Below (I believe) is the post that Larry Derfner published on his blog on August 21 but has since removed that resulted in his firing by the Jerusalem Post. I'm also publishing Derfner's apology for this post following the original post. (I found the original at Alice in Wonder-Land. Thanks to James North and Shmuel).
The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror. [link to Derfner's site doesn't work anymore]
Posted on August 21, 2011 by Larry DerfnerI think a lot of people who realize that the occupation is wrong also realize that the Palestinians have the right to resist it – to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis, especially when Israel is showing zero willingness to end the occupation, which has been the case since the Netanyahu government took over (among other times in the past).
But people don’t want to say this, especially right after a terror attack like this last one that killed eight Israelis near Eilat. And there are lots of good reasons for this reticence, such as: You don’t want to further upset your own countrymen when they are grieving, you don’t want to say or write anything that could be picked up by Israel’s enemies and used as justification for killing more of us. (These are good reasons; fear of being called a traitor, for instance, is a bad reason.)
But I think it’s time to overcome this reticence, even at the cost of enflaming the already enflamed sensitivities of the Israeli public, because this unwillingness to say outright that Palestinians have the right to fight the occupation, especially now, inadvertently helps keep the occupation going.
When we say that the occupation is a terrible injustice to the Palestinians, but then say that Palestinian terror/resistance is a terrible injustice to Israel, we’re saying something that’s patently illogical to anyone but a pacifist, and there aren’t many pacifists left, certainly not in Israel. The logical, non-pacifist mind concludes that both of those statements can’t be true – that if A is hurting B and won’t stop, then B damn sure has the right to hurt A to try to make him stop. But if everybody, not only the Right but the Left, too, is saying that B, the Palestinians, don’t have the right to hurt A, the Israelis, then the logical mind concludes that Israel must not be hurting the Palestinians after all, the occupation must not be so bad, the occupation must not be hurting the Palestinians at all - because if it was, they would have the right to hurt us back, and everybody agrees that they don’t. So when they shoot at us or fire rockets at us, it’s completely unprovoked, which gives us the right, the duty, to bash them and bash them until they stop – and anybody who tries to deny us that right doesn’t have a leg to stand on, so we’re just going to keep right on bashing them. And when the Palestinians complain about the occupation, we Israelis can honestly say we don’t know what they’re talking about.
This, I’m convinced, is how the Left’s ritual condemnations of terror are translated in the Israeli public’s mind – as justification for the occupation and an iron-fist military policy.
But if, on the other hand, we were to say very forthrightly what many of us believe and the rest of us suspect – that the Palestinians, like every nation living under hostile rule, have the right to fight back, that their terrorism, especially in the face of a rejectionist Israeli government, is justified – what effect would that have? A powerful one, I think, because the truth is powerful. If those who oppose the occupation acknowledged publicly that it justifies Palestinian terrorism, then those who support the occupation would have to explain why it doesn’t. And that’s not easy for a nation that sanctifies the right to self-defense; a nation that elected Irgun leader Menachem Begin and Lehi leader Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister.
But while I think the Palestinians have the right to use terrorism against us, I don’t want them to use it, I don’t want to see Israelis killed, and as an Israeli, I would do whatever was necessary to stop a Palestinian, oppressed or not, from killing one of my countrymen. (I also think Palestinian terrorism backfires, it turns people away from them and generates sympathy for Israel and the occupation, so I’m against terrorism on a practical level, too, but that’s besides the point.) The possibility that Israel’s enemies could use my or anybody else’s justification of terror for their campaign is a daunting one; I wouldn’t like to see this column quoted on a pro-Hamas website, and I realize it could happen.
Still, I don’t think Hamas and their allies need any more encouragement, so whatever encouragement they might take from me or any other liberal Zionist is coals to Newcastle. What’s needed very badly, however, is for Israelis to realize that the occupation is hurting the Palestinians terribly, that it’s driving them to try to kill us, that we are compelling them to engage in terrorism, that the blood of Israeli victims is ultimately on our hands, and that it’s up to us to stop provoking our own people’s murder by ending the occupation. And so long as we who oppose the occupation keep pretending that the Palestinians don’t have the right to resist it, we tacitly encourage Israelis to go on blindly killing and dying in defense of an unholy cause.
And by tacitly encouraging Israelis in their blindness, I think we endanger their lives and ours, their country and ours, much more than if we told the truth and got quoted on Hamas websites.
There’s no time for equivocation anymore, if there ever was. The mental and moral paralysis in this country must be broken. Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack. They had the same right to fight for their freedom as any other unfree nation in history ever had. And just like every harsh, unjust government in history bears the blame for the deaths of its own people at the hands of rebels, so Israel, which rules the Palestinians harshly and unjustly, is to blame for those eight Israeli deaths – as well as for every other Israeli death that occurred when this country was offering the Palestinians no other way to freedom.
Writing this is not treason. It is an attempt at patriotism.
Here is Derfner's apology on his blog, on August 26:
I have an apology to make for “The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror,” which I posted here and on Facebook on Sunday. I didn’t mean to say anything “good” about Palestinian terror against Israelis – I see nothing good in it whatsoever, and I thought I made that clear, but I see now that I didn’t.
I wrote that because of the occupation, Palestinians are “justified” in attacking, even killing Israelis, that they have the “right” to do so. Later on I stressed that I didn’t want them to kill my countrymen, and that I would do anything necessary to stop it. I meant those two points to show that I wasn’t “for” terrorism, that while I thought the occupation justified it, that didn’t mean I supported it. But I see now that the distance from “justified” to “support” is way, way too short – and I am as far away as anybody can be from supporting attacks on Israel and Israelis.
Writing that the killing of Israelis was justified and a matter of right took a vile image and attached words of seeming approval to it. This, I’m afraid, produced an “obscene” effect, as one critic wrote. I don’t want to write obscenity about Israel. I didn’t mean to, and I deeply regret it.
I meant, instead, to shock Israelis and friends of Israel into seeing how badly we’re hurting the Palestinians by denying them independence: It’s so bad that it’s helping drive them to try to kill us. This is something I believe, something liberal Israelis and friends of Israel believe, and I wrote that if we were to start saying so publicly, it might force other Israelis to finally confront the reality of what we’re doing to the Palestinians, and thereby get them to see that it’s wrong and must stop.
My intention was to shock people into recognition, but I ended up shocking many of them into revulsion, and twisting what I wanted to say into something I didn’t and don’t mean at all.
What I mean is this: The occupation does not justify Palestinian terror. It does, however, provoke it. Palestinians do not have the right to attack or kill Israelis. They, do, however, have the incentive to, and part, though not all, of that incentive is provided them by the occupation. I believe that if Israel gives the Palestinians their independence, we have enough military power to neutralize whatever leftover incentive they would have to attack us. So my purpose with regard to Palestinian terror against Israelis is not to legitimize it, God forbid, but to end it.
Again, I regret what I wrote on Sunday. I apologize to everyone who was offended by it, and I apologize to my countrymen. The post is no longer on my blog; I’ve taken it down.
the thing is, this is what more and more people are realizing, that resistance to occupation is very justifiable. terror is never right, not when israel does it not when anyone does it. the whole world should be non violent but they are not. in a perfect world only soldiers and militants would get targetted. but the disproportion of force and opportunity make that impossible. to conceive of palestinians just getting plummeted..crazy. and the WB perfectly demonstrates what non violence brings. they just get tighter and tighter targeting children and locking them up for throwing stones, setting them up..creating a system whereby often times the child stays in longer waiting for a trial unless he ‘admits’ or confesses to a crime he did not commit. so either way it is a suffocating reality tighter and tighter the noose. completely horrid existence.
but you say that and it is as if a cult comes down on your head, that there needs to be a code of silence to prevent this obvious idea from piercing thru the discourse. and instead of discussing it what do they do. start a campaign and the settlers rule the roost.
israeli nationalism becomes more and more cult like everyday. it is insane and it is growing stronger. it dangerous not just to palestinians for for israelis, obviously.
The Israelis live in a bubble where they have the most moral army in the world and the Palestinians are all wicked because they aren’t Jewish. And that’s the space that allows them to kill Palestinans off video screens and fire white phosphorous in family homes. And nobody ever does time because Arabs don’t count.
And it’s absurd. And it going to come crashing down around them because they live in an Arab neighbourhood and no Arab believes the bullshit they tell themselves over and over.
The cult is out of control like wasps drunk on fruit sugar at the end of August. But winter is coming.
resistance to occupation is very is justifiable. terror is never right, not when israel does it not when anyone does it. the whole world should be non violent but they are not. in a perfect world only soldiers and militants would get targetted. but the disproportion of force and opportunity make that impossible.
