President Obama continued a pattern of declaring deceitful formal support of Israel while throwing coded support for Palestinians to the Democratic base, which is, disgracefully, largely siding with the anti-Israel forces in Europe. His reluctance to commit the moral weight of his office against the conduct of Hamas and behind Israel was embarrassingly clear when he said, “I also think it is important to remember that Hamas acts extraordinarily irresponsibly when it is deliberately siting rocket launchers in population centers, putting populations at risk because of that particular military strategy.” Intentionally placing its own citizens, including children, in harm’s way to maximize photo-ready casualties that can turn world opinion against Israel is not “irresponsible.” The President trying to play both ends against the middle in the Gaza crisis is irresponsible. Using Gazans as human shields when Hamas forces Israel to respond militarily to missiles and tunnels is indistinguishable from evil, and the President, were he responsible, would say so unequivocally. Instead, he resorts to weasel words, equivocations. Surely, this President extolled for his eloquence knows the meaning of the words he uses.
Then, this week, Obama gave us this:
“I have no sympathy for Hamas. I have great sympathy for ordinary people who are struggling within Gaza.”
Godwin’s Law be damned: a Nazi Germany analogy is instructive here.
Ordinary German citizens elected Hitler’s party to power; ordinary German people stood by while he set in motion horrific events, and ordinary German people suffered terribly when the tide of war turned against Nazi Germany. Abby Mann’s superb stage adaptation of his screenplay and teleplay for “Judgment at Nuremberg” (my theater company recently produced the play, and damn well) presented both the claim of German citizens after the war that their leaders, but certainly not the people who put them in power, deserved condemnation for war crimes, and the rebuttal for that claim. Hitler couldn’t have murdered six million Jews without the knowledge and support of the German people, and Hamas couldn’t continue its deadly, indeed insane and terroristic, policies without the support of the “ordinary people,” who may be “struggling within Gaza,” but they also elected Hamas to lead them, knowing it was committed to exterminating Israel.
They allowed and tacitly approved of Hamas diverting resources intended to build the region into arms and tunnels. Even now, polls show that 80% of the Gazan public supports Hamas. I listened to a kind, gentle NPR report on Gaza that was dripping with implied criticism of Israel, but ended with the jaw-dropping admission that the Gazans, including the terrified Palestinian parents interviewed in the program, didn’t want the conflict to end “without Gaza winning something.”
The ordinary people of Gaza are exactly as complicit in Hamas’s conduct and the consequences of it as the German people were complicit in the crimes of the Third Reich.
sympathy,noun
1. feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune.
“they had great sympathy for the flood victims”
synonyms: compassion, caring, concern, solicitude, empathy; More
commiseration, pity, condolence, comfort, solace, support, encouragement;
consideration, kindness2. understanding between people; common feeling.
“the special sympathy between the two boys was obvious to all”
synonyms: rapport, fellow feeling, affinity, empathy, harmony, accord, compatibility
Which definition of “sympathy” is appropriate for the President of the United States to apply to the “ordinary people‘ of Gaza that put Hamas in power and supports its actions now, actions that are killing their own children?
Neither of them.
_______________________
Sources: HuffPo, Washington Post
Ethics Alarms 
People tend to become a reflection of their rulers. I very much doubt that anyone in Gaza is under any misapprehension of what their rulers’ methods and motives are. Maybe they didn’t understand fully that they would become mass sacrifices as they have, but that is merely the consequence of stupidity that was born of savagery. They all counted on a disinformed public opinion in the world to protect them from the vengeance of those they mercilessly attacked. It didn’t work. Too bad.
I heard rumors that the Japanese had a similar problem in the 1940’s.
They weren’t alone, either. Savagery and fanaticism is a communicable disease.
If I were a Hamas leader, I’d change tactics. A group of forty could sneak over our border, rent three dozen Fords, buy several cartons of Marlboros, and simply drive around the West as they threw their cigarette butts out the window on a windy, dry day. They could lay waste to most of California in an afternoon.
