Here is a story in the Globe and Mail about an Israeli human rights group that claims that half of the dead in the recent war in Gaza were civilians. The Israeli Defense Force has a similar casuality total but claims that most were fighters. The clear (though unstated) implication of the article is that Israel is a human rights violator and perhaps guilty of war crimes (i.e. deliberately targeting civilians).
I would suggest that someone is guilty of war crimes and of causing needless civilian deaths, but it is not the Israeli Defense Force. It is Hamas. Hamas is the group that locates lethal rocket launchers in private homes and heavily settled urban communities. Hamas is the one that does everything possible to draw Israeli defensive fire into places where civilians are sure to be killed because that makes Israel look bad. They are war criminals and they have no respect for civilian life, including that of women and children.
The problem is that Israel is trying to fight under international rules but Hamas is essentially lawless and barbaric. World opinion should be against Hamas, not Israel, and as long as Palestinian civilians prefer being ruled by Hamas to a real democracy they will ensure that this horrifying status quo continues.
As anti-Israel sentiment grows among the liberal fascists of the Western world, it is time for all those who cherish democracy, liberty and the rule of law to stand by Israel. The disgusting anti-Jewish behaviour of the Arabs of the Middle East is incompatible with the ideals and ethics of the West.
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I agree with JA Tyson. Craig, do you realize that it is precisely the "liberal fascists of the Western world" that do not recognize the statehood of Palestine? If anything this post is anti-Jewish and follows the basic ideological "liberal fascist" line.
Ironically, the direction of your thought is going in a decidedly liberal direction, despite your best intentions.
Jatyson, go be vulgar on your own blog. And get a clue before you come back.
Anti-Jewish? Everyone in Israel and the West is ready to recognize the statehood of Palestine (and that of Israel) except Hamas and its sponsors, who want to keep the war to exterminate Israel going at any cost.
BTW, by "recognize the statehood of Palestine" what do you mean? Do you mean the two-state solution or is that code for an Arab-dominated state and the end of Israel?
Liberal? You don't even know what liberalism is. For you it is just a contentless swear word. Give me a break. Your leftist rants are a joke.
Craig, I don't understand why you don't just admit that you're a liberal. What is the big deal? Just come out and say it. I'm dead serious. How can your support for Hayek-style capitalism be construed in any other way?
And, come on, Craig, who is really guilty of using liberal as a swear word?
I've spent ample time in with Palestinians and Israelis. Have you? Ever spend weeks on weeks living with Palestinians, on the other side of the wall? I don't need a clue, I've got the memories and the relationships, what the hell do you have?
jatyson,
All you have got is semtimentality. You never denied that anything I said was true. You are just emoting.
If your terrorist friends would stop the mad war against the State of Israel that they have carried on since 1947 we might be able to get somewhere. But they play Westerners like you like a fiddle.
Anti-Semitism is not dead in the West; it is always there under the surface and it is virile among the Arabs of the Middle East and all the Leftist movements in the world eg. Hugo Chavez, the canadian trade union movement). Wake up and smell the coffee.
Enough with the demagoguery.
The level of unintelligibility of this post is ground breaking.
1. How can you continually chastise liberalism but claim that one must cherish democracy or be a complete enemy of Israel?
2. How are my Palestinian friends terrorists?
3. How does Israel's illegal occupation respest of the 'rule of law'? And whose 'rule'? Which 'law' nonetheless?
4. There is no such thing as 'world opinion'.
5. I'm still puzzled as to how exactly such things as 'democracy, liberty, and the rule of law' are not ultimately 'liberal'?
6. How is it that Palestinans prefer to be ruled by Hamas. Again, who is ruling in the West Bank?
This is not a defense of the terrorist organization known as Hamas. This is a defense of the Palestinian people who, like you and I, desire education, food, and family.
OK, so you want to debate. Good, let's have a go.
1. Enlightenment Liberals didn't invent democracy; the Greeks did. I'd rather live in a democracy than in a Saudi Arabia or an Iran and I would wish for others what I wish for myself. How about you?
2. Your Palestinian friends are victims of terrorists, but when you join the anti-Israel chorus you make yourself a friend of terrorists.
3. The war the Arabs started in 1947 is not over yet, so how do the Arabs justify starting and continuing that war, which by the way, was just as illegal as any occupation resulting therefrom? Israel would be crazy to withdraw without a peace agreement. Look at what happened in Gaza. How would a repeat of that in the West Bank improve the situation? Missiles hitting Tel Aviv - that is your idea of peace and justice?
We need peace,(yes the whole world needs peace in the Middle East), not more bombings and rockets launched at civilians. (I didn't even mention that atrocity in my post but I should have.) Do you really think Iran wants peace? The only kind of peace their little Hitler of a president wants is the peace of a cemetary full of dead Jews.