The Inter-American system of public international law has contained a blanket prohibition against belligerent military occupation since the adoption of the OAS Charter in April 1948. See Article 21 link to oas.org
Ben Ferencz helped lay the foundation in international law at Nuremburg for mankind’s right to live in peace. He discusses the changes in international law that have already occurred in that connection over the course of many years in this video: link to youtube.com
Rather than engaging in a reductio ad absurdum involving individual charges of “war crimes” involving targeting and disproportionate force in the deaths of millions, he simply explained that planning and conducting a war of aggression is a “crime against peace”. Prior to Nuremberg there were conventional attempts to outlaw wars (e.g. Kellogg-Briand), but customary international law had contained no corresponding prohibition – even in the cases of wars of aggression.
In the 1970s Ferencz worked on the General Assembly’s consensus Definition of Aggression, which contained a prohibition against military occupation. In 2010 he attended the ICC Review Conference that adopted that definition and incorporated it into the Rome Statute.
The General Assembly had already applied the definition in connection with Israel’s military occupation of Arab territories since 1967 and its refusal to comply with resolutions demanding its immediate and unconditional withdrawal (e.g. UNGA 39/146). The ICJ subsequently rejected Israel’s defense of its administrative regime based upon the right of self-defense contained in Article 51 of the UN Charter.
Prior to the establishment of the ad hoc criminal tribunals in the early 1990s, there were conventional attempts to outlaw reprisals against civilians (the 1st Additional Protocol of 1977 and various anti-terrorism treaties). The ad hoc tribunals accepted the treaties as evidence of customary state practice and rejected the use of the tu toque defense against investigation and prosecution. So, neither side in the I/P conflict has the boundless discretion or an unchallenged “right” to attack civilians in southern Israel, the West Bank, or Gaza.
thanks hostage
RE: “the whole world should be non violent but they are not.” ~ annie
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I wonder if the Algerians would have liberated themselves from the French colonisation if they had to contend with non-violence.
“I wonder if the Algerians would have liberated themselves from the French colonisation if they had to contend with non-violence.”
The Algerians ended up with a one party dictatorship after the French left, followed by a brutal civil war in the 90′s that killed over 100,000 people. This is often what happens after a country achieves its freedom from colonial rule via a guerilla war. Paraphrasing what Chomsky said regarding Vietnam, in such a circumstance the people that end up on top tend to be tough and ruthless, the sort that had to survive by killing fellow Algerians (or Vietnamese) who might have been collaborators. And then they identify themselves and their party with the Revolution and never give up the habit of suppressing dissent.
Maybe nonviolence wouldn’t have worked, but violent revolutions very often produce dictatorial regimes after the liberation. Algeria and Vietnam are far from the only examples of this.
Donald, my question, or wondering rather, was about whether a certain outcome, liberation from colonisation, would have seen the light if another tactic or mean of struggle was adopted not whether it had the best outcome in terms of governance (I hate this word now that it sounds like Witty). So my question stands. Would the Algerians have liberated themselves from the implacable and violent French colonisation if they had adopted another mean of struggle? My conviction, to be clear, is that it wouldn’t have. The Metropole was determined to keep both its feet in North Africa and had no intention of letting go. Terrorist actions with multiple, random targets had a devastating impact on French leadership and population and de Gaulle understood what he had to do and decided to pull out. Terror worked..
“Donald, my question, or wondering rather, was about whether a certain outcome, liberation from colonisation, would have seen the light if another tactic or mean of struggle was adopted not whether it had the best outcome in terms of governance ”
I understood the question. I don’t know the answer. My point was that terror tactics have a cost, not only during the war (and setting aside whether it is moral to use them), but afterwards, as the people who use such tactics and survive the sort of war that Algeria went through are often likely to produce dictatorships. So if nonviolence has any kind of chance, that’s what should be tried.
Determining when nonviolence has failed is the question I can’t answer for sure. In the case of I/P I think nonviolence has a better chance than violence of working, at least if there is enough outside pressure to go along with it.
Posted this to Derfner’s blog:
Larry,
I read the original version of your post as well as your apology, and I must say that the overall sentiment (that the occupation provokes Palestinian resistance, violent and otherwise) was correct, while as you stated in your apology, the choice of words was quite ill considered in places. No one has the legal or moral “right” to attack civilians even if they live under occupation. Your apology did a good job of correcting the wording, and *incentivize* and *provoke* I think are perfect phrases to characterize what the occupation does to foment Palestinian resistance. Violent Palestinian resistance that targets civilians is both immoral and terrible strategy, however, it’s high time that Israel woke up and recognized its role in provoking that violence. Israel could end this violence not with more bombs, but with a policy of Israeli-Palestinian equality and an end to occupation, colonization, and land theft.
I’m very sorry the J Post fired you. Your post was brave and important, and the editors should have given you a chance to amend, update, redact, etc. the phrasing instead of just dumping you. This is a national conversation Israel desperately needs to have. Shame on them for censoring it from the public sphere.
Matthew
For wannabe international lawyers, I can’t overemphasize that at times, attacks on civilians are perfectly legal and legitimate. The proper language is “protected non-combatants.” Jewish Zionist settler-colonists in the Occupied Territories cannot be considered protected non-combatants by any stretch of the imagination.
“Jewish Zionist settler-colonists in the Occupied Territories cannot be considered protected non-combatants by any stretch of the imagination.”
Exactly.
Galen ~ I get your point, and agree with it, at least the second half; about the settlers not being ‘normal’ civilians, since they are outside the borders of their country and in territory where their government is undertaking belligerent military occupation, but I don’t think there is anywhere in international laws and treaties that expressly permits attacks on such people. I’m *not* a wannabe international lawyer, FYI – but please expand upon your point.
In my view, the adults among them are belligerents and are legitimate targets. Every adult among them is a member of an occupying army, and should be considered as such.
That’s your view Woody, but what is their actual status in international law? That’s my question to Galensword.
I kind of agree with your point about them being belligerents. They are individually and collectively profiting from violations of the Geneva Conventions, so are they war criminals?
Are you talking about IDF reservists, the settlers running around with machine guns, or just settlers in general as an occupation force (but not an actual army)?
“Jewish Zionist settler-colonists in the Occupied Territories cannot be considered protected non-combatants by any stretch of the imagination.”
That was part of the ruling in the 2005 Israeli High Court of Justice Gaza Coastal Council decision. However, that finding is inapplicable to the civilians killed in the recent terror attacks in southern Israel.
Collective punishment is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and its protocols. Bear in mind that “[T]he Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, entrusted with the functions of the Government of the State of Palestine by decision of the Palestine National Council, decided, on 4 May 1989, to adhere to the Four Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and the two Protocols additional thereto”. Egypt is also a party the the four conventions and the protocols. link to icrc.org
link to icrc.org
In my view, the adults among them are belligerents and are legitimate targets.
Under the “law of nations” in force in the pre-Clara Barton era, one of the legal consequences of the state of war between two countries was that every national of the one State becomes an enemy of every national of the other. In the current era, it’s a generally recognized rule of international law that civilians must not be made the object of attack directed exclusively against them. Nonetheless, the military codes of the US and many other countries prohibit any unauthorized communication with the enemy, including enemy civilians, as a possible source of “supplying aid and comfort to the enemy”, i.e. treason. Obviously, I wouldn’t recommend a legal system in which Palestinians might be subject to the death penalty for “unauthorized communications” with humanitarian NGO volunteers (e.g. B’Tselem, Peace Now, & etc.) or vice versa.
Every adult among them is a member of an occupying army, and should be considered as such.
Yes but you can’t overcome the targeting and proportionality criteria and turn then into a valid military objective with a sweeping generalization. Deadly force shouldn’t be authorized against unarmed reservists who aren’t participating in combat operations, unless they offer resistance to capture or present some kind of imminent danger. The members of the Yesha Council and the Rabbis responsible for the price tag terror campaigns are government officials. They can be prosecuted for war crimes or crimes against humanity. The latter require no connection to a war or armed conflict. There are penal responsibilities for expropriating or destroying private or state property in occupied territories under the Hague rules of 1907, but that doesn’t warrant summary execution. Raphael Lemkin and others who wrote about the German colonial enterprise during WWII said that the Liquidations Treuhanders (liquidation trustees) and other civilians that the Axis occupants entrusted with the expropriated property were individuals who were voluntarily imported for that purpose. Lemkin said that the fact some of the settlers had been moved against their will, might exclude their penal responsibility in assisting the enemy in acts of dispossession. But that simply isn’t the case with the Israeli settlers. See “6. The Problem of Colonists” and “7. The Responsibilities of the Administrators of Sequestrated Property” in Raphael Lemkin, “Axis rule in occupied Europe”, 1944, Carnegie Endowment, page 45
An editor of a news paper should be (is in some countries) responsible for what is on print in his/her paper!
