What if we choose to?

11 Responses to “What if we choose to?”

1. Howie on March 7th, 2008 6:34 am

   In Hebrew we say; “boker tov Eliyahu”…basically…”did you just now figure that out”?

   Yes…dear writer…whoever you are…that is just it…it really really could be that simple…

   You hear Israeli’s here saying it over and over and over; just stop trying to murder us…just try for awhile to be a decent neighbor…Realize you can’t have all your dreams…nobody can…realize that it would be better for all of us…the entire world would benefit.

   But too many of you have made your choice and bring us to despair…

2. Don Cox on March 7th, 2008 10:02 am

   What makes just stopping difficult is that the Arabs would have to admit that what they have been doing since 1920 is wrong. That would be a hard thing to swallow, and for those who believe in an afterlife it carries the implication that people would be doomed to Hell instead of Paradise.

   What on Earth did they think would happen if they spoke Arabic in Marks and Spencer’s? That is truly bizarre.

3. Roman Kalik on March 7th, 2008 11:55 am

   A fine article - hopefully the sentiments it echoes will spread, though sadly I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

4. Andrew Brehm on March 7th, 2008 12:06 pm

   Great article.

   Although I am always fascinated when people from Arab countries with a much lower standard of living and more violence than Gaza and the West Bank think of the “suffering” Palestinians.

   Being “oppressed” by Jews apparently adds an extra terror to one’s situation that is completely unrelated to how much one really suffers.

   Don, Can you imagine what could happen if you spoke Hebrew in Marks and Spencer’s?

   Howie, “just stop trying to murder us” Indeed. We keep hearing stories about Israel’s crimes, but there has never been even a basic acknowledgement on the Arab side of the idea that, perhaps, trying to murder Jews is wrong and could naturally result in Jew fighting back.

   And there are those who claim that Arabs are not anti-Semites, do not want to and never have tried to murder Jews, and are only resisting oppression; those I want to remember, always, the following quote:

   “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honour. God is with you.” (1944)

   “Those who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive.” (1967)

   THAT is the problem. And it started before Israel was founded.

   (The same thing, of course, happened to the Kurds and other non-Arab minorities. Why do so many people comment on the Arab-Israeli conflict without noticing that the Arabs are in conflict with ALL non-Arab nations in the area and beyond?)

5. Andrew Brehm on March 7th, 2008 12:40 pm

   “What if we choose to?”

   The problem is that such a choice would immediately present to the world the real issue of the conflict.

   One of two things will happen:

   1. Israel would kill all the “Palestinians” when they stop “defending” themselves, proving that Zionism is evil and that terrorism really is a necessary desperate defence and that murdering all the Jews in 1948 would have been not a crime but merely a prevention of Jewish violence.

   2. There will suddenly be peace, proving that Jews and Israel are not evil at all and that the entire conflict was only due to Arabs attacking Jews all the time.

   This is, btw, why passive resistance against Israel doesn’t work.

6. AOS on March 7th, 2008 7:07 pm

   I recommend Robert Fisk - Pity the Nation.
   It is always important to keep a sensible perspective.

7. Andrew Brehm on March 10th, 2008 1:53 pm

   “I recommend Robert Fisk - Pity the Nation.
   It is always important to keep a sensible perspective.”

   Robert Fisk is “sensible”?

   Isn’t he the one for after whom the term “fisking” was named?

   From the jargon file:

   “A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment.”

   I don’t think reading Fisk of all people is sensible. There is no need to include an uninformed perspective into one’s views.

   Ignorance is not a point of view.

8. AOS on March 10th, 2008 3:58 pm

   You can think what you wish.
   He has his critics, understandably. It would be astonishing if he didn’t…

   …and I guess has had, erm, terms named after him…?
   Simply quoting one of them will not alter my appreciation for his efforts.

   I understand and anticipate your disagreement on this, Fisk has been quite critical of a country obviously very close to your heart.

9. Roman Kalik on March 10th, 2008 7:33 pm

   Fisk deserves some respect, in my opinion, but I also think that he is guilty of bad journalism - which had only increased in volume as time passed. He had some good articles, but his books are full of factual errors - some quite obviously deliberate - which he uses to support his claims.

   Robert Fisk is also, sadly, the very essence of a man who ends up criticizing the foreign outsider so much that he becomes blind to local issues.

   Today Fisk is but a repetitive muppet, doing the same antagonizing act over and over again. Many Lebanese bloggers (of whom many aren’t in the “I like Israel” camp) share this view, in that Fisk is pretty pathetic these days. Any comment on any local issue ends up being a repeat of the same line.

10. AOS on March 10th, 2008 8:32 pm

    It might be easy to dismiss his account of the Lebanese war due to his so-called journalistic bias. It takes away from, in my opinion, a great piece of journalism.
    One of the biggest criticisms of ‘pity the nation’ was his alleged humanization of the ‘terrorists’ (i put that between ” because he does a brilliant job of discussing the abuse and exploitation of that word), however I did not see it. I finished the book not feeling there were necessarily any good guys, all are guilty.
    Who is more guilty?…I assure you we’ll probably disagree on that…

11. Roman Kalik on March 10th, 2008 9:41 pm

    *shrug* In the aftermath of the recent Lebanon war, Fisk accused Israel of using some kind of uranium-based dirty bombs. This disregarding, for the moment, his claim that Israel uses white phosphorous munitions (it does, mind, as do many other armies worldwide… they’re called smoke munitions, though this isn’t what Fisk had in mind).

    Fisk tends to throw around such wild statements at times, and his evidence tends to evaporate just as quickly - at least outside the usual conspiracy-theory circles in the Middle-East. This sort of thing just makes me view him in a less credible light time after time.

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