nettime's_balancing_act on Sun, 28 Apr 2002 05:55:17 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> o jerusalem digest [chaim x2, wonereh] |
Chaim <cog@slackworks.com> Re: Arafat Accountability Act Chaim <cog@slackworks.com> Confession of an Israeli leftist From: WoNereH@aol.com FYI - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 14:02:59 -0400 (EDT) From: Chaim <cog@slackworks.com> Subject: Re: Arafat Accountability Act If, as you propose, the terrorist infrastructure is the entire Palestinian Arab population, then coexistence will never be possible, and I refuse to believe this. Angry people don't just exploded in crowded markets -- an infrastructure is necessary for this to happen: incitement, encouragement, bomb making shops, money, materials, planners, etc.. In the past several weeks the IDF has dismantled many bomb factories, confiscated dozens of suicide belts, guns, and rockets, and arrested and/or killed numerous organizers of suicide murder bombings. All of these arms had an address -- Israeli civilians -- and their confiscation prevented their being used to that end. This has had a material effect, as a week or two before Passover the Israelis were treated to two suicide murder bombing attempts daily. This reduction in violence, I might add, didn't require wiping out an entire population. While you are correct that anger is necessary for terrorism, it isn't a sufficient condition. Suggesting that Hamas and Islamic Jihad (quick historical info: both groups whose stated tactics and intent is targetting unarmed Jews for murder in order to kill or expel all Jews from the region) is equivalent to the entire Palestinian Arab population is profoundly untrue, and while you may not care to make this distinction, Israelis, to their credit, do. Rather than flatten Jenin from the relative safety of their F-16s, the IDF sent in soldiers to effect this distinction as best they could -- a non-academic differentiation that cost the lives of 23 soldiers. This type of conflation is disturbing, to say the least, as the logical result is killing Jewish children in Tel-Aviv because they are somehow responsible for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs. > From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net> > Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 12:40:30 -0400 > Subject: Re: Arafat Accountability Act > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1927000/1927974.stm > > So, US Congress passes the bill holding Arafat accountable for not > dismantling the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure. But, what do > you do when the "terrorist infrastructure" is the entire population? > Just wipe them all out? Ottoman Turks tried to deal with Serbian > terrorism (what else were organizations like Black Hand?) like that > for centuries, and they eventually lost the battle, so Israelis should > be taking hints from history. > ivo - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 14:25:21 -0400 (EDT) From: Chaim <cog@slackworks.com> Subject: Confession of an Israeli leftist ------------------ (Forwarded) ------------------ Professor Richard Dawkins Oxford University Dear Professor Dawkins: You do not know me, but I have been an admirer of yours for many years, and many of my students are familiar with the elegant statement of Ockham's razor on p. xi of River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. It is thus with great sadness that I discover that you have lent your name to the shameful, one-sided, unprecedented, and academically disgraceful call to withhold European grants from Israeli scholars. I write to you as a person who has for years been identified with the "peace camp" in this country, who had (and took) many opportunities to work for the improvement of the status of Arab students at the University of Haifa, and who was subject to not a little personal and social pressure and vilification because of his views and activities. I further belong to that group of Israelis who -two years ago- would have been willing, even happy, to withdraw from the land we occupied after the late King Hussein attacked us in 1967, redivide Jerusalem, and aid in the establishment of a Palestinian state. I am also confident that I have invested more in promoting peace in the Middle East than European academics who feel sure they hold the moral high ground, and by signing that disgraceful letter, take cheap shots at Israel in general and their Israeli colleagues in particular. Two years of endless murder of Jews by Palestinians, two years of virulent anti-semitic propaganda being churned out by the Arab world generally and the Palestinian Authority in particular, two years of watching the BBC report from the Middle East in a fashion which makes a mockery of any standard of journalistic objectivity, two years of watching European leaders condemn Israel time and time again while expressing sympathetic understanding for a regime which tolerates no dissent, operates like a particularly violent mafia (as General Zinni reportedly said), lends spiritual support (at the very least) to the purposeful murderers of children, of mothers, of grandmothers, two years of this have led me to the reluctant conclusions that the Palestinian nation apparently has the leadership it deserves and that those Europeans who lend that leadership their support are either stupid, or immoral, or simply hate Jews. The letter you signed speaks of the Israeli "policy of violent repression against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories" as if this "repression" takes place in a moral and political vacuum. Need I remind you that Yasir Arafat, the head of a profoundly corrupt thugocracy, made Ariel Sharon Prime Minister of Israel? Were it not for the Arafat-inspired and orchestrated Palestinian war on Israeli children, women, men, and only incidentally soldiers, Ehud Barak (an Israeli leader more to your taste, I assume -- certainly he used to be more to my taste) would be Prime Minister of Israel. Need I further remind you that at Camp David and at Taba, Arafat had the option of saying to Barak: "No, but." Instead, he simply slammed the door, went home, and started killing Jews, hoping, it appears pretty clear, also to get lots of Palestinians killed, so as to score points against us, and stimulate the sympathy of well-intentioned if easily duped people. Many things puzzle me about the behavior of European "intellectuals" but I want to raise only one of them now. Let me grant for the sake of argument something which is clearly and indubitably false, namely, that Israeli behavior in the West Bank and Gaza is every bit as cruel, violent, and despicable as alleged by the hordes of polished Palestinian liars who appear regularly on international TV and radio and in the international press. Is Israeli behavior, even if these absurd claims are true, worse than that of Iraq? (Not that I take much comfort in being compared to Iraq, believe me.) Is the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank that much worse than the suffering of Palestinians in Kuwait after the Gulf War? Why go so far afield? A good case can be made that your own country, Great Britain, has inflicted greater injustice and greater suffering on the Irish than a hundred Israels have inflicted upon the Palestinians. Where are and were you and your colleagues? Were you organizing protests, calling for academic boycotts? Perfidious Albion, or at least deeply hypocritical Albion, seems to be an appropriate commentary on the behavior of you and your colleagues. In great disappointment, (Prof.) Menachem Kellner ###################################### Professor Menachem Kellner Wolfson Professor of Jewish Thought University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel email: kellner@research.haifa.ac.il http://hcc.haifa.ac.il/Chairs/Wolfson/ home telephone: 972 4 822 7647 office telephone: 972 4 824 9494 fax: 972 4 825 2037 ###################################### For a special treat, visit the "Be-Zavta" website: http://research.haifa.ac.il/~bezavta ###################################### - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: WoNereH@aol.com Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 16:20:13 EDT Subject: FYI TERROR IN THE CHURCH The Jerusalem Post reports that 3 Armenian monks, held hostage by the Palestinian gunmen inside the Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, fleed the church and were rescued by Israeli soldiers, after holding aloft a white cloth banner with the words "Please help." One of the monks, Narkiss Korasian, told reporters: "They stole everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything... they stole our prayer books and four [gold] crosses... they didn't leave anything." Israeli officials quoted the monks as saying that Palestinian gunmen had also begun beating and attacking clergymen. http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/04/24/News/News.47624.html Did your local media report this revelation at the Church? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net