If the editor puts on print something that is indefensible/untrue/treasonous etc., then the editor should be blamed/fired. Not the journalist.
the piece was posted at derfner’s blog, as i understand it, not at the JPost
Sorry i misunderstood.
An editor that punish a journalist for an article that has NOT been on print in his paper is even worse.
Was the journalist not allowed to blog or write for other papers?
“Sign ze papers, old man(cheech/chong)” and then all your opinions (confessions) belong to us!
Derfner’s original words rang very true and packed such an emotional punch that he had to receive the Goldstone treatment, and was forced to repent under threat of shunning by his countrymen.
Larry was VERY CLEAR that his clarification was of his own convictions.
convictions?
Did you read the apology?
His convictions, what he is committed to, his criteria for evaluation.
Yeah, I take him at his word. I don’t think he really meant that anyone has the right to kill civilians, but he was trying to point out the hypocrisy in the way Israel allows itself to bomb civilians and otherwise oppress them and then reacts with outrage when it gets a much smaller dose of the same medicine. Unfortunately the original words allowed the hypocrites to ignore the message. Westerners tend to be that way, Americans and Israelis alike.
As someone points out below, there’s also the distinction between killing IDF soldiers and killing civilians, but Israel refers to all of it as “terrorism”. So Derfner could have made that point too. When Israel bombed the Hamas police graduation ceremony they claimed those men were legitimate targets. They weren’t, but Israel left the door wide open for responses in kind.
Amendments made because of erroneous information and/or spelling mistakes are perfectly acceptable. However, as you very well know, apologies based on threats are not.
I bet you loved it, Witty. I must have been almost as good as the moment you realised the anti-Viet-Nam war protestors were going to turn over a police car, and you could stop with all that damn hippie nonsense.
Sorry Richard, but one doesn’t need to issue a public apology to oneself. His apology contains several references indicating sensitivity to his critics, such as:
His retraction, like that of Richard Goldstone, followed upon the intense disapproval and punishment by his community.
i think this is an important point. derfner obviously believed what he believed at some point. as goldstone did, on leaving gaza in june 09.
then goldstone was besieged by his own community, and 2 years later modified his beliefs.
derfner also apologizes to his “countrymen,” which reminds me of the word we used for other jews when i was a kid, lansman….
Larry, are you out there, do you want to post any response to the many comments at this site? Let me emphasize, you have my great sympathy on this occasion, and I like to think that your best work will flow from this very painful and upsetting incident….
phil
I agree wholeheartedly with Phil Weiss; I hope Larry Derfner shows up here again on Mondoweiss, as he did a few months ago.
I interpreted his apology as more of a clarification, which did not dilute the power of his original post.
Its a mistake to believe that he changed his views on the basis of coercion.
His apology is sincere, self-motivated, resulting from his own thinking.
Definitely after conversation, but your speculations are in left field.
“Speculations?” You’re the one who believes that a tunnel over a mile into Gaza was an “immediate existential threat” to Israel that justify, ultimately, the slaughter of 350 children. Don’t talk to us about speculation. Mr. Derfner’s article makes it CRYSTAL CLEAR that Israel provokes violence from the Palestinians, not vice versa.
He didn’t change his views AT ALL, Witty. He apologized to save face from extremists like you who think Israel can kill anyone they like. Even Americans in international waters. But he didn’t change his views. He still writes that Israel is the side that is perpetuating the violence, and that was never intended to be construed as some sort of justification for terrorism.
I didn’t misunderstand his original post in the least and his “apology” was not needed.
The only people that
needed” an apology were the dishonest, unaware and low octane humans.
>> RW: Its a mistake to believe that he changed his views on the basis of coercion. His apology is sincere, self-motivated, resulting from his own thinking.
>> Chaos4700: He didn’t change his views AT ALL, Witty. He apologized to save face from extremists like you who think Israel can kill anyone they like.
Of the two explanations, the latter strikes me as the more plausible (especially in light of the Goldstone “recantation”.) Then again, RW views Mr. Derfner as “a personal friend”, so perhaps he is privy to information which supports his explanation.
Here is what one poster on his blog said:
“The original column you wrote, for which you’ve now been fired by JPost, was not wrong or hurtful or obscene or anything like that. On the contrary, it was a refreshing blast of reality for a nation sorely in need of it, and believe me the ones who needed it most are the ones who are now sanctimoniously baying for your blood, yes the same “We’re always right and holy” crowd who are most responsible for the awful mess in which this country now finds itself. I understand that when a decent, thinking person like yourself is subjected to a torrent of vilification and accusation, it’s natural to think that you must have screwed up, to examine yourself with a microscope and look for flaws. In many cases that’s an appropriate response. But in some cases, like this one, it’s actually the little boy crying that the emperor has no clothes who is absolutely right, and all the self-righteous prigs condemning his chutzpah can all go soak their heads. If the future historians of this period get it right, they’ll describe your original column as a Galileo moment, and your subsequent apology as Galileo recanting after the church beat the crap out of him.”
The linked post is the original.
First of all, as noble as his intentions might have been, labeling Palestinian resistance of the occupation as “terrorism” is wrong, inaccurate, and perpetuates the harmful propaganda that has been forced down the world’s throat by zionists. When your land is stolen, homes destroyed, family killed, women raped, and children arrested and tortured, fighting against this injustice is not terrorism!
When Israel indiscriminately bombs the Palestinians, the MSM portrays this act as defending Israel’s soverignty/freedom. When a Palestinian kills an IDF soldier during a gunfight they label it as terrorism. Israel and its collaboraters in the US are legitimzing war crimes and condemning the fight for freedom
The term ‘terrorism’ is nothing more than a politically expedient euphemism to discredit those movements, and acts of violence, that threaten the establishment; whether in America, Europe, India or Israel, the goal is the same. So-called ‘terrorism’ only differs from state-sponsored violence by, say, the US or Israel, in terms of who is doing the violence. Who’s killed more civilians, Israel or Palestinian resistance groups?
Palestinian resistance is legitimate; the use of violence by Palestinians against Israelis is entirely understandable. I don’t care if we are talking about rocket attacks that land indiscriminately or suicide bombing in a cafe full of future or former soldiers; Israel has left the Palestinians with no other means of resistance.
@Exiled,
before the definition was airbrushed in the recent wave of Political Correctness, “terrorism” was defined as “intentional targeting of non-combatants”, and if u can prove that Israel has intentionally targeted civilians (or civilian targets), then it is terrorism. The Palestinians, though, though do not conceal that they target Israeli (actually, Jewich) civilians. So, no question that their attacks ARE terrorism.
And no, not having “other means of resistance” does NOT justify war crimes. Do you suggest that, Exiled?
Are “the Palestinians” monolithic?
Do “the Palestinians,” as a rule, make reference to targeting ‘Jewish’ civilians, specifically?
Is there such a thing as a non-combatant among an occupying force?
Is there such a thing as an Israeli ‘civilian?’
To all above, the answer is an emphatic ‘NO!’
Asherpat,
What would you do if the shoe was on the other foot and it was an all-powerful Palestinian state, protected and financed by a superpower, that had invaded and conquered a weak and nacent Israel, and was establishing Arab-only settlements throughout the land of Eretz-Israel, seizing Jewish land, using force and violence to stop non-violent demonstrators, etc.?
Do you not think you might be tempted to resort to violent resistence? Since it would be suicidal to go face to face against this powerful Palestinian military, would you not consider terrorism, even suicide bombing as a valid means of resistance?
I think I would, particularly after 44 years of an oppressive and brutal occupation with 650,000 taking over my land, not to mention millions of my fellow countryman still living in squalid refugee camps some 63 years after having been ethnically cleansed from my country.
Do you condemn your Lehi forefathers who committed terrorism against Arabs, British, and UN mediator when they were attempting to find a fair and equitable solution to the conflict over Palestine. These acts included assasinating Lord Moyne and Count Bernadotte, blowing up public markets and the King David Hotel, hanging captured British soldiers, etc. These Israeli terrorists are now honored in Israel as hero-patriots. Two of their group later became Israeli prime ministers.
It seems Israelis and their American supporters have double standards when it comes to terrorism: OK for oppressed Jews, but never for oppressed Arabs.
Gil Maguire
http://www.irishmoses.com
Exiled, ur comments are vile, not because I don’t agree with them, but because by replacing in ur repsonse “Israeli” with “Palestinian”, one can justify any artrocities. Is that what you argue for?
and by the way, the children in Sbarro restaurant were also “occupying force” when a Palestinian (or maybe you dispute that) walked-in and murdered them? If your answer is “yes”, then dont complain next time that Palestinian civilians are killed.
and by the way, there are Arabs who are “Israelis”, so when you imply that there is no Israeli ‘civilian’, do you count them in also as legitimate targets, or you apply the good old “selection” between Jews and non-Jews?
“Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should
not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the
centres of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in our places of
recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in
our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because they have children and
parents at home who are hungry and humiliated.” (Avraham Burg, 15 September
2003)
hey straighline,
Avraham Burg is a crank, and that is how he is perceived in Israel. His great father must be turning in his grave.
But because Avraham Burg also justifies murder, it does not make murder justified. If it does, then again, dont complain when Arab civilians get killed. After all, Israeli soldiers “have children and parents at home” that are afraid of rockets, knives, bus-bombs etc and they are “humiliated” by this, so by your logic, they are justified to murder just about anyone, isnt it straighline?
“and that is how he is perceived in Israel”
Perhaps that’s why Burg refers to Israel as “thunderously failed reality”. I think “crankiness” is in the eye of the beholder.
And how do you justify murder then – it happens pretty well every day in the occupied territories? Oh I forgot they’re “Arabs” so it’s ok.
It seems to me that you’re the exceptionalist – I regret every violent death as I’m sure Burg does. You seem only to regret violent deaths if the killed is Jewish.
How about Gerald Kaufman – another crank?
“The world is rightly horrified at the cruel and bloody deaths of Israeli
civilians, including babies and small children, inflicted by terrorist suicide
bombers. Grievous though every one of these deaths most certainly is, it
cannot be denied that during the three years of the Second Intifada the
Israelis have killed three times as many Palestinians, some of them terrorists
(in illegal targeted assassinations) but most of them innocent civilians,
including babies and pregnant women.” (Gerald Kaufman, 22 November 2003)
A person that refers to “reality” as “failed” is a crank.
A person that makes a baseless claims and accuses me that I “only to regret violent deaths if the killed is Jewish” (which is not supported in any of my posts above and ever), is either (i) obsessively disingenous; or (ii) will admit his mistake and apologise.
What would you do if the shoe was on the other foot and it was an all-powerful Palestinian state, protected and financed by a superpower, that had invaded and conquered a weak and nacent Israel,
That is exactly it. Imagine if you will what would have happened if Israel lost and was overrun in any of the wars against it? There would have been no occupation, just Jewish blood neck high in the streets. We have seen what Muslims do to each other in conflict, imagine what they would have done to the hated Jews.
I would much rather have us in two states side by side. The Palestinians for the most part (and Chaos etc) want us eliminated.
You might as well be asking us what it would be like if unicorns were running a communist state in Palestine, LLI.
The fact is, I want your bloodlusting military to go, I want the occupation to go and I want the Jewish privilege to go.
It’s hardly my fault that there’s nothing else to Israel when you do away with all of that, is there? And nobody believes that the Palestinians would run such a god-awful state as you run. There’s no example of any of the shit you do to Palestinians being done to Jews, unless you go as far back as the Crusades, and that was the Catholic Church at its worst.
I think you’ll find that it is Israel that is the crank, not Avraham Burg.
He’s one of the sanest voices I’ve ever heard out of that country:
Charlie Rose: A conversation with Avrum Burg
Let the record show that it is Israel that kills Palestinian civilians in a ratio of 4-to-1 (versus the number of Israelis that Palestinians have killed), and Israel that kills Palestinian children at a ratio of 10-to-1.
It is not “muslims” that perpetrated the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 jews in 1948/49. It is not even “muslims” that perpetrated the ethnic cleansing of an equivalent number of jews from arab lands in the two decades til 1967 – for that is a case of gigantic recent historic revisionism.
It is not “muslims” that killed ~20,000 Lebanese civilians in 1982, it is not “muslims” that have launched six major wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1982, 2006) against Israel in six decades.
It is not “muslims” that have rained down terror on Gaza in the 6 years since Sharon’s fake withdrawal. It is not “muslims” that have imprisoned a million Palestinians in the Warsaw …oops, Gaza Ghetto. It is not “muslims” that have demolished 25,000 Palestinian homes since 1967. It is not “muslims” that have created and perpetuated the largest refugee population alive in the world today. It is not “muslims” that are undertaking the longest military occupation in the modern world. It is not “muslims” that are using the occupied Palestinian territories as a weapons testing ground for the merchants of death (AKA private military contractors).
I’m not going to say it is jews that are responsible for all these atrocities either, because it is not, it is Israelis – and I reject your disgustingly racist religious tribalism. Still, if that’s your paradigm, I suggest you take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if everything I’ve written above makes you proud to be a jew.
“The Palestinians for the most part (and Chaos etc) want us eliminated.”
So is that the excuse you tell yourself while you kill all their children in cold blood??
Asherpat.
Your comments remind of Lenny Bruce on the difference between the Allied bombing of Dresden and the Nazi extermination camps.
“They looked!”
IrishMoses. your post is repugnant. There are many conflicts in the world today. In many of them, the sides are at big disparity and one side is significantly weaker militarily than the other. In only ONE conflict, the weaker side and its supporters overwhelmingly justify murdering children and non-combatans of the other side. Only ONE.
And no, in the presence of abundant military targets (and even in lack thereof), if i was in a situation that you describe, I may have resorted to suicide bombings, but not against the civilians of the hypothetical “strong Arab side”.
No, Irish, weakness does NOT justify murder. Or you have other logic?
In only ONE conflict, the weaker side and its supporters overwhelmingly justify murdering children and non-combatans of the other side. Only ONE.
Nonsense, the Viet Cong and Tamil Tigers were employing suicide bombers against non-combatants decades before the second intifada. The Tamil Tigers group is reported to have invented the suicide vest, and made suicide bombing their trademark. See Tamil Tigers: Suicide Bombing Innovators link to npr.org
yeah asherpat: it was really heartening to see Israelis rise up against their government in protest when it attacked Gaza in 2008/09, killing over 1000 civilians and 300+ children, and how about the Israeli Revolution that came after B’Tselem released their statistics that Israeli has killed 10 times as many Palestinian children in the last decade than vice versa…?
For sure, nobody could ever claim that Israelis justify the mass killing of Palestinian civilians and children.
Good Christ Asherpat, it took you almost 24 hours to reply to my original post and that’s the best you can do? You are a real Hasbara lightweight and need to be sent immediately back for retraining:
To begin, you conveniently ignored my last paragraph/question to you:
“Do you condemn your Lehi forefathers who committed terrorism against Arabs, British, and UN mediator when they were attempting to find a fair and equitable solution to the conflict over Palestine? These acts included assassinating Lord Moyne and Count Bernadotte, blowing up public markets and the King David Hotel, hanging captured British soldiers, etc. These Israeli terrorists are now honored in Israel as hero-patriots. Two of their group later became Israeli prime ministers.”
You are more than willing to condemn all Palestinians as baby killers and murderers but are unwilling to face up to and acknowledge the reality of Israeli terrorism, war crimes and atrocities. Let me give you some specific historical events. Please respond by telling us whether the action was murder or somehow justifiable, and, if so, why was it justifiable:
• Jewish terrorist bombings of Arab markets and buses during the pre-partition period?
• Jewish terrorist assassination of Lord Moyne, a British diplomat?
• Jewish terrorist assassination of Count Bernadotte, a Swedish UN mediator appointed to find a solution to the conflict in Palestine?
• The ethnic cleansing of some 700,000 Arab Palestinians from Israel in 1948, including the seizure of their lands and property and total destruction of some 500 of their villages?
• The various massacres of Arab civilians during the 1948 wars by Israeli troops such as at Deir Yassin and Jaffa?
• The killing of 29 Muslims praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs by West Bank settler Dr. Baruch Goldstein?
• The seizure of Arab lands in the West Bank and transfer of some 650,000 Israeli Jews into Jewish-only settlements on those lands in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention?
I could go on and on and you could surely reply with your own examples of Palestinian acts against Israelis. My point is that terrorism is tool or tactic used typically by weaker people who are being oppressed by a much stronger power who possesses overwhelming military force. It is a tool and tactic used by Israelis themselves against the British, the Palestinians and even the UN. Instead of condemning the Palestinians as murderous baby killers, you might want to take an honest look at what is causing this conflict and whether or not the Palestinians are an oppressed people fighting for their freedom against a very brutal occupying power.
Gil Maguire
http://www.irishmoses.com
@Hostage, u did not read my post carefully. It has an important qualification “There are many conflicts in the world TODAY”. Today, there are NO forces in the world, except muslim terror groups that use unmitigated violence that is directed primarily, intentionally and openly against non-combatants. IRA, however repugnant in itsself, and BTW a good friend it always was with the Palestinians, at least tried to warn the British and tried to dirsupt life rather than kill civilians. Today, there is no group in the world other than muslims and non-muslim Israel haters that overwhelmingly condon killing of non-combatants, inclulding children.
Please read my posts carefully next time.
oh that’s such bullcrap. i guess you’re just not up on the idf targeting children.
That’s total bullshit.
Zionists kill 10 times the number of Palestinian children and are unapologetic about it.
