Spellbound

• subscribe to print magazine

  First Name Last Name Home Address City State Zip Code Email

  2-year, 24-issues, $44.95 1-year, 12-issue, $24.95

• stay in touch with our email newsletter

  Subscribe to our regular weekly e-mail newsletter. It's packed with updates on recent and upcoming stories, events, campaigns and things every progressive should be informed about.

   

• email this article to a friend

  Your Name Your Email Recipient Email

  Personal message Thought you might be interested in this article from In These Times.

   

  Please help us prevent spam by verifying the word you see in the image above

  Send to multiple recipients. Just separate each email address with a comma.

• Reader Comments (19)

  Page 1 of 1 pages

  What really does need to happen is to acknowledge the **obvious** - the Middle East is stuck in the Middle Ages. They are still barbarians (which seems to be strongly linked to their brand of Islam - see fundamentalist). This is not meant as an insult, just a statement of the obvious.

  Thus just as parents need to raise their children, the West must raise up these infant countries. Forcing them into democracies is a wonderful idea - but it will be a bloody affair (hopefully mostly theirs!). Or as Bush might say (or think) it is analogous to civilizing the old wild west (kill the outlaws until they finally realize it does not pay to be an outlaw).

  It would be nice to just ignore them and their primitive societies, but, unfortunately, they have access to modern technology (that was a BIG mistake, like giving fire to infants!). So we are now forced to raise them up to acceptable standards.

  Oh well, perhaps their grandchildren will be teachable. . .

  Posted by dan on Feb 11, 2005 at 4:20 PM

  Do you really think that the juvenile Bush administration is going to raise these Islam nations. Bush can’t even raise his daughters right. He needs to grow up first.
  Unfortunately, your wild west comment is how Georgie Boy sees the world; he really thinks he is a cowboy fighting those primitive Indians in the wild west.
  Seriously, it won’t happen under the rapture presidency but we need to start controlling Israel. But as long as we are fighting an illegal war in Iraq how can we convince any nation to rein in their imperialistic warmongering?

  Posted by AmericanInsurgent on Feb 11, 2005 at 9:34 PM

  Gee Dan I’d say that your description of the Middle East as stuck in the Middle Ages is just as descriptive of Washington DC… barbarians stuck in their own brand of fundamentalism. Certainly the US has murdered plenty of women and children in Iraq, which qualifies as barbarian in my book.

  And I wish there were some adults among the current group in Washington, someone who knows that killing the outlaws until they quit is an endless cycle, as Ariel Sharon has endlessly demonstrated in Palestine.

  Primitive societies with technological weapons sounds like Washington DC too, as the fra-right wing there regresses further and further into their primitive fundamental outlook, encouraged by the Likudniks who are playing them and all of us for fools.

  Oh well Dan… perhaps our grandchildren will be
  teachable. But I’m afraid the Bush administration plans on shedding their clothes, heading for the heavens and leaving all American students behind. There’s no hope for public education from this bunch.

  No Dan. We don’t need to kill anybody. Just cut off the funds that Sharon is using to build his Concentration Camps on the West Bank and to turn all of Gaza into one big Concentration Camp.

  In the midst of the Memorial to the Liberation of Auswitz the studied quiet surrounding the construction of new Concentration Camps in Palestine by the people who themselves swore “never again” is deafening.

  No Dan, all we have to do to bring peace to the Middle East is to stop funding the war.

  Posted by John Francis Lee on Feb 12, 2005 at 5:51 AM

  Ha ha ha ha ha hoo ho ha ha haaa!!!!

  Wow - someone who actually seems to think that the US is on the same moral level of the Middle East. Wonder if they would be willing to actually live there (ha ha ha!!!)????

  Now that is funny!! Ha ha ho ha ha ho ha!!!!

  Posted by dan on Feb 12, 2005 at 3:07 PM

  Hi Dan.

  I’ve been thinking about your question, would I actually be willing to live in the “Middle East”.

  Would that be in Palestine? Palestine is in the midst of a conversion to a series of Concentration Camps by Ariel Sharon, using the Israeli entitlement fund provided by the ever-compliant US political class, so I don’t think I’d like to live there. The Isralis use ten year old girls in school yards for target practice.