Another commando group could sneak over our border, buy some guns at a local gun show, and lay waste to a prominent synagogue. (The Qataris would finance it.)
For this reason, I would concur with respect to your assessment that they are stupid. Look at what 9/11 accomplished, and just imagine how things would change here if they tried something like this.
It is in our national interest to forge a just solution.
I think that’s already happening here, Steve. They’d have big trouble buying a lot of weaponry at a gun show! However, our attorney general has made that unnecessary. They have little more problem acquiring arms than the jihadists do. A “just solution” occurs when terrorists and bandits are lying dead in their tracks.
One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter. Those Colonists would have been labeled as such in 1776.
That’s what all the left wing freakos say, Steve. But that’s not the case at all, as I’m sure you’re aware. In any war, ugly things happen. But was there any orchestrated policy of atrocity against civilians during the War of Independence? Did you see Tories systematically tortured and beheaded; man, woman and child? Did you ever hear of American children strapping bombs to themselves to blow up British soldiers or Tories? Would you even begin to compare the leaders of the Revolution- in their stated aims and deeds- to those of Al Fatah, Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood? There’s all the difference there between civilized men forced to take up arms for freedom and that of lunatic savages to whom human life means nothing. Don’t even try to make that idiotic comparison to me, Holland. All you’ve done here is to place yourself off on the deep end and erase your credibility.
In the South, the internecine warfare was brutal. The IRA was known for indiscriminate violence, and Menachem Begin was a leader of Irgun. And let us not forget the Mystic Massacre. The weapons you have determine what kind of war you will fight. And I can’t think of a war that is not brutal, which is why it is a thing to be avoided.
One of the problems with religious zealots is that they do not fear death. In war, that is an enormous tactical advantage. If Muslims prefer to live in a theocracy, don’t they have that choice? I think that religious people ought to be presumed crazy until proven otherwise, but it is their lives. The trick with self-determination is in accepting what the people choose.
“If Muslims prefer to live in a theocracy, don’t they have that choice? I think that religious people ought to be presumed crazy until proven otherwise, but it is their lives. The trick with self-determination is in accepting what the people choose.””
Shifting the goalposts. No one is arguing against self-determination. Not one bit. If the wretched muslims want to elect themselves a horrendous dictatorship, no one will stop them.
The “Palestinians” have been given that chance. Instead, they elected a group that would rather annihilate another group’s right to self-determination. At that point, all bets are off. They don’t matter anymore…if your whole existence is the utter unwilling destruction of another group, you don’t get your way.
And that is the key characteristic you anti-Israel groups willfully ignore. And at this point, you are just as guilty as the rest.
You might recall that I mentioned “an orchestrated policy of atrocity”, Holland. I also agreed that war is a barbarous business by nature, as we all know. But when terror is a chosen and upheld instrument of a state’s policy, then that’s a different story. Your pointing out scattered examples of potential brutality in American history is obviously just another (and usual) attempt to justify a terrorist group that the Left approves of by utilizing false moral equivalency.
Moslems tend to live in semi-theocratic dictatorships because that’s what the Koran essentially calls for. It also calls for warfare by any means against all non-Moslems. In this and its other moral precepts, it is at fundamental odds with Christianity and Judaism.
You’ve made it plain that you espouse atheism, yet you defend a murderous “religion” and its theocracy against others who not only defend themselves and their people, but have actually liberated great numbers of Moslems (those who want to live in peace, regardless of Mohammed’s bloody edicts) from those selfsame tyrants.
There’s a reason for that, too. Secular leftism and Mohammedism- despite one being godless and the other worshipping a bloody devil- have points in common that they cannot share with Judeo-Christianity. A strict intolerance for any divergent point of view is a point of your commonality. Another is your common view of Christendom as a block in your designs for power. This is buttressed by fear. Both groups are aware that the Gospel of Jesus, when given free rein, will attract adherents from their ranks. Thus, no New World Order or Islamic Caliphate can co-exist with Judaism or the Christian Church. This is at the basis of the jihadists insane hate for Israel and America and all they stand for. It’s also the basis for that of the Left.