And you’re no scholar on ‘many conflicts in the world today’ to arrive at that conclusion.
Your qualification is also stupid as hell. The Tamils aren’t ancient history, you clown.
Israel-haters is also a cute term. No one has to love Israel. In fact, I don’t blame people for hating a racist, apartheid State like Israel. A colonial settler-State deserves and should be hated. Hated until it is reformed.
Israel flaunts international law and regularly kills civilians – especially children. This is in addition to it’s theft of Palestinian land and water among other resources.
Zionists all have the same shallow cartoon intellectualism about them. You people are morons.
>> asherpat: Today, there are NO forces in the world, except muslim terror groups that use unmitigated violence that is directed primarily, intentionally and openly against non-combatants.
Mexican drug cartels targeting and killing children
Wow, that was easy. Any other sweeping and stupid statements you’d like to make, new Mondoweiss troll?
IRA gets a commendation from asherpat for ‘warning’ us? ha bloody ha, that’s why they planted bombs in waste bins in shopping centers is it? Killing children? Oh such adequate warnings! Consider Warrington. False information in warning.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Today, there is no group in the world other than muslims and non-muslim Israel haters that overwhelmingly condon killing of non-combatants, inclulding children.
Please read my posts carefully next time.
I’m confident that the UK was correct when it imposed a three-year ban on Rabbi Elitzur and placed him on their terror list for authorship of the book, Torat Hamelech, in which he said it was “permitted” to kill non-Jewish children. The Israeli authorities have handed-out restraining orders and bans against terrorists accused of conducting or inciting “price tag” operations in the Yitzhar settlement. link to israelnationalnews.com
See also the Federal Register for the State Department 01/05/2010 Notice of Review “In the Matter of the Designation of Kahane Chai” (aka American Friends of the United Yeshiva Movement aka American Friends of Yeshivat Rav Meir aka Committee for the Safety of the Roads aka Dikuy Bogdim aka DOV aka Forefront of the Idea aka Friends of the Jewish Idea Yeshiva aka Jewish Legion aka Judea Police aka Judean Congress aka Kach aka Kahane aka Kahane Lives aka Kahane Tzadak aka Kahane.org aka Kahanetzadak.com aka Kfar Tapuah Fund aka KOACH aka Meir’s Youth aka New Kach Movement aka newkach.org aka No’ar Meir aka Repression of Traitors aka State of Judea aka Sword of David aka The Committee Against Racism and Discrimination (CARD) aka The Hatikva Jewish Identity Center aka The International Kahane Movement aka The Jewish Idea Yeshiva aka The Judean Legion aka The Judean Voice aka The Qomemiyut Movement aka The Rabbi Meir David Kahane Memorial Fund aka The Voice of Judea aka The Way of the Torah aka The Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea aka Yeshivat HaRav Meir) As a Foreign Terrorist Organization pursuant to Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act link to federalregister.gov
elJay, drug cartels do not fall under the terrorism definitions cos their agenda is not primarily political, they are criminals.
I am grateful to the moderator of this particular thread to let me voice the other side’s position, and judging by the repsonses to my comments, frequenters to these pages much prefer a good cosy backscratching.
…and when you’re ready asherpat please address the overwhelming support of the Israeli public for the regular bloodbaths the IDF visits on Gaza, and the fact that Israel has killed 10 times as many Palestinian children as vice versa in the last decade.
Here are B’Tselem’s statistics:
10 years to the second Intifada – summary of data
You were saying:
I can’t locate “overwhelming” support among Palestinians and their supporters, please point me to the relevant sources documenting this. I do know 90% of Israelis supported the 2008/2009 Gaza Massacre.
>> elJay, drug cartels do not fall under the terrorism definitions cos their agenda is not primarily political, they are criminals.
So, without a “primarily political” agenda, terrorism is not terrorism. Try selling that to people terrorized by drug cartels who use violence directed intentionally and openly against non-combatants.
What a lame little troll you are.
>> elJay, drug cartels do not fall under the terrorism definitions cos their agenda is not primarily political, they are criminals.
I have to say, though, this is good news for “muslim terror groups”. All they have to do is divest themselves of their “primarily political” agendas and they’ll stop being terrorists!
elJay,
i dont mind you calling me a troll, but look in the mirror – the real trolls, boiling with hatred (sometimes, self), envy and prejudices, based on flawed post-colonial guilt or honour-shame syndrome and to what? The only country in the middle east where you can scream ur hatered without being shot or tortured (Sumud, pls dont start, no one in Israel gets shot for peaceful protest, to pre-empt you, peaceful protests do not include clashes with throwing rocks, slingshots and other physical provocations), pls give me an example from the recent lame “flytilla” – how many were shot? Try doing it in any arab country…
Right, you have to include the disclaimer “in Israel”.
• How about the 20 or so Palestinians who have been murdered in recent years by Israelis while engaged in non-violent protest?
• How about the 9 people executed and ~50 people shot on the Free Gaza Flotilla?
• How about the more than 1000 Palestinian children who have been murdered by the IDF in the last decade?
• How about the senior citizen murdered by the IDF while asleep in his bed in the West Bank a few months ago, or the multiple senior citizens (mostly farmers working their land) killed by the IDG in Gaza since the end of the Gaza Massacre?
• How about the Palestinian mother who was shredded by an IDF flechette missile while she stood on her front verandah in Gaza?
• How about the IDF testing weapons for Rafael by shooting children as they collect gravel in Gaza?
What you really meant to say was “no *jews* in Israel get shot for peaceful protest”.
Palestinian don’t need to engage in protest – peaceful or otherwise – to be killed by Israelis.
>> i dont mind you calling me a troll …
That’s good, because you are a troll. It’s clear that you’d like to blame all of the world’s terrorism solely on Muslims (“Today, there are NO forces in the world, except muslim terror groups that use unmitigated violence that is directed primarily, intentionally and openly against non-combatants.”) but you can’t, and I can only imagine how sad that makes you. :-(
>> … The only country in the middle east where you can scream ur hatered without being shot or tortured …
“Israel: We may not be as good as the best but, hey, at least we’re not as bad as the worst!”
“What you really meant to say was “no *jews* in Israel get shot for peaceful protest”
I forgot her last name, but what about Emily H, the American (Jewish) girl who lost her eye because an Israeli shot a tear gas canister at her face? Though maybe that was in the WB.
Henochowicz? What did she do? Or old ladies from Michigan who got their forearms broken?
fyi, the latest from Henochowicz:
link to youtube.com
thanks cigargod. it’s up in draft, i hat tipped you on it.
Thanks.
btw, I agree with your earlier response to my “banging head against wall” comment.
So many of the posts today were amazing/inspirational.
i’ll say. and thanks for your many many excellent contributions. i’m so grateful for this space and everyone who makes it what it is. mindblowing and such an honor to be part of this discussion with such amazing people.
Thanks. I’m learning a lot here.
I was so burned out at DK, TPM, HP, etc…even though I learned a lot there, too.
The links/book recommendations here are fantastic. Reading Avnery’s: 1948 and just ordered The Politics of Genocide.
The thing I’m liking most about MW, is that the mods and the posters assume your good intentions…even on hot topics (which I like)….where it is hard not to run headlong into an emotional car wreck.
i like the moderation thing here. for me, in a perfect world..we wouldn’t even be aware they were there. i don’t want to hear the kinds of stuff i hear at dkos. it just doesn’t interest me to have whole threads diverted into discussions of what is or is not ok to say . i’d rather argue the points instead and build the camaraderie. that probably feels silly but i feel like we are part of building a global movement. i learned a lot from many of the posters at dkos tho. many of my favorite posters of all time are there. i love simone daud. just love him. and nathan firebad and soy, weasel. now all part of adalah and tom j. sheer determination and litho…steel cajones. others too. corvo. many good posters. but it was such a hostile environment. just really horrible. i think the whole rating system stinks. like every single comment being graded and being open to being taken down because someone finds one thing. it’s childlike and nuts. i can’t believe i wasted so much time there. the vile nature of some of the hasbara, much worse than here. so much worse. and i never felt really valued there. my voice was..in survival mode always striving or something..well it is all in my past, it brought out the worst in me. water under the bridge. such a radical difference from posting here where it seems like there’s a pull-togetherness..like the wind is on our back. especially lately. it’s like being free or something. well…i am rambling. i should knock on wood.
Very much agree.
It’s like the quote someone left about surrounding yourself with smarter people. Works in reverse, too.
I didn’t see rambling…I saw a nice flow.
This is the narrative that most people see in the world. But in America, we are provided with the story that Jews have been victims for 2000 years. Because of historical conflicts Jews were often on the losing end and forced to wander the earth. So we should accept them as history’s losers and allow them to construct their homeland on the land of Palestine. It’s only fair to a ‘people without land’.