  Or would that be in Israel? Well I’m not Jewish, so living in a theocratic Jewish state would make me a second class citizen, determined by my race, so I wouldn’t like to live there. It’s dangerous as well, with the Palestinians resisting their elimination by the Israelis using whatever means they can.

  Perhaps you meant Iraq? Well Iraq has been destroyed by the United States of America hasn’t it? Shockingly and awfully so. It is a very violent place as the Iraqis are engaged as are the Palestinians in a death struggle against the occupiers of their country. And the Americans have leveled Fallujah, slaughtering women and children in a truly breathtaking act of terrorism there. Payback is sure to follow that unspeakable deed. No I don’t think I’d like to live in Iraq either.

  Iran and/or Syria may soon be invaded or bombed by the US/Israeli axis as well. I don’t think I would like to live there either.

  In fact as an American I find that “my” government’s rogue, terrorist actions world-wide are making people hate me without even knowing me. Hating me as an American for the actions of my government. It used to be that people would distinguish between the American government and the American people, but after the fascist victory in the American elections of 2004 they are no longer able to do so.

  So I guess my advice to you Dan would be to stay out of the Middle East, to stay out of the world, to remain deep in your Red State in the heart of fortress America where life is fast becoming a way of death, just as it has in Israel.

  Or else to work for the removal of the present regime in the 2006 elections. To cut off the funds for the imperial American war machine that is causing so much death and destruction and building up so much hatred for Americans everywhere as it prosecutes its two fronted war in the Middle East.

  The Constitution of the United States has not yet been suspended. We may yet exercise our control over the purse strings of our treasury by selecting a new House of Representatives to reign in this present mad regime in 2006.

  Posted by John Francis Lee on Feb 12, 2005 at 5:03 PM

  Another insightful article from Neve Gordon. Like a few other commentators unaffiliated with making the rounds at official propaganda news outlets like Fox, MSNBC and CNN, Gordon grasps the basic processes and hypocrisies oiling American-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and its immediate outlying hinterlands in Afghanistan, Central Asia and beyond.

  Recognizing that the democratic facade bestowed on what are unambiguously classic military occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan is being transplanted to the Israel-Palestine conflict while obfuscating the most important facts - the importation of millions of immigrants by Israel and relentless colonization of the occupied territories to the effect that the Jewish squatter population (not the genuine and small Jewish minority community that has resided there for millenia) of the West Bank and Gaza doubled during the 1990s (ostensibly while Israel was negotiating for its gradual incorporation into an embryonic Palestinian state) - Gordon rightfully rejects the basic implicit position held by the mainstream media and pundits that the conflict is rooted in the authoritarian character of Palestinian governing institutions, and not de facto, brutal military occupation by Israel that is nearing its fourth decade of establishment and has the inglorious honor of being the longest running foreing military control of land in the entire world.

  Posted by Iskandar on Feb 12, 2005 at 5:09 PM

  Wow Dan,
  Your really know how to sock it to those primitives in the Middle east. Let me share something with you though. To anyone other than a red blooded patriotic american like you-to anyone that is that doesn’t share your views on the right of the US to ‘teach others a lesson’, your rant just seems like good old fashioned imperialistic arrogance. Trust me Dan, I know you couldn’t give a ‘rats’, but your views amply confirm for the rest of the world what some have only just hitherto feared-you really do think you have a god given right to do what you like, where you like, how you like-and damn the rest of the world! Well that’s OK I guess. But just remember,the next time you read about some demo in some country somewhere, where the people are yelling ‘go home yankee’, or you read another survey of world opinion , where the majority of people think the US is a danger to world peace, just maybe pause and think-when you regulalry treat others with arrogance and disdain, including bombing them for their own good-is there any particualr reason they must be grateful and thankful as well as dead?

  Posted by jane on Feb 12, 2005 at 10:48 PM

  On reflection to reading Neve Gordon’s piece, and others comments, I think that the resolve between the Israelis and Palestinians “to stop all acts of violence” is more part of the globle strategy to find ways to deflate the wind out of radical Islamism recruitment for Jihad against the Western Nations.

  I do not disagree with what John, and Iskandar write.