4. I meant that the whole civilized world should unanimously express its moral revulsion toward Hamas and its terror methods. Of course it isn't doing so and I think we both know why not.
5. Good question; why do Palestinians prefer to be ruled by Hamas? Because of the insufferable corruption of the mainstream PLO and because they have not risen up as a population and said no to violence, no to anti-semitism, no to being used as pawns by Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, no to being patronized, used and abused by the corrupt elites that have been enabled by the West for the last 50 years. Maybe its time they took a different tack. Democracy is only useful if it is used wisely.
You say this is not a defence of Hamas. But I took dead aim at Hamas in my original post and you went ballistic. Nuff said.
Actually, its utterly disingenuous of you to claim that this post is merely an attack on Hamas. In the post you explicitly claim that "Palestinian civilians prefer being ruled by Hamas to a real democracy". This is simply not true for the vast majority of Palestinians, many of whom are Christians but I guess that doesn't matter in the least to you.
You also spuriously speak of the "disgusting anti-Jewish behaviour of the Arabs of the Middle East" thereby placing the blame squarely not just on Hamas but on all Palestinian civilians whom you charge with antisemitism simply because they want to live normal lives and not get their houses bulldozed without reason.
Also what on earth is the deal with the ludicrous statement that anti-Judaism is "incompatible with the ideals and ethics of the West"? Last time I checked it was the West who committed genocide against the Jewish people in the twentieth century and before that the greatest enemy of the Jews was Christianity.
This post betrays a mind-numbing ignorance that is quite sad. If you'd ever actually spent any time studying the situation in Gaza and the West Bank perhaps you'd be able to speak with some degree of persuasiveness and intelligence about this issue. As it is you're just foaming at the mouth about antisemitism because clearly you have a visceral fear and hatred of Arabs whom you functionally equate with Islam and terrorism.
BS, (for short)
Its nice that you have had the opportunity to psychoanalyze me so that you can tell me about my motivations.
The Palestinian people voted for Hamas so they do bear responsibility for the foreseeable results of that decision. However, they were caught in a tragic situation with the corrupt PLO as the only alternative. And many of them didn't vote for Hamas. And many more are scared to stand up to the thugs. If you think I don't appreciate the tragic complexity of the situation, you are mistaken.
I don't believe anyone except the Palestinain people themselves can solve this problem. They must form a new party and elect that party. Then they must root out terrorism and negotiate a just peace settlement. Nobody can do that for them, but whatever outsiders can do to encourage that we should do.
As for Arab anti-Semitism, it is real no matter how you want to spin it. Look at the president of Iran's public comments and then imagine what he says in private. When the Protocol of the Elders of Zion is repudiated by all Arab states and school textbooks start treating Jews with respect, then progress will have been made.
Your anti-Westernism is sad and pathetic. You remind me of people who castigate the West for the African slave trade, when in fact the Arab black African slave trade is older and more widespread and still going on, whereas it was abolished by the West 150 years ago at great cost (including a bloody war). The Nazis were not "the West" but a modern, anti-Christian, pathological distortion of the West. And they were utterly defeated and stamped out at tremendous cost by the West. You slander your forefathers with such statements.
As for equating Arabs and Islam with terrorism, oh I see, you are right. How on earth could anyone make a connection like that? I mean, have the Arabs ever done anything violent to Israel? And its not as if terrorists operating in the name of Islam have very, you know, flown planes into buildings or blown up buses. Oh, wait . . .
So maybe if I'd spent time on the
West Bank I'd realize all that was jusftified. Then again, maybe not.
To All My Critics:
I would like you to have the courage to admit your position on two issues.
1) Do you support a unitary state of Palestine including all the territory designated by the UN in 1946 for the Jews and all that designated for the Arabs? Or do you support a two state solution?
2) Do you think Israel is guilty of the emotionally loaded term "apartheid" or not?
I just want to know with whom I am dealing here. I think you can be a critic of specific actions taken by the State of Israel without being anti-Jewish. But I don't think you can be against the continued existance of the State of Israel and escape being shunned and isolated by right thinking people as anti-Jewish. Are we having a rational discussion here or are we re-playing the 1930's? Just asking.
Do you really think the election of Hamas is an accurate representation of the Palestinian people? I suppose you think Ahmadinejad was legitimately reelected in Iran as well? Please. When massive corruption, threats of violence, and actual violence are being applied to a population to manipulate votes how can you then turn and blame the people for the result? This is another area where you would do well to educate yourself about the middle east, Craigy.
Now, some other falsehoods you've spouted should be pointed out. First off, you say that we shouldn't really care about the West's slave trade because other people did/do the same sort of thing? Hmmm, there's a logic for you.