Derfner’s argument is silly. Of course the occupation incentivizes and provokes terrorism, but what follows from that? Before the occupation, the existence of Israel provoked terrorism and before that the existence of Jews in Palestine provoked terrorism. So? How does he know that ending the occupation will end terrorism? It wasn’t the cause of terrorism in the past and may not be its cause in the future.
“before that the existence of Jews in Palestine provoked terrorism.”
explain? Palestine provoked terrorism before the Jews. Does this have to do with the specific earth? minerals?
Or do you allude to Palestinians/Arabs, do they have a terrorism gene?
No, Palestinians do not have any terrorism gene but they do have extremist in their society that use terrorism.
link to en.wikipedia.org
Do you disagree with the statement that the presence of Jews in Palestine pre 1948 provoked terrorism?
I’ll disagree with that statement. If you look at some of the many links available thru this site alone, you’ll find that it was the activities of the zionist Jews that provoked violent responses *occasionally* prior to 1948. Definitely not mere “presence”.
You mean the Jews who blew up hotels and booby-trapped the corpses of British soldiers, eee? Because I think we need to make a distinction between Jews like you, and Jews like Mr. Derfner.
10000% and if you believe that your ignorant of history. what provoked terrorism was the , sadly successful, attempt to displace, disenfranchise, and replace the palestinian in their own country and homes through the inherently bigoted ideology of zionism.
Of course.
It was not just the presence of
jewszionists in Palestine pre-1948, but their declarations that they wanted to control ALL of mandate Palestine, and parts of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon that was the problem.I can just imagine the hysteria if 300 million Chinese began undertaking illegal immigration to the USA stating their intentions to create a new Chinese state and that existing Americans can go and live with their caucasian brothers and sisters in Canada and Mexico. After all, most are recent immigants anyway!
Let’s assume you are right. So a Jew proclaiming he wants a Jewish state is provocation enough for terrorism. Got it. You just prove my point. The “provocation” excuse can be used all the time. When does it stop? Apparently when the last Jew leaves Israel.
So a Jew proclaiming he wants a Jewish state is provocation enough for terrorism. Got it.
nah, that wasn’t what sumud said and you know it. let me rephrase your text to reflect what you really mean:
eee:
So Jews proclaiming they wanted to control ALL of mandate Palestine, and parts of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon is provocation enough for terrorism. Got it.
and given what sumud said about 300 million Chinese i’d even bet you can extract the ‘jew’ segment of the proclamation, because it is fairly irrelevant who is coming to displace you from your home when it’s happening now isn’t it?
i’d like to point out that it is fairly transparent how you asked these silly set up questions and then when you get an answer to your question you make some sweeping strawman proclamation completely devoid of the content someone just provided for you. seriously eee, you are such a tool.
but your misrepresenting what it was. the provacation was demanding a jewish state in a place where jews were a major minority. the provocation was demanding a state for jews in a place that already had a strong nationalist sentiment. the provocation was demanding a state for jews at the expense of the non jewish native population. the palestinians couldn’t give a damn if there is a palestinian state they just don’t want it to be on their land in their country.
You are an intentionally dishonest person.
OT, but I’d like your opinion on this:
link to youtube.com
Annie,
Ok. so if SOME Jews say they want to control ALL of Mandate Palestine it is enough provocation to justify terrorism? You are mincing words and know it. What did Sumud say if not that?
So if some Arabs say today that they want to annihilate Israel, that gives Israel a right to attack them? And if the Iranians say such things about Israel? Does this give Israel a right to attack them according to you? Only when it comes to Israeli Jews, our verbal provocations are enough to justify terrorism. And if that is not what you are saying, then what exactly are you saying?
Your inability to see Arab terrorism for what it is makes your whole position quite suspect. Your whole love affair with Hamas is revolting. You did not have any problem coordinating the flotilla with them did you?
i am not mincing anything. you’re all about asking loaded questions and then drilling people with more questions on their response. i know your game.
Do you disagree with the statement that the presence of Jews in Palestine pre 1948 provoked terrorism?
why are you asking this? aren’t you really asking if zionists provoked terrorism in pre 1948? of course they did. i’m not mincing words. you said defners argument was “silly” you went on to qualify that by saying:
iow you agreed with defner (kinda) “the occupation incentivizes and provokes terrorism”
you can skip the “incentives” tho because everyone here knows it is hella lot more that the “incentivizes” that provoke terrorism. it is the action.
then you go off on a tangent leap Before the occupation, the existence of Israel provoked terrorism
see the leap? see where you completely skipped the actions of the zionists and laid it all on “the existence of Israel “. cute..no cigar.
and before that the existence of Jews in Palestine provoked terrorism.
see the leap? see where you completely skipped the actions of the zionists and laid it all on “the existence of jews “. cute..no cigar.
So? How does he know that ending the occupation will end terrorism?
maybe if you ended the actions that provoke terrorism, terrorism will stop. just try it. try grasping the actions made a difference and they still do. just like burning olive trees make a difference and pissing on prisoners makes a difference.. otherwise what you are suggesting is the actions of the zionist terrorist organizations made no impact. they did.
cherrio.
Part of what 3e means (and this is an extremely common argument among Israel defenders) is that what Israel does to Palestinians has absolutely no moral significance whatsoever, unless it triggers terrorism against Israeli Jews. You see this argument all the time, often in letters to the NYT.
The other part of what he means is that Palestinians (and no doubt everyone else) are inherently anti-semitic, so the Israelis could have treated them with exquisite kindness and fairness and done nothing at all to provoke them and they still would be trying to murder them–Because That’s Just the Sort of People They Are. So what are you gonna do? Might as well steal their land and treat them like dirt. What’s that you say? They’re human beings with rights? Eh? What? I don’t understand.
Donald,
Many Palestinians are antisemitic. The battle cries of the 1947-48 war were clearly antisemitic. The Mufti and the Palestinian leadership were antisemitic. Hamas is an antisemitic organization. So yes, the mere aspirations for a Jewish homeland are a provocation and a justification for violence for large parts of the Palestinian society.
“mere aspirations for a Jewish homeland are a provocation and a justification for violence for large parts of the Palestinian society.”
Those “mere aspirations” involved taking over a chunk, if not all, of Palestine, and either expelling the Arabs or reducing them to second class citizens. When most of the Jews the Palestinians meet have these aspirations, is it surprising that the Palestinians have a negative attitude towards Jews?
Well, to you, it is. You have been brainwashed into the idea that negative attitudes towards Jews are never the result of the attitudes or behaviour of Jews.
>> You have been brainwashed into the idea that negative attitudes towards Jews are never the result of the attitudes or behaviour of Jews.
eee is just another hateful Zio-supremacist who uses “common sense” instead of reason. (E.g.: “Give me what I want or I will take it from you” = “negotiation”.)
He is the robust co-collectivist RW is thankful exists, who makes it possible for RW to “hold his nose” and pursue the immoral Zio-supremacist dream without ever having to dirty his hands.
Your reasoning is flawed.
Having Anti-semitic feelings or beliefs do not equal violence.
Having Aspirations (hope) does not equal provocation.
Acting, on either…may.
“…uses “common sense” instead of reason.”
That is it in a nut shell…and is one of the 2 or 3 main reasons why it is impossible to make any headway with these guys.
The other reasons are:
1. They think the debate and not the pursuit of truth….is the point.
2. They think being dishonest in service to the “cause” is blessed by God.
Terrorism is the means by which Israel manages the Palestinians. On a daily basis, as we have seen with the reports on child abduction, not to mention indiscriminate shooting and bombing, daily deliberate and calculated humiliation and degradation. Do people in Israel and the US waste time worrying about ‘justifying’ Israeli terrorism? Of course not, but look at the twist they get into when on of their own points out the obvious – that if you visit terror on people, some people will return it. Calling their own terrorism ‘self-defence’ is laughable, while denying the same ‘right’ to Palestinians. Expressing surprise that they have provoked and encouraged Palestinian terrorism is similarly laughable. Double standards? Hypocrisy? By the bucketful.
Neither the ‘existence of Israel’ nor the ‘existence of Jews in Palestine’ provoked terrorism from the Palestinians, you twit!
JEWISH TERRORISM, e.g. Stern Gang, Haganah, Irgun, and the ethnic cleansing of Arab villages, coupled with the declaration of Israeli independence well beyond the borders suggested by the UN all culminated to provoke Palestinian terrorism.
“JEWISH TERRORISM, e.g. Stern Gang, Haganah, Irgun, and the ethnic cleansing of Arab villages, coupled with the declaration of Israeli independence well beyond the borders suggested by the UN all culminated to provoke Palestinian terrorism.”
@exiled – you sure imply that Palestinians have a long memory if their current terrorism was provoked by events of 70 yrs ago.
The Nakba is an ongoing event.