  But prefer to set as an example the recently aired PBS documentary on Al Qaeda’s “goals and hopes” in Western Europe. Which noted that many young European Muslims have gone to Iraq to train, and fight, the American forces. And that their primary goal is to re-enstate a 13th century Muslim Caliphate. This would include all of the Middle East, India, much of the Mediterranean and Europe.

  It was mentioned during this PBS program that it is only a two or three day drive from Europe to Iraq. And is now definitely considered a concern by secruity analysts that Europe has became a traget for Al Qaeda attacks.

  Posted by Jamessonofabreweryworker on Feb 13, 2005 at 5:07 AM

  Hey ‘Jamessonofabreweryworker,’

  While I’m glad you stated your opinions without recourse to any name-calling or vituperative outbursts, I’m sorry to have to lay down the cards and tell you that you’re flat out dead wrong. The ‘acts of violence’ you mentioned between Israelis and Palestinians do feed into global Islamism, but only insofar as it reflects the arrogance and unwillingness of American and Zionist negotiators to conclude a fair and respectable peace treaty with the Palestinians (and thus the wider Arab world) with just recompense and acknowledgement of the historical injustice inflicted on the indigenous inhabitants of historical Palestine. There’s not even a pretense any longer among the American-Zionist elite of why this festering conflict has managed to drag on so long when the antidote has long been recognized to be formulated in the specific UN resoloutions and the generally-held consensus worldwide for ending the problem: namely, a two-state solution along the demarcation boundary of the ‘67 war (with possible minor adjustments), compensation for Palestinian refugees displaced by pre-state Zionist militias and terror groups, and an official acknowledgment by Israel to the effect that its creation necessitated the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of Arabs to make way for imported transnational Jewry who settled on the ashes of their villages and townships (this if Israeli leaders can’t - or won’t - muster up an official apology). That’s it.

  Unfortunately, Israeli leaders preferred to kickstart a massive settlement building program right after the ‘67 war that was justified on purely ethno-religious grounds - marching on to Judea and Samaria and so forth - and an implicit desire to create conditions so miserable throughout the occupied territories that it would induce Arab flight and thus relieve the ‘hasbarah problem’ of open transfer (read: ethnic cleansing) of the residents, some already refugees from earlier wars. The apartheid barrier being built today is not being built on the internationally recognized boundary, but darting in and around the West Bank, enclosing the choicest bits of Palestinian real estate and resources while binding to Israel forever the illegal settlements which it had no right to build in the first place.

  This is not a country looking for genuine security. This is a country which in the words of its gleeful advisor to the prime minister is dedicated to turning the Palestinians into ‘Finns’ and setting into ‘formaldehyde’ the prospects for a viable, contiguous state with all that entails: control of air space, national security, resources, etc etc.

  Hence, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in its essence a nationalist dispute between two ethnic groups, one indigenous and the other an ideologically-binded group from disparate backgrounds but having a long (and noble) tradition of religious beliefs and shared cultural heritage. Although many (especially those in the U.S. media) would like you to believe that the struggle between the ‘heroic, civilized Israelis’ and those uncouth barbaric lizard eaters is all part of a menacing Global Jihad against ‘Western civilization,’ the conflict is nothing of the sort. Islamists are not blowing up Danish resort hotels for allowing mixing of the sexes. They aren’t blowing up Italian Renaissance architecture for displaying ‘graven images’ that are sinful to the eyes of god. They aren’t storming the Louvre or adding minarets to St. Paul’s cathedral or making plans to introduce Shariah into Sweden. Islamism feeds off of American and certain Western nations’ regional hegemonies (i.e. Russian occupation of Chechnya and, before that, Afghanistan) which percolates into the frustrations of Muslims everywhere, from Morocco to Malaysia. This has resulted in an upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism in a proud people who have witnessed every other incarnation of secular nationalism, from communism to Nasserism to Baathism thwarted by terrified internationl powers, mostly American. All this is also bypassing the not insignificant role the U.S. itself had in creating jihadist groups when it suited it just fine.

  As for your paranoid references to Iraq being the staging area for jihadist elements, that is a purely American creation, just like how the war was fought for reasons completely opposite of those officially proclaimed: weapons of mass destruction (actually, Iraq was attacked specifically because it was weak and powerless), ties to terrorists (actually, Islamists of the bin Laden stripe always despised Saddam), freedom and democracy (read: oil, Israel, and the general feeling America needed to strike out at some Arab country after 9/11, Afghanistan not being enough to show them A-rabs just who’s boss), etc etc.