Thank you for calling it what it is…pure evil.
I am glad to hear someone finally say what is obvious: the Gazans support Hamas. Therefore, they are agreeing to the terms of the conflict. Wars end not when some beneficent ruler decides the people have had enough carnage. Wars end when the people can no longer take the beating.
The United Nations, et al are responsible for the current ongoing strife around the world. The notion of proportional response to evil is what is keeping those conflicts going on and on. No one is ever a clear winner. The people that push proportional response are the same people that wind up profiting from war (politically and economically). They are either incredibly naïve or insanely corrupt.
Evil must be met with overwhelming force or it will fester, regaining strength, biding its time until it rears it head up to strike again and again. Does it matter whether 1000 die in one day if it prevents 5000 civilian deaths over a longer term? If you want to stop civilian deaths then you must eradicate the evil that sets the stage for its occurrence.
Excellent comment, Chris.
And what about Gazans who did NOT vote for Hamas? Are they responsible too? You’re painting with too broad of a brush here Jack.
It is no different than in 1942 Japan.
I agree with your statement. I think we are just looking at this differently.
War ethics Beth.
It sucks but we can’t avoid victory by wringing hands over the potentially innocent– far worse results from painstakingly and impossibly attempting to identify the anti-hamasians…
Here’s the mitigating methodology: tell civilians to leave the area.
(Guess what? Israel did that)
Beth:
Those that did not vote for Hamas but stand quietly by while the leadership does as it chooses is tacitly complicit in the act. Failing to speak out because of fear is no excuse if you are a patriot. Where is the outcry from the Gazan opposition to Hamas?
I don’t know. Dodging rocket attacks maybe? Burying their dead?
That’s the Israelis dodging the rockets, Beth. They also have dead children to bury, from rockets and from Arab kids with explosives wrapped around them.
The vast majority of Hamas rockets are shot down and do no damage to Israeli citizens. The numbers reflect this. As for body count, there are far more dead kids in Gaza.
And as far as comparisons go, I expect more from Israel. They can protect themselves without causing this level of devastation.
Can they? When fighting for their lives means they are forced to take out enemy positions that are carefully positioned in schools, cities, hospitals and homes?
If a person holds their child up in front of themselves and shoots at you from behind the child are you obligated to let them go on shooting until you can get a clear shot around the child. It’s the people hiding behind civilians and children who are putting their own children in the line of fire.
We’ve had more deaths this year in Chicago than in all of Israel. The government isn’t sending in missiles to destroy the city. And your analogy is just wrong. These people aren’t in Israel right now with their children using them as shields. They are in their houses sending up their crappy rockets, over 90% of which are being shot down. But — even though Israelis aren’t getting hurt — they are still blowing up these homes. And didn’t four kids die on a beach just a few weeks ago? No Hamas weapons there.
I hate how any criticism of Israel reads as anti-Israel. I support its right to exist. I do not support they way it is waging this war. Important difference. And I don’t think the US should be sending money that can be used to buy weapons. We should stay out of it.
You didn’t just compare a political insurgency with military objectives to crime in Chicago did you? Did you really make that false analogy?
A closer comparison would be, say, a cluster of insurgents, in… Say… Charleston, SC gathering together to bombard a military installation in the harbor. Do you think the government would be right to fight back then?
Who has accused you of being anti-Israel? Guilty conscience much?
My point is a simple one Tex. You don’t fight mosquitoes with tanks — regardless of political motivation.
“Mosquitos” aren’t armed to the teeth.
A very apt objection, eating at the prime problem with Beth’s analogy…
That’s a fallacy. The little guy, the relentless harasser,who constantly assaults a stronger adversary knowing that he dare not defend himself lest he be condemned as a bully is the one in the wrong, deserves to be decked, and when he is decked, deserves no sympathy whatsoever.