It is you @asherpat & your ilk that have the long memories – saying you’re returning to your ‘homeland’ after a couple millenia…
Zionist Jews arrived in Palestine armed with weapons and a well planned conspiracy to usurp Palestine.
Remember “the bride is beautiful, unfortunately she is already married.”?
Quote by an early zionist when Zionists were debating what piece of land in the world they would usurp, Ugandans, you should thank God every morning that they decided against your country.
“JEWISH TERRORISM, e.g. Stern Gang, Haganah, Irgun, and the ethnic cleansing of Arab villages, coupled with the declaration of Israeli independence well beyond the borders suggested by the UN all culminated to provoke Palestinian terrorism.”
Show me ONE instance of Jewish terrorism pre-1929. Do tell, what provoked the Hebron Massacre?
u m jews going we want to take your country and kick you out. that kind of attitude almost always engenders a violant response as it should.
Show me ONE instance of Jewish terrorism pre-1929. Do tell, what provoked the Hebron Massacre?
Well the whole national myth was started by the fifty legionnaire-terrorists at Tel Hai. They were led by the one-armed Russian, who was quite obviously trying to dominate the indigenous Arab people. I don’t believe that the legionnaires had any business “defending the north of Eretz Israel from Arab takeover” on March 1, 1920. link to betar.org.il
That was several weeks before the (supercalifragilisticexpialidocious) San Remo resolution on April 25th, and the British occupation forces had not received any such mandate.
I’ve mentioned before that the Haganah carried out assassinations, such as the murder of Jacob Israël de Haan in 1924. He was killed for his anti-Zionist political activities and contacts with Arab leaders. That same year the Jewish High Commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, asked the Colonial Secretary for a Collective Punishment Ordinance so that it could be employed against the inhabitants of the Arab “tribal areas”. See
Former Reference: CP 152 (24)
Title: Palestine. Proposed Special Legislation for Tribal Areas.
Author: James H Thomas
Date 03 March 1924
Catalogue reference CAB 24/165
link to nationalarchives.gov.uk
We’ve also discussed the Hebron massacre before too. Here is the most relevant part: Members of Betar, Ahdut Ha’avodah, and Histradut subsequently staged a paramilitary propaganda march on the Western Wall on Tisha B’Av. They were carrying Jewish national flags and singing the Zionist anthem Ha-Tikvah. Given the fact that the raison d’etre of this march was to put on a provocative display of Zionist triumphalism (and xenophobia) it is small wonder that it triggered extreme animosity.”
BTW, the US State Department report on the 1929 Hebron massacre is cataloged under the title 867n.404Wailing Wall/6: Telegram The Consul General at Jerusalem (Knabenshue) to the Secretary of State, August 25, 1929. link to digicoll.library.wisc.edu
In an earlier Wailing Wall Telegram from the Consul General at Jerusalem, 867n.404Walling Wall/5, he advised the Secretary of State that:
– See Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1929, page 47
We’ve all witnessed the Zionist nut cases today marching to the Western Wall singing and chanting about butchering the Arabs.
link to mondoweiss.net
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves .. politically we are the
aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they
inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we
want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the
Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and
self sacrifice.” (David Ben-Gurion, 1938)
Seems like this kind of silliness has been around a long time, eee. I wonder if JP would have fired Ben-Gurion?
And let’s not forget this bit of silliness:
“If I were a Palestinian at the right age, I would have joined one of the terrorist organizations at a certain stage.” (Ehud Barak, 1998)
Lucky he wasn’t working for the JP at the time.
“Terrorism is the war of the poor and war is the terrorism of the rich”.
Peter Ustinov
I had forgotten that quote…which reminds me…I think I’ll have to see what else P.U. wrote.
That kind of quote comes from very aware earth.
The Principle of Just War in Catholic Church states:
The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy.
At one and the same time:
1. The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
2. All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
3. There must be serious prospects of success;
4. The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
I am clear in my mind that Palestinian Resistance to Occupation is a Just War.
Clearly it is not even according to this definition since 3 does not hold. The more they use violence, the less the Palestinian chances are.
Eee,
I respectfully disagree about you assertion that point 3 of Just War
- There must be serious prospects of success-
Whole empires have been brought down by the relentless, low level, attacks by occupied population on Occupying Army. Read Polish history, plenty of your kin share it.
It also depends what you call a success: Was Warsaw Ghetto a success?
Because if it wasn’t – Jews had no right to raise against Germans.
I’m polish and that a real good look for proof.. the polish had a saying that should be a grave word of warning to all who would seek to destroy her. you may conquer the land but you will never conquer the people. an occupied people don’t have to win. they just don’t have to lose.
The Catholic conception of a just war is not one which I support at all. Under it, the American war of independence would be a unjust war. It rules out the possibility of fighting for an ideology or a principle: Give me liberty or give me death. I think there are ideas worth dying and killing for. So of course the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was justified, but not according to your theory since as you point out, it had zero chance. You should therefore reject your theory.
“The Catholic conception of a just war is not one which I support at all.”
Given that your ideology is virtually identical to clinical psychopathy , I’m not surprised.
I think that Derfner was wrong and misleading. The truth sometimes is too monstrous.
What happened was that a non-Palestinian extremist group attacked Israelis. Perhaps that group strived to kill soldiers, or perhaps they killed one or two soldiers by dumn luck. IDF did what it does of late when caught on left foot: lashed out without much sense and then exhibited a mastery in the field of propaganda. By some accounts, during the chaotic events of the day, IDF killed 5 Egyptian security personnel and one of their own. That would mean that the terrorists killed one soldier and seven civilians, but who knows was really happened (there was a lot of friendly fire on that day).
Afterwards, a gathering of some extremists in Gaza was bombed, and almost surely the killed guys (not to mention assorted collateral damage, quite unlamented by Israeli press) had no connection whatsoever with the attack. So the comrades of the killed (not Hamas!) responded by firing the best stuff in their storage. And there were more exchanges like that, and my very strong impression was that IDF duly initiated all of them. According to Israeli press, at that point Barak was about to initiate another Cast Lead, but Egyptian authorities came out with proofs that the original attackers were native Egyptian extremists and public rage in Egypt (for the killing of Egyptian soldiers and police) would probably be very, very hard to contain if IDF followed with full scale carnage. So the Israeli cabinet decided to show restrain.
Restrain in Israeli style looks like that: only few more hapless Gazan got killed. Because it was determined that Hamas has nothing to do with any of that, Hamas was spared of killing, but … several hundreds of their supporters were hunted down in West Bank for good cheer, most of them rather quickly released, strangely enough.
The point is that there was no Palestinian terror to “justify and understand”. There was shooting back in response to a wave of killings. There was also a rather inept (thankfully, thankfully) attack by a loner with a knife in Tel-Aviv, who could be driven nuts by his experiences under occupation. His relative ineptness, and ease of crossing the security wall shows that the only reason that there are no suicide attacks anymore is that nobody is organizing them.
Israel won against terror. Won. Period. What is left are echoes of IDF activity. Which Israeli use to scare themselves to death and to “snatch defeats from the jaws of victory”.
It is very hard to face the reality that institutions of a democratic state can lie systematically and quite completely. Recall the debate in UK on “45 minutes”. Totally false reports that British intelligence collected from informers were saying that Saddam is in possession of chemically armed artillery shells that need hours of assembly before using. This was transmuted into chemical warheads that can strike British facilities in Cyprus within 45 minutes after a command. What was widely discussed is how could the government distort and exaggerate so much. Nobody really touched the point that the distorted and exaggerated stuff was false to begin with. There was no “there” there.
Is there a locus classicus of Just War theory in your view, Eva?
Your statement of the rules would not, I think, exclude civilian targets, at least not if they were few overall, considering the whole campaign, and were reasonably expected – is reasonable expectation enough? – to lead to the liberation of millions.
Other people in this discussion would not permit any civilian targets at all or would say that the targeted civilians must not only be few in comparison to those liberated by the whole campaign but (at very least!) few in comparison to the combatants targeted at the same time. It may be all right if you target a military camp and catch a few civilians in the blast, but that is as far as you’re allowed to go.
How do we decide the truth of the matter?
I am not trained in law, I’m a scientist.
I believe that Catholic view of Just War is based on Roman philosopher’s Aristotle’s writing and developed by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas.
I think majority of acceptable Just War theory is using Catholic Definition, which really is Christian Definition.
You are right that Just War theory does not exclude civilian casualties being a consequence of military action; there is of course a further test to be applied:
The Doctrine of Double Effect:
“1. The act itself must be morally good or at least indifferent.
2.The agent may not positively will the bad effect but may permit it. If he could attain the good effect without the bad effect he should do so. The bad effect is sometimes said to be indirectly voluntary.