  Posted by Iskandar on Feb 13, 2005 at 3:07 PM

  Sorry everyone, someone let dan play on the computer again - he is only 8 years old you see - he shouldn’t be given hitech toys to play with.

  I my best to educate him......

  Posted by julie on Feb 13, 2005 at 7:56 PM

  I am not sure the Bush administration has convinced anybody anything. It just has the loudest megaphone in the world, with virtually every major media outlet from the NYT to Popular Mechanics under CIA control.

  Posted by Jim on Feb 13, 2005 at 9:55 PM

  havent read above postings yet so just a random thought. Abbas was elected, but polls showed the guy who WOULD have won, and still got a ton of votes, is in prison in israel. i mean would as in alot of people didnt because 1) hes in prison and 20 kept dropping in and out of the race because of this. just a thought.

  Posted by hvmiller on Feb 16, 2005 at 2:41 AM

  Iskandar said:

  “Gordon rightfully rejects the basic implicit position held by the mainstream media and pundits that the conflict is rooted in the authoritarian character of Palestinian governing institutions, and not de facto, brutal military occupation by Israel that is nearing its fourth decade of establishment and has the inglorious honor of being the longest running foreing military control of land in the entire world.”

  That’s bullshit Iskandar.  The conflict is rooted in the Arabs’ (including so called Palestinians’) demonstrated fanatical obsession on the destruction of the state of Israel, by any means necessary including blowing themselves up in order to murder innocent Israeli civilians.  The Arabs’ have and continue to proceed, despite any public concessions to the contrary, under their traditional directive that the State of Israel has no right to existence.

  The state of Israel was founded for the purpose of being a sanctuary for Jewish refugees following the holicaust.  Israel rightly continues to hold itself out as a sanctuary to Jews seeking refuge from pursecution.  Before the Jews created the nation of Israel, there was no nation there.

  Since its creation, Israel has endured continuous uprovoked military attacks from virtually every Arab Nation and continues to endure terrorist attacks and suicide bombings on a virtually continuous basis.  Nevertheless, a significant minority of Arabs reside in Israel and enjoy the same freedoms as Jewish Israeli citizens including the holding of public office.  How many Jews live freely and hold public office in Arab Nations?

  Until the Arabs (including so called Palestinians), demonstrate through their actions that they accept Israel’s right to exist, and want to co-exist with Israel in peace, Israel rightfully defends itself and its citizens by all means necessary.  If and when the Arabs demonstrate through their actions that they REALLY WANT PEACE with Israel (which, based on the Arabs’ current disposition appears unlikely to happen in this century), I have no doubt that they will be welcomed with open arms. 

  Until then, Israel rightly defends itself militarily, and by the expulsion and sequestration of those who pose a threat to the safety of Israel and its citizens.

  Posted by Lefty on Feb 17, 2005 at 4:42 PM

  - Dear so-called ‘Lefty,’

  - You claim:

  “The conflict is rooted in the Arabs’ (including so called Palestinians’) demonstrated fanatical obsession on the destruction of the state of Israel, by any means necessary including blowing themselves up in order to murder innocent Israeli civilians.”

  - Elsewhere, you reinforce the geopolitically-hilarious notion that the Arabs (including what you derisively refer to as ‘so-called Palestinians’ [apparently in keeping with official Zionist apologetics, there were no Palestinians - and if there were, they all migrated to those refugee camps and squalid cinder-block homes voluntarily, in search of greener pastures]) are secretly plotting amongst themselves to destroy Israel and scatter once and for all the peace-loving, non-little-girl-shooting-for-sport IDF types who just yearn for peace and brotherhood and equal rights for Arabs and so on. Here are some more samples of your increasingly shrill (and increasingly more inane) comments:

  “Until the Arabs (including so called Palestinians), demonstrate through their actions that they accept Israel’s right to exist, and want to co-exist with Israel in peace, Israel rightfully defends itself and its citizens by all means necessary.”