Beth seem to be equating incompetence with having the moral high ground. Just because you can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun, from inside the barn, doesn’t mean you’re right.
1) Mosquitoes vs tanks is a completely false analogy in this instance.
but if it weren’t
2) I’m not sure what military tactics schools you’ve attended or what extra curricular reading you’ve done (I’ve attended plenty and read tons), but there is no military principle that goes against the notion of using tanks against mosquitoes since the objective of war is to win.
Beth:
When a mosquito bites me I fight back with overwhelming force. I slap my arm an squash the bug. No more problem from him. Unfortunately the breed and if I want to prevent a mosquito borne disease I up the ante.
So, If the shooter is across the street shooting into my house and I’m wearing body armor it’s OK for him to keep on shooting?
Do you realize what you’re saying? You’re saying that just because the Israelis, after pitiless attacks over the years in this manner, have managed (out of sheer necessity) to put in place a system that can take out most of these rockets, this negates their right to destroy these weapons before they can be used. No defensive system is perfect, Beth. Those rockets still kill people. Nor can the Iron Dome continue to shoot down rockets forever. The Israelis are doing what they must out of a duty to protect their own people. They’ve done their best to hold down the civilian casualties, but neither they nor any nation on Earth can just sit there and suffer this sort of bombardment without moving to stop it at its source. All you’re doing is passing along jihadist propaganda.
“As for body count, there are far more dead kids in Gaza.”
A huge component of dead “Palestinians” comes from errant Hamas rockets as well as by direct fire from Hamas terrorizing its own people. These numbers are reported as though the Israelis killed them.
Even if all those were actually killed by Israel, here’s the razor: how many people would be dead if Hamas did not start the fight?
Answer: 0.
“And as far as comparisons go, I expect more from Israel. They can protect themselves without causing this level of devastation.”
That is self-evidently ludicrous. Their job isn’t to stop the bullets being fired, their job is stop those firing the bullets. There is no peace without victory. History will attest there is no Victory without utterly laying prostrate the enemy. This level of devastation is much less than what will be necessary to defeat Hamas.
Your analogy would be to tell the big gentle giant on the playground to sit back while a little wimp looking for a fight continues to punch him in the stomach and jaw just because you know the big gentle giant could finish the fight with a quickness. Ridiculous.
And I know the typical rejoinder to that is, well the big kid ought to tell the teacher. Yeah, heard that before, and by analogy to Israel, running to get the teacher is the same as appealing to the civilized nations of the world… and we see how they align in this conflict.
Then Israel should just eliminate all of Gaza. Because under your reasoning, that is the only possible outcome where there will be finality.
At this point in the conflict, after generous concessions and magnanimous offers by Israel since 1948, that may actually be the only solution. The Palestinians have shown their inability to live peacefully.
However, that probably isn’t the only solution and your jumping to it stinks of false dichotomy. We didn’t eliminate Germany when we defeated them. The Union didn’t eliminate the southern states when they defeated them. This latest action to stifle insurgency in Israel, if I understand only pushed into about 10-15% of Gaza to eliminate tunnels, terrorist infrastructure and some launch sites…
There is a huge gulf between 10-15% and total destruction of the Palestinian presence in Gaza. Please, don’t be hysterical.
Hysterical? Hardly.
That’s your response?
So you concede to your errors?
No — you are too beyond hope to discuss further. It’s not worth my time.
“Beyond hope”? Your elitism is showing, Beth.
Elitist? That’s a purty fancy word for a country gal like me.
Spare me the “down home” nonsense, Beth. I’m old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson.
Please Beth, don’t take a pathetic cop out. You’ve made horribly false analogies and I’ve pointed those out. I’ve given you more accurate analogies which you’ve failed to digest. There’s nothing about this discussion that is errant on my end.
You are wrong. It’s simple as that.
The Egyptians themselves would likely agree with your assessment, Tex. Gaza is a cesspool that they have to deal with, too.