You should probably remember that the slave trade (esp sex trafficking) is still a reality in the West as much as anywhere else in the world. Pretending that we have the moral high ground on that issue is simply false and reflects inadvertent or willful ignorance.
Secondly, the idea that Nazism is somehow not "the West" is stupid beyond belief. That's like saying that segregation wasn't committed by "America." Its a silly and ideological redefinition of "the West" to just include whatever virtues you happen to believe in. Nazism is utterly unintelligible outside of its distinctly Western nature. Hitler just picked up the threads of the worst moments of Luther and plenty of Popes. Antisemitism has always been a part of Western Christendom. If you deny that you're as much of an ideological revisionist as any Holocaust denier.
Furthermore, the idea that the West stamped out the Nazis owes more to John Wayne movies than to any actual study of history. If anyone is responsible for the crippling defeat of Hitler it is the USSR and no one else. Read a history book. Russian lost around 10,000,000 soldiers bringing down the third reich to America and England's measly 800,000 or so. The idea that "the West" stamped out the Nazis is simply false. You owe Stalin a thank you card.
Equating Arabs with terrorists as you do is a stupid and racist as equating all Mexicans with drug czars.
Let us use our imaginations for a moment. If some Texan terrorist group started suicide bombing Mexican cities and Mexico's response was to deliver massive air strikes to cities and villages in the U.S. that intentionally targeted civilians, would anyone deem that acceptable? Of course not. But that is what Israel does all the time. To be sure Hamas is a vile terrorist organization, but that does not excuse a regime to do whatever it wants to civilians who are just doing their best to survive in a place where they have no civil rights and where any laws that should protect them are regularly and intentionally not enforced by those in power.
The idea that Israel bears no responsibility for any of this is simply an ideologically induced and utterly disgusting sort of dishonesty. I really hope you shed yourself of it by doing some actual study of the matter at some point.
BS,
You sound like a typical PC apologist for the Soviet Union. What a joke! Do you really expect anyone to take you seriously? England sacrificed her empire to stop Hitler and the US threw everything into the war effort. Many of your own countrymen made the supreme sacrifice to do it and you state that it was the Soviet Union who deserves our thanks? you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Maybe the war wouln't have even begun if Stalin had not entered into a pact with the Devil. And the Communist take-over of Eastern Europe was as much a disaster as the Nazi conquest of it.
As for blaming the Church. Sure, you can go ahead spouting the usual leftist line and politically correct revisionism. But that only reveals a self-loathing that needs psychological explanation.
You accuse Israel of deliberately targeting civilians. That is a grave charge and it is essentially slander. You are ideologically blinded by your anti-Western and anti-Christian bias and you see everything through a lens that is distorting.
Boy this topic really brings out the crazies.
Alas, the only crazy here is you. All I've done is provide facts. Don't believe me about the casualties of WWII? Read a history book. Or if that's too much work take a gander on wikipedia.
I deplore the evil actions of the USSR, but the facts about WWII are just that, facts. As is the fact that Nazism is decidedly Western as is Antisemitism.
I certainly do not loathe myself. If anything I like myself far too much.
What I don't do is concoct lies and hysteria to justify myself in my own mind. If anyone needs psychological evaluation sir, it is you. The mere presence of facts seems so disturbing to you that they send you into a state of blind unthinking rage. I really do hope this changes for you at some point and you cease to be so threatened by truthful analysis and actual facts of history.
Well, actually, the Palestinian elections are some of the most closely watched by international groups in the entire world. Evidently, the election of Hamas was quite a clean democratic process, representing the will of the people.
What wasn't clean about the elections was not from Palestinian militant political regimes, but United States' involvement. The US massively funded the Fatah party, yet Hamas still won. Can you imagine if Iran started funding the democratic party? People would be hysterical.
My point in raising this is just to point out that despite some of the rhetoric from left of center leaders in the West, it is really inaccurate to say that Palestine has a lot of support. Think about the "war" a few years ago when Israel went into Lebanon and started cluster bombing the hell out of them. Do you remember that? I can't remember the body count, but Israel killed tens of thousands of more people, mostly civilians while displacing many more tens of thousands. Do you remember what the international community said then? They said, we are in full support of Israel protecting herself. The US, much of Europe, and Canada supported Israel's "self-defense."
Again, my point is that the US and Canada is a strong supporter of Israel and that has not changed under Obama. Hilary Clinton, of course, is staunchly pro-Israel more than most republicans. I just want to make sure we at least have this straight.
Despite some rhetoric of Israel's "occupation" etc., when push comes to shove the US and most of the Western world sides with Israel, even to the point of interfering with Palestinian elections.
This is not even to mention the billions of dollars of aid that the US gives to Israel for her military, which is by the way, one of the biggest in world. Israel is a massive military machine with full support of the US--for God's sake, we give them cluster bombs!
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