  “If and when the Arabs demonstrate through their actions that they REALLY WANT PEACE with Israel (which, based on the Arabs’ current disposition appears unlikely to happen in this century), I have no doubt that they will be welcomed with open arms.”

  - The basic gist of these sentences is clear: Israel wants peace, has always wanted peace, is still willing to have peace, if but not for those rascawy Arabs, ever lying in wait to pounce on the Israeli lamb in its moment of weakness. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  - Now, back to the real world, and the real facts, which interestingly enough you didn’t even try to deny, preferring instead to slosh through my arguments with the usual Israeli mytho-historiographical version of events:

  - 1. Israel is the faithful puppy dog of the United States government, the most powerful country in the world and the most powerful country to have ever existed in any time in human history, with broad and well-documented links between the policy-making elite in Washington and Tel Aviv and a faithfully quiescent media in the U.S. that has served its ally well in whitewashing known and extensive Israeli atrocities stretching all the way back to its founding, and continuing to the present day (Israeli murder of Palestinian children, Israeli revenge rampages in Khan Younis and Rafah that has turned the latter into a ‘moonscape of desolation’ [the Economist], Israeli settlements and diverting of resources in the occupied territories, Israeli bypass roads reserved for “Jews only,” etc etc). Hence, your claim that Israel is in danger of its survival by ineradicable Arab hatred is deliriously false.

  - 2. Since 1949, Israel has received over 95 BILLION dollars of American aid, not to mention the countless number of loans which were simply forgiven (often with the explicit understanding that they would be forgiven before Israel was required to repay them [ifamericansknew.org]). Since the 6-day war, Israel has been armed to the teeth with the latest and greatest in American death weaponry, everything from ‘smart’ missiles to fighter jets (including the fantastically modern F-15 warplane) to joint anti-missile system development to training to what have you will. Hence, your claim that Israel is in danger of its survival by ineradicable Arab hatred is deliriously false.

  - 3. Israel has one of the strongest armed forces in the world and unquestionably reigns supreme where it matters most, namely in its own region in the Middle East. Its air force alone is reputed to be stronger than any NATO power and in recent simulated military battles with the U.S. Air Force Israel emerged victorious. Besides being one of the most voracious military hardware importers in the world, Israel is also one of the largest net exporters of military equipment and weapons systems TO the world, with billions of dollars of sales to no less than 61 different countries, including the diffusion of US-derived military technologies to potential American adversaries like China. Besides being qualitatively well ahead of any potential Arab adversary, Israel’s military expenditures through the 1990s only increased in proportion to the decrease in spending on the military in the rest of the Middle East. Israel outpaces Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon in every major category of arms spending COMBINED. Hence, your claim that Israel is in danger of its survival by ineradicable Arab hatred is deliriously false.

  - 4. Israel’s negative PR problems in the wider world are of its own making, since virtually all its historical enemies have long since accepted its existence as a fait a accompli. It signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and another with Jordan in 1994, thus relieving it of two of its most ‘confrontational’ adversaries (in fact, the peace treaty with Egypt opened up the possibilities of adventurism against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982, which it did with devastating effect, killing thousands of innocent civilians, bombing apartment complexes and densely populated cores during its brutal siege of Beirut, driving hundred of thousands of Shias from their villages and into the capital’s slums, helping their Falangist friends slaughter Palestinians, etc etc).

  - Syria, the last remaining ‘traditional’ enemy of Israel, has been in economic and military decline ever since the implosion of its main patron, the Soviet Union, in 1989-1991, and the qualitative differences between the two countries in military preparedness have only increased since then, to the effect that Israel can (and does) regularly penetrate Syrian airspace with impunity and has brushed aside numerous Syrian requests for direct negotiations leading to a permanent settlement of their state of war, mostly involving the return of the annexed Golan Heights, which Israel refuses to relinquish. Seen this way, Israel’s traditional complaints against Syria (allowance of the establishment of headquarters of Palestinian militant groups and tacit support for Hizbullah, a creature spawned by Israel’s invasion in the first place) seem very mild by comparison.

  - Israel’s other “Arab enemies” like the Gulf countries and the Saudi ruling family are so much mere American client states like Israel itself that any insinuation of an attack by them is preposterous, made more so by the fact that the U.S. has military bases in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain. For some reason - I don’t know, it could just be me - I don’t foresee any attack by Prince Abdullah any time soon. Hence, your claim that Israel is in danger of survival by ineradicable Arab hatred is deliriously false.