Screw the Egyptians…Gaza is a cesspool of their making as well. That hideous sinister and actively counter-advancement culture of Islam reaps what it sows.
They had a chance to welcome their brothers when their brothers screwed up a great deal from the Israelis, but they rejected them. Then we saw how Arab Muslims treat Arab Muslims just like we see how Arab Muslims treat Arab Muslims now…just one head shorter.
Nope, Egypt may be pseudo-stable, but they aren’t clean. Screw them too.
I’d say it’s a problem that the Egyptians inherited from their less-than-wholesome past. My point, however, is that they share that much with the Israelis. It may prove an important point of unity in future days. Gaza and the Palestinian Authority are festering sores within the body of Israel AND the Arab states who are likewise threatened by jihadism. Egypt narrowly escaped it. Syria and Iraq are falling to it. Iran and now Turkey are supplying it. These realities may result in a new alliance of convenience between nations like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia with Israel for the sake of their survival. If so, the further existence of “Palestine” and Gaza could not be tolerated.
Much like the Israelis in Tel-Aviv, who no longer bother to express outrage, since few if any are listening.
What about the Germans who didn’t vote for Hitler, but who just went along with the crowd? “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 80% is a pretty good vote of confidence, no? I’ll accept “I have no sympathy for 80% of the ordinary people who are struggling within Gaza” as a big improvement over what Obama said, but in a democracy, we all agree to accept and be accountable for the will of the majority.
in a word, yes. At least in as much as they suffer the consequences of their fellows actions. Just like here, in America, we suffer alike for the incompetance of the current administration.
I’m not “struggling with Gaza.” If someone steals your property, you have the moral right to do whatever it takes to get it back.
What I have always had an ethical problem with is sacrificing the other guy’s rights for sake of expediency. When you do that, you create a precedent that will someday be used on you.
Who stole property?
(As a hint, answering “Israel” will reveal a considerable amount of historical ignorance)
Gaza is an ancient city that was once both beautiful and industrious. So was Beruit. Both are now hellholes. Israel didn’t make them that way. The Islamists did. Trashing civilization is what they do.
And they are SO damned good at it.
Well, when you follow a religion that was designed by a raider to keep subordinate raiders in line and continue tribute flow to the raider-in-chief, it is hard to avoid the destruction of civilization.
The Jews of Europe left millenia ago. Kindly make the case for why they have a right to reclaim what they abandoned.
1) because from the 1870s until the end of the British mandate they moved in peacefully and purchased land and settled unowned land… All perfectly free market solutions.
2) no less than twice during the British mandate Muslims organized to attack and drive out the Jews.
3) when the British mandate concluded, a new solution was required to administer that area- the solution the Jews agreed to was a 50-50 split and two state solution. The Arabs started a war the very next day.
4) ever since then, Jewish gains have been from winning wars they didn’t want to fight (a perfectly acceptable means of gaining land)
5) despite Jewish magnanimity and generosity in regards to concessions to “Palestinians”, they have continually been attacked and attacked.
Now your turn… How has Israel “stolen” land?
Please no spin or ignoring facts either.
Half the truth is often a lie in effect. Jewish immigration was opposed by the indigenous populace, for much the same reason that the tidal wave of immigration from Central America is opposed by many here. But the Brits wanted to rid Europe of a European problem: a long-ingrained, shameful anti-Semitism.
The Brits promised that a homeland would only be created if the people of Palestine approved. Needless to say, they did not. And Jews were the first terrorists in the region; Menachem Begin led the infamous Irgun.
Palestinians who owned land were chased from it at the business end of a gun. If that isn’t “theft,” what is it? (I am relying on the UN’s dissertation on the Palestinian Problem here, which I find both balanced and accurate.) If you had to face a man who was physically chased from his family’s land at gunpoint (and still had the deed to it), what would you say to him?
