
liberals
underestimate
how ousting Saddam Hussein could help
spur positive political change
in the Arab world. Today's column explores
why conservative
advocates of ousting Saddam underestimate the
risks,
and where we should strike the
balance.
Let's
start with one simple fact: Iraq is a black box that has been
sealed shut since Saddam came to dominate Iraqi politics in the
late 1960's. Therefore, one needs to
have a great deal of humility when it comes to predicting what
sorts of bats and demons may fly out if the U.S. and its allies
remove the lid. Think of it this way: If
and when we take the lid off Iraq, we will find an envelope
inside. It will
tell us what we have won and it will say one of two
things.
It
could say, "Congratulations!
You've just won the Arab Germany
— a country with enormous human talent, enormous natural
resources, but with an evil dictator, whom you've just removed.
Now, just add a
little water, a spoonful of democracy and stir, and this will be
a normal nation very soon."
Or
the envelope could say, "You've
just won the Arab Yugoslavia —
an artificial country congenitally divided among Kurds, Shiites,
Sunnis, Nasserites, leftists and a host of tribes and clans that
can only be held together with a Saddam-like iron fist.
Congratulations, you're the new
Saddam."
In
the first scenario, Iraq is the way it is today because Saddam
is the way he is. In the second scenario,
Saddam is the way he is because Iraq is what it is. Those are two very
different problems. And we will know which
we've won only when we take off the lid. The conservatives and
neo-cons, who have been pounding the table for war, should be a
lot more humble about this question, because they don't know
either.
Does
that mean we should rule out war? No. But it does mean that we
must do it right. To begin with, the
president must level with the American people that we may indeed
be buying the Arab Yugoslavia, which will take a great deal of
time and effort to heal into a self-sustaining, progressive,
accountable Arab government. And, therefore, any
nation-building in Iraq will be a multiyear marathon, not a
multiweek sprint.
Because
it will be a marathon,
we must undertake this war with the maximum amount of
international legitimacy and U.N. backing we can possibly
muster. Otherwise
we will not have an American
public willing
to run this marathon, and we will not have allies ready to help
us once we're inside (look at all the local police and
administrators Europeans now contribute in Bosnia and Kosovo).
We'll
also become a huge target
if we're the sole occupiers of
Iraq.
In
short, we can oust Saddam Hussein all by ourselves. But
we cannot successfully rebuild Iraq all by
ourselves.
And the real prize
here is a new Iraq that would be a progressive model for the
whole region. That,
for me, is the only morally and strategically justifiable reason
to support this war. The Bush team
dare
not invade Iraq simply to install a more friendly dictator to
pump us oil.
And it
dare
not simply disarm Iraq and then walk away from the
nation-building task.
Unfortunately,
when it comes to enlisting allies, the Bush team is its own
worst enemy.
It has sneered at
many issues the world cares about: the Kyoto accords, the World
Court, arms control treaties. The Bush team had
legitimate arguments on some of these issues, but the gratuitous
way it dismissed them has fueled anti-Americanism. No, I have no illusions
that if the Bush team had only embraced Kyoto the French
wouldn't still be trying to obstruct America in Iraq. The French are the
French. But
unfortunately, now the Germans are the French, the Koreans are
the French, and many Brits are becoming
French.
Things
could be better, but here is where we are — so here is where I
am: My gut tells me we should continue the troop buildup,
continue the inspections and do everything we can for as long as
we can to produce either a coup or the sort of evidence that
will give us the broadest coalition possible, so we can do the
best nation-building job possible.
But
if war turns out to be the only option, then war it will have to
be — because I believe that our kids will have a better chance
of growing up in a safer world if we help put Iraq on a more
progressive path and stimulate some real change in an Arab world
that is badly in need of reform. Such a war would indeed
be a shock to this region, but, if we do it right, there is a
decent chance that it would be shock therapy.
Outgoing mail scanned by NAV
2002
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