3.The good effect must flow from the action at least as immediately (in the order of causality, though not necessarily in the order of time) as the bad effect. In other words the good effect must be produced directly by the action, not by the bad effect. Otherwise the agent would be using a bad means to a good end, which is never allowed.
4.The good effect must be sufficiently desirable to compensate for the allowing of the bad effect“
If I may say so, Eva, I’ve always thought that your grasp of moral as well as scientific subjects was a very sure one. However, this subject is very difficult for all of us.
Surely violent actions are never morally indifferent – outside the scope of any moral rule. Their direct effects – killing, maiming, terrifying; these are the only effects that are truly direct – are never good, not ever. It’s only some of their indirect effects, such as the better situation that results for survivors when bad guys are eliminated, for which they could be valued. Don’t you think so?
How different really are the states of mind of one who wills and one who permits?
Yes, we Jews know all about the Just Wars of the Catholic Church, Eva, we know them all too well.
Our people experienced a lot of that “Justice” in your country.
“Our people experienced a lot of that “Justice” in your country.”
And someone had to pay for it..The natives of Palestine..Hang on!..yeah, the price tag already in 1947!
Monsters!
“And someone had to pay for it..The natives of Palestine.” Jews.
Who did the Jews move in on when they first came to the region?
Please try to be honest…
@CigarGod
“Who did the Jews move in on when they first came to the region?
Please try to be honest…” – Not Arabs. honest.
Simply impossible for you to be honest.
Makes one wonder…if talk like a crab…do you walk sideways, too?
Who are “we”, my friend. You just proved that you know nothing about Jewish history. I would surely not call it “know well”, and even less so “know them all too well”. Dates and events please.
An appeal like this to the israeli public should have come along a lot earlier, say around 1969 … better late than never
these words really summed it up “the blood of Israeli victims is ultimately on our hands, and that it’s up to us to stop provoking our own people’s murder by ending the occupation”
pretty clear-cut that statement – and quite true
Derfner couldn’t take the heat his convictions generated and retracted a teeny bit, but he should have just stuck by his original words – the meaning was clear and needed no clarification
I think Derf said what he really thought the first time round. He shouldn’t have said it, nor should his editor have given him space to say it, unless he was prepared to stand by every word and his editor was prepared to stand by him. His point was that it is generally agreed that injustice, at least if serious and continuing, justifies violent resistance. In circumstances where all violent resistance is unjustified, he notes by parity of reasoning, there cannot be injustice – yet ‘left-wing Zionists’ consider (he presumably reports their view correctly) that actually there is injustice inflicted on the Palestinians.
This doesn’t prove that all, rather than only some, forms of resistance are justified. Few would say that ‘all’ were. So it’s a question, if the original argument is valid, of drawing a line. What if we say ‘The Palestinians are justified in resisting, but only within the traditional laws of war?’ That might mean that attacks with reasonable prospects of success on recognised combatants, doing direct damage expected to be much greater than any collateral damage that might be ‘necessary’, were permitted: but no more. But this might amount in practice to nothing at all.
So are there forms of severe, hideous injustice that ought not to resisted at all? Or are there circumstances in which, because others have gone too far, you can go too far as well? A very distressing choice.
What I found interesting is that Derfner’s article must have been seen by the ZioCons as such a major threat that it must be hidden from the public eye. Judging from how quickly it was disappeared from JP, Derfner’s blog and almost everywhere else, they obviously didn’t want his entire article providing full context. I found it by google searching the title and finally found some obscure German language site that had cut and pasted the English text. It would be nice to see his original posted on Daily Beast, Tablet, Forward or other major sites to encourage some debate on this.
Derfner’s article was never published in the Jerusalem Post. He removed it himself from his own blog.
He later apologized for his use of terms, and clarified his views.
Smells like a duck?
Derfner regretted using the word “terror” simply because people like you have changed the definition of “terror” to pretty much exclusively mean “when Arabs attack white civilians.”
He didn’t change his core argument at all — that Israel provokes violence by being the originator of violence. So stop pretending like there was some huge retraction on Derfner’s part, there wasn’t.
Two thoughts come to mind immediately.
Larry wrote: “I got fired from J Post today. The paper received hundreds of notices of cancellations”. Wow. BDS does work, people!
Also, my take away from The Derf’s article was that Israel claims the right to self defense, that right is manifested in aggression against Palestinians, Palestinians seek to invoke their own kind of self defense, this is branded as terrorism, but isn’t this cycle of violence predictable and therefore preventable? As a columnist, he was attempting to shake his fellow countrymen out of their bubble. Speaking truth to power, as he has done courageously for so many years, he was immediately executed by firing squad.
Larry Derfner is a courageous analyst, American-born, made Aliyah and writes honestly about his country. The J Post must have had no further tolerance for LD after he was arrested at Tel Aviv airport during the chaos of the “fly-tilla.”. He’s received the same treatment as Helen Thomas.
LD, we salute you for your candor. Freedom of the press, the expression of unpopular ideas — this is what you learned growing up in America. God bless you for extolling those virtues courageously.
This was also meant to have a chilling effect on leftist journalists.
Derfner is going through the same thing Benni Morris did – He wrote the plain truth of how Israel establishes/maintains itself as a Jewish state and, facing censure, finesses his words to get back in good with the family. And like Morris, he didn’t actually mean to explain how Israel remains a Jewish state. He simply wants Israel to not shoot itself in the foot.
But hey, Israel still respects freedom of thought enough not to tie him to a chair and beat him on the stomach. They only do that to Palestinian kids so they can finger their own relatives. So it’s still the most free society in the middle east, and stuff.
he did in that original article do something that needed to be done to fix this problem. cut through the bullshit and focus on the root causes of the conflict.
y’know i can’t help but think his better self was screaming thru to break free. his honor is very raw and beautiful in it’s simplicity.
Derfner shouldn’t have used the word “terrorism” to describe justifiable Palestinian militant resistance.
He should have distinguished between what is justifiable and even legal (a right); the right of an occupied occupation to militant resistance, and what is never and can never be justified; actual terrorism – the intentional targeting of civilians.
Palestinians do have the right to kill Israeli [soldiers] as part of a legitimate militant resistance to the occupation, and they do not have the right to kill Israeli civilians. But he is right, the occupation does provoke such events.
The prohibition on the Israeli press reporting accurately the targets of Palestinian militants is, I think, a deliberate attempt to sow confusion over the intentions of these militants, and to paint them all as terrorists. A recent rocket attack out of Gaza resulted in Israeli press reporting on X people being hurt (no mention of whether the injured was civilian or soldier), with a spokesman out of Gaza claiming it was an IDF facility that had been targeted and hit.
‘and they do not have the right to kill Israeli civilians.”
I don’t think I believe this, as a blanket statement. If the civilians are active participants in the crimes of occupation (here I’m specifically thinking of the adults among the settlers who are part of the occupation forces but which are technically not military members), then I do not believe that their status as non-soldiers is determinative as to whether or not they are legitimate targets.
This is not a new quandry, of course. The bombing of the manufacturing facilities and civilian populations of the Axis was justified on the basis that the one who provides the soldier with the gun is as much a combatant as the man who fired the gun and should be no less a legitimate target. As far as I know, there were no prosecutions of any Allied military personnel for their attacks on civilians cities among the Axis.
‘and they do not have the right to kill Israeli civilians.”
I don’t think I believe this, as a blanket statement.
The better view is that extrajudicial killings and terror attacks violate the prohibition which says:
The experience of WWII lead to the adoption of four new Geneva Conventions in 1949 and the two additional post-1977 protocols. They provide many additional protections for victims of war, POWs, and civilians.
The principle “Nullum crimen sine lege” only requires that the conduct in question constitute, at the time it takes place, a crime. Comparisons with earlier wars have to take into account any inter-temporal differences in the applicable law.
As long as Israel’s soldiers act in the interest of Israel’s civilians to use violence against Palestinian civilians to maintain the occupation or prevent the return to their homeland it’s difficult for me to condemn violence against Israeli civilians. There would have never been an Israel without “terror” (violence against civilians) and it would immediately collapse without it.
So I ask Zionists all the time: Are you ready to bring everybody on both sides who has allegedly committed (or helped) war crimes to an international court? I usually don’t get a response, because they know who is the main “terrorist” and will always be as long as Israel has to keep people segregated (yes, this is a crime of apartheid, too) to maintain a certain demography.
>> So I ask Zionists all the time: Are you ready to bring everybody on both sides who has allegedly committed (or helped) war crimes to an international court? I usually don’t get a response, because they know who is the main “terrorist” …
And that’s why even a self-proclaimed “humanist” like RW talks down accountability all the time. He’s for “peace, not ‘justice’” because justice would require:
- acknowledging Zionist crimes; and
- holding Zionists accountable for those crimes.
And, well, that just won’t do. Not even for a “humanist”.