To me, this equation is driven by pure ethics. Jack seems to think that it is ethical to sacrifice the rights of the few for the good of the many (which is the very flower of communism). Where he goes, I cannot follow.
To me, the saddest fact is that it didn’t have to happen like this. If Zionists had made themselves indispensible to their new hosts as good friends and neighbors, the conflict could have been avoided.
This is fantasy, Steve, with facts mixed in for maximum confusion. Th UN has never been fair or unbiased on this matter in its existance—bad choice. The bottom line is that the Palestinians have repeated chosen violence and a refusal to solve the problem in the best way available for 70 years. It could have a state now, it could have a state next year. Granted, the 1948 resolution was an invitation to conflict, but one party has been largely reasonable in seeking a solution, and the other has institutionalized terrorism and an ideology of genocide, harmed its own people, placed hate and bitterness in its society’s DNA.
I don’t particularly like the way Israel was created, and more than I like the way the US ended up with California. But ethics involves dealing with realities. This, frankly,is ridiculous:
I think a minimum requirement for a potential friendship is that both parties accept the other’s right to exist. In fact, I know it.
If you don’t respect your neighbor’s right to liberty or property, why should they respect your right to life? Tyrants and highwaymen have no rights at all.
Is the U.N. “biased” … or are you? Or both? We always have to have the self-awareness to ask that question.
I don’t think the Palestinians are required to accept the forced sacrifice of their rights. And yes, they have a clear legal and moral right to resort to violence. You can’t steal my land and expect me to sue for peace.
The challenge is in giving them an alternative that is more profitable than violence.
Steve, you just can’t make up your own facts. This is Fractured Fairy Tales all over again, and please stop justifying terrorism on an ethics blog. Does Hamas have a right to intentionally get its children killed too?
The U.N. is corrupt, biased, dominated by anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic powers, and if it was my call, I’d pull the US out of it, and kick the organization across the pond. I have no bias..no dog in the hunt whatsoever….except biases against terrorists, liars and anti-Semites.
“If you don’t respect your neighbor’s right to liberty or property, why should they respect your right to life?”
You really have no concept of ethics other than an eye for an eye and the law of the jungle, do you? I welcome your provocative contrarian takes, but why do you hang out on an ethics blog when you clearly don’t believe in ethics, and don’t seem inclined to learn anything either? It smacks of trolling.
The land in question was British land; it was never theirs to begin with.
Half the truth is often a lie in effect.
Good thing I only bothered you will the whole truth then.
Jewish immigration was opposed by the indigenous populace, for much the same reason that the tidal wave of immigration from Central America is opposed by many here.
Odd, because it was the indigenous population who sold land to the first arrivals. You did read the facts I taught you, right? You don’t oppose peaceful free market solutions, do you? Your answer to that last question will tell a lot about how I can handle your future arguments.
But the Brits wanted to rid Europe of a European problem: a long-ingrained, shameful anti-Semitism.
Spiffy, the sins of Europe are relatively irrelevant to this discussion.
The Brits promised that a homeland would only be created if the people of Palestine approved. Needless to say, they did not.
Odd, they approved as long as the market made them wealthy…sucks their ingrained Islamic bigotry started kicking in and they decided to rescind their lawful land sales through violence. Do you support such action? You must if you oppose the pre-Israel Jewish immigration to the area.
And Jews were the first terrorists in the region; Menachem Begin led the infamous Irgun.
Spin. The “Palestinians” initiated first hostilities towards lawful land buyers from the 1870s – early 1900s. That a minority movement amongst Jewish settlers engaged in criminal activity doesn’t change the calculus that the majority of “Palestinians” decided to start opposing the Jewish settlers.
Palestinians who owned land were chased from it at the business end of a gun. If that isn’t “theft,” what is it? (I am relying on the UN’s dissertation on the Palestinian Problem here, which I find both balanced and accurate.) If you had to face a man who was physically chased from his family’s land at gunpoint (and still had the deed to it), what would you say to him?