  - 5. Saving the best for last in demolishing your nonsense, in March of 2002, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah - decidedly nervous at how the escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence was undermining his own legitimacy as a ruler and increasing calls for his removal as an ‘American lackey’ - offered Israel “FULL NORMALIZATION IN RELATIONS” with the entire Arab world, collective recognition, and immediate establishment of relations in return for Israel’s withdrawal of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel refused. HENCE, YOUR CLAIM THAT ISRAEL IS IN CONSTANT DANGER OF ITS SURVIVAL FROM EVIL BLOODTHIRSTY ARABS IS NOT ONLY ‘DELIRIOUSLY FALSE,’ BUT AN OUTRIGHT LIE DESIGNED TO HIDE THE FACT THAT THE ARAB WORLD FORMALLY PROPOSED A PEACE TREATY WITH ISRAEL, ONLY TO BE REBUFFED BY AN ISRAEL THAT WOULD RATHER KEEP DEARLY LOVED JUDEA AND SAMARIA RATHER THAN LIVE IN PEACE WITH ITS NEIGHBORS.

  - Before I sign off this piece blowing your claims out of the water, one more caveat: no nation has a ‘right’ to exist. Not Israel, not the U.S., not France, not China, not Dubai, not Liechtenstein. Nation-states are born from war and conflict, die by war and conflict, and arise again elsewhere by war and conflict, and do not possess the ‘rights’ accorded to a human being. No single country (other than Israel) has ever predicated negotiations leading to a settlement of conflict on a ‘recognition’ of a country’s ‘right to exist.’ The Palestinians don’t expect Israel to claim that Palestine has a ‘right’ to exist; a Palestinian state is desirable from a moral point of view that rights a historical wrong, not from any inherent ‘right’ for it to be there (as is true by looking at the historical record, where historical Palestine did not exist as a Western-defined nation-state but rather as an ill-defined province whose inhabitants shared a similar language and culture). I hope you had a hearty time getting embarassed, Lefty.

  Yours unruly,
  Iskandar

  Posted by Iskandar on Feb 18, 2005 at 3:15 PM

  Iskandar,

  You would make a prototypical republican. You ignore my arguments, and then proceed to issue a truckload of nonsense - based upon false premises, and diversionary tactics. 

  The indesputable facts are that the distruction of Israel has been the official policy of ALL Arab nations as well as that of the Palestinians for 5 decades.  The indesputable facts are that the Arabs have, and continue, to verify this policy by their acts: military and terrorist attacks.  These facts are indesputable.  Under the circumstances, it cannot reasonably be argued that Israel is well within its rights to take reasonable steps to defend itself and protect its citizens.  Accordingly, you resort to false premises, lies and diversionary tactics.

  Further, that Israel has received both financial and political support from the U.S. is at once the right thing for the U.S. to do, and utterly irrelevant to the issues at hand.  What purpose is served by this declamation?  The only purpose to be served by your bringing up this fact is as a diversionary tactic, and perhaps to prejudice other readers based on some absurd notion that the U.S. unfairly favors Israel in its struggle to survive the relentless attacks of the Arabs.

  What is indesputably clear from your argument is that you hate Jews and, therefore, you hate the U.S. for supporting Israel, the worlds only Jewish state.  Well, tough shit.  The Arabs don’t deserve U.S. support because they are in the wrong. 

  What is conspicuously missing from your argument is that Israel has never, ever attacked an Arab nation or the Palestinians other than in self defense.  On the other hand, the Arabs including the Palestinians, have launched unprovoked attacks against Israel on numerous occasions, and have stated and demonstrated their willingness and ability to continue to do so.

  Israel is not going to cease to exist, is not going to allow Palestinains a right of return, ever, and should not give any of the land it now occupies to the Palestinians because: 1) the land in dispute was captured by Israel after it defeated 6 Arab nations who launched an unprovoked military attack against Israel who now retains the land as a strategic military buffer, 2) the Palestinians have demonstrated that they are able and willing to continue to launch missle, terrorist and other attacks against Israel from beyond the buffer zones, and to send suicide bombers into Israel proper to murder innocent Israeli citizens. And they have made no effort to convince anyone that these attacks will cease even if the land is gifted to them.