No it isn’t theft…that’s what happens when your group initiates hostility and loses. Sorry, Way of the World. Don’t wanna lose your land? Don’t start fighting and lose. (over half of a dozen times)
Hint: a UN report can hardly be relied upon to stand for right.
To me, this equation is driven by pure ethics. Jack seems to think that it is ethical to sacrifice the rights of the few for the good of the many (which is the very flower of communism). Where he goes, I cannot follow.
What utter farce. The rights of the “few” (when that few have demonstrated no willingness for peace or the acknowledgement of other people’s rights) are completely surrendered when they initiate hostilities, especially based on bigotry…which seems to be the cultural core of Islam.
To me, the saddest fact is that it didn’t have to happen like this. If Zionists had made themselves indispensible to their new hosts as good friends and neighbors, the conflict could have been avoided.
Spin bordering on lie, and closer to lie than spin. Sorry that’s a complete ignorant analysis or abject fabrication of history. Do you believe in the market? Where people engaged in commerce and exchange peacefully?
Because that’s how the Jewish settlers arrived for close to 70 years before, guess it… the “Palestinian” Arabs initiated the first hostilities.
You are right, this conflict could have been avoided. To bad you are colossally wrong on how.
If you had any more propaganda, agg, you could fill in the Red Sea with it. If the Palestinians had had a say in the matter, they wouldn’t have allowed any Jewish immigration.
It was ottoman land and the inhabitants, Arabs (not Palestinians- a modern invention) did not stop the Jews from engaging in free market transactions…
You did read what I wrote right and you do understand chronologies right?
I seem to recall that they were driven out. Nor was it for the first time in their long history.
Being forced out by the Romans does not exactly qualify as abandonment.
It was more that those who remained were killed by Christians during the Crusades. With very few exceptions, the present-day Jewish Israelis are European or Ethiopean, having commingled with the natives for centuries. They settled from the Low Countries to the high steppes.
They could have returned centuries earlier, but chose not to.
Irrelevant.
And if it hadn’t been for a ingrained European penchant for bigotry and persecution of Jews, there may have been no major need for an ethical solution of giving them their own homeland after they began migrating en-masse to a semi-pacified “Promised Land”.
I was wondering when Holland would drag the Crusades into this… in desperation! The Crusades got started when the Moslems overran the Holy Land and started “pacifying” it in the manner we see them do today… by terror and mass murder. They also, as a bonus, threatened the trade routes between Europe and the Far East. At their worst, the Crusading armies were decidedly less barbarous (in an era of barbarity) than the Saracen hordes they opposed.
Now, now…don’t resort to Comparative Virtue!
My virtue is incomparable!!
SO WHAT?
Britain ceded their Mandate over Palestine to them.
Great Britain, which administered Palestine through a mandate, agreed to cede the territory in question.
Just an FYI, Tex, a lot of people seem to be unaware that the Hebrews, while not necessarily the first to occupy the area, certainly were among the first. The Canaanites went on to establish Carthage and the Philistines (probably the Phoenicians) were established there, in five fortified cities, by the Egyptians. The Hebrews took the land from them.
I’m aware of the notion. Don’t see its relevance however.
Goes to address the notion that will eventually be expressed here, if it hasn’t already that the Israelis “stole” Palestine from the Palestenians
The argument was already made several discussions ago and debunked for a variety of reasons, the two primary ones:
If “ethnic” based premises are sound, modern Palestinians are not any more related to the ancient tribes than the Jews are.
If ethnic based premises are not sound, then the next best claim is a political/economic argument… And after no less than 15-20 different polities controlling that region before the late 1800s when Jews began legally purchasing land and settling unused land… I don’t think any legal claim exists as there is NO political or economic relationship/lineage between Palestinians and the ancient tribes…
All true, but I like pre-emptive strikes against stupidity. The argument still crops up from time to time, generally by folks whose sense of history goes back all of maybe 30 days.
Did I not predict it?
Yes. I’m just going to link to the previous argument for Steve to peruse.