  For the time being, Israel correctly does not trust the Arabs, including the Palestinians.  When the Arab military and terrorist attacks against Israel cease, and they demonstrate through their acts that they truly want peace, they shall have it and the justifiable and reasonable defensive measures instituted by Israel will cease.  NOT ONE DAY SOONER.

  Posted by Lefty on Feb 18, 2005 at 4:21 PM

  I just wanted to remind lefty that of an extremelly influential group that is preventing any developments towards peace in Isreal-Palestine-----right wing, orthodox isreali jews.  Remember that it was a Isreali Jew who murdered Yitzhak Rabin and singlehandedly put the peace process back more then half a decade, not a palestinian.  It is not just militant islamic groups who are “fundamentalist” .

  Also to those who are describing Muslim countries as primitive and barbaric, 1) take an antropology course, and 2) wake up man, just because their culture is different then ours doesnt make it inferior----if you want to criticize then speak in specifics (lack of rights for women for example) but dont just cast them off as barabarians, thats just being arrongant and just helps to deepen tensions between “us” and “them”
  ----Definatly not what we need now

  And one more thing....isreal was created to be a haven for jews after the holocaust, true.  But just because there was no sovereign, independent nation in palestine at the timedoesnt mean that there were no PEOPLE living there! (there werent any “states” in africa then either, doesnt mean that people havent lived there for generations) people were displaced and put yourself in their shoes....you too would be mad if you were forced off your land.

  Posted by david on Feb 20, 2005 at 6:53 PM

  Friend Lefty, jew hatred and its politcal manifestation: anti-semitism, are more and more properties of the left. Anger and alienation are how I feel, but I’ve been waiting for this shoe to drop all my life. Shalom

  Posted by Gimpel the fool on Feb 22, 2005 at 9:44 AM

  This is Lefty.  I had to post this under a different name as it appears that ITT has decided to ban me from these forums. Accordingly, this will be my last post at ITT.

  David,

  The fact that there are some right wing wackos in Israel is again, interesting banter, but is really beside the point.  Israel either does or does not have a right to exist and to protect its citizens from terrorism.  And BTW, the Arabs living in Israel at its inception were not displaced, they left in protest to the formation of a Jewish state only to find no other Arab nation would take them in.

  Gimpel,
  Your statement is, of all the discourse contained in this thread, the most disturbing.  The left is the left because it places the interests of public health, safety and welfare about the interest of corporate profit.  The right is the right because it places the interest of corporate profit (with all of the obligatory corruption and disinformation appurtenant thereto) above all other interest - the stalwart of fascism - the ultimate destination of right wing.  The shoe has dropped, on your head apparently, and you have allowed your brain to be washed clean of any independent thinking.  It’s time to wean yourself from the tit of corporate brainwashing.  Antisemitism, like all other bigotry is born of ignorance - the major pillar of corporate fascism, to wit, the right.

  Posted by Paul Atreides on Feb 23, 2005 at 8:27 AM

  Dan I really believe we should all just back off and see what 4,000 years of so called civilization in the Muddle East will do to each other with out our interference, that is if we can control our selves from interfering with North Koreas help to escalate their process of internal stabilization.
  Then we can just hope the fallout doesn’t reach this far.
  Talk about the blind leading the stupid

  Posted by Richard Carroll PhD. on Mar 29, 2005 at 9:45 PM

  Page 1 of 1 pages

• register a new account »Posting Security

  To participate in our forums, please register for a free account.

  Username Password

    Remember me
  

  Retreive lost password »

Also by Neve Gordon

• The Experiment in Gaza
  
• Israel and Hamas Just Say No To Peace
  Over the past 40 years, the Arab League's position on Israel has radically shifted. It's time for Israel to recognize the change.
• Fighting the Larger War
  The War On Terror is unique because its political, temporal and geographic borders are unknown and its enemy is fluidly ill-defined.
• Israels September 11 Effect
  Israel is uniting in its war with Lebanon
• The U.S.-Israeli Somalia Plan
  
• Hamas: Sharons Legacy?