Please do. I am persuaded that almost a millenium of continued residence is sufficient to establish a claim, and understand that there were relatively few Jews living in the region before 1900. British immigration policies were to blame, as the people had no control over who would be allowed into the country.
Claim to what? Free market interactions allowed thousands and thousands of Jews to buy land and settle peacefully in the soon-to-be land of Israel.
You do believe in a Free market right? Where people engage in commerce peacefully, right?
It was after that that the Arab Muslims got antsy and decided to initiate hostilities…
the discussion here
here
and
here
Those discussions have a sampling of pro-terrorist arguments, widely ranging from ethically upside down people, like you, to anarchists, like Zan Tarr…
There’s also the bare fact that in no other nation in the Middle East do Arabs enjoy the freedom and prosperity that they do as Israeli citizens. That’s yet another reason why the Islamists hate and fear Israel and America.
Be careful Jack, you may be looking at a fatwa!
I really am at my wits end with moral-equalizers. I really don’t know how to reach anyone who can possibly believe Israel is in the wrong on any of this.
It’s so frustrating. I don’t really want to count as evil those who would verbally defend evil, but it’s getting there….
This pretty much expresses my feelings, Tex. It just not a position that I can respect. I was listening to Boston’s NPR station, and two smug old progressives were talking about the US’s public’s support for Israel was “retrograde,” and compared Hamas to Nelson Mandella. Then I heard an interview with an illegal immigrant, saying that he couldn’t understand why anyone though he had done anything “wrong,” as the interviewer approved vigorously. How do people get like this? I really want to know. It’s like a science fiction movie.
It’s like watching an airborne operation, where a guy’s parachute malfunctions and I can see everything wrong that they need to fix to save themselves, but the individual in the chaos of their own panic can’t see what to fix.
I’m on the ground with no ability to get to them…they are up there in a complete tangle plummeting to destruction thinking, in error, what they are doing is fixing the problem…
Utter helplessness. I don’t know how to fix it…it’s not even just a lack of logic… it’s a lack of sound premises and principles.
Gads it bothers me.
I actually witnessed something like that at Sicily Drop Zone at Fort Bragg. Fortunately, it turned out okay. But I can relate to both your point and your analogy.
I’ve never seen the worst occur in person. It was merely an analogy based on real frustrations. The closest I came was a guy who jumped two or three positions behind me. After my parachute deployed and I oriented myself I saw his poor mass about 100 feet away plummet past me. All I could do was watch…helplessness/uselessness is the 2nd worst feeling. Fortunately, about halfway down his chute popped open.
(of course, ask him today and he’ll tell you he bounced off the ground before his parachute deployed and still managed to run a marathon the next day… most Paratrooper stories tend to exaggerate over time)
Tex, I define this as wilful stupidity. It is difficult for me to believe, like it is for you, that ANYONE can read history and then spin it so badly that what he just read is no longer true. Then add non-existent facts to make his point. However, it happens and it happens a LOT. I have come to expect it.
I think this apt tweet summarizes the dichotomy well:
From @iowahawkblog:
People who went totally apeshit over a cheerleader with a dead lion oddly disinterested in 7-year-olds with severed human heads.
It all depends on what matters ton them, I guess. Dead maneating lion- shot by a Texan cheerleader- bad. Dead non-Moslem men, women and children- their heads waved around by a jihadist child soldier from Australia- GOOD!
To me that would come pretty close to meeting the criteria for crazy as a freaking hoot owl, child or not.
The odds are high that that kid will never be right in the head and will likely be a threat to civilization until he dies. Certainly, his father is that. You have to wonder as to what level and form of indoctrination it takes to turn the citizen of a free Christian nation into a mortal enemy of his entire heritage- in league with the most despicable cretins on Earth.
You don’t have to wonder much, Steven. Look at the state of our public schools…excuse me, indoctrination centers.
Ah, the good ole days, before Hillary vs Trump was even a concept!