Letters to the Editor
cardshark
Published Letters: 146 Editor's Choice: 18
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Gordon Wagner at least open in his dogmatic hatred
[Read the article: Why Israelis believe they're right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is no "legend of the holocaust," Gordon, there is indisputable fact, garnered from many hundreds of sources that the Holocaust occured. The Master Race is not a legend either, that's what Hitler thought the Aryan blue eyed yellow haired people were. He wrote about them and spoke about them many times.
Israel is faced by enemies who also deny these facts. Muslims living in predominantly Islamic areas even deny, in large majority percentages, that Muslims were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/253.pdf)
Furthermore, in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan, and India, the percentage of people who have a "very, or somewhat favorable" opinion towards Jews are in the single or low double digits. In Jordan in 2005, 0% had even a "somewhat favorable" opinion of Jews.
Jews. Not Israel, or Israelis, but Jews.
Yes, it is a war of ideology, as much as Tim, KStone, et al like to deny it.
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Not selective at all
[Read the article: Why Israelis believe they're right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Btw, you might want to check your polls because while I'm not sure about Indonesia or Pakistan, Israel does have decent to good relations with Turkey, Jordan and India, but I guess since all Muslims are alike and can be judged by the worst actions of some of them, unlike other people, your selective polling excerpts trump reality
KStone, the same Pew research study I quoted has the poll numbers. I didn't make them up. If you would just look at the PDF you could see for yourself.
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Read the PDF
[Read the article: Why Israelis believe they're right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If anything, I didn't emphasize the rift between the Muslim and Christian/Jewish world nearly as much as the Pew study does. Reading the study in its entirety makes it perfectly clear that in the countries polled, the Muslim public is much more likely to blame their problems on the West (and Jews in particular) than vice-versa.
You can say "it doesn't follow" until you are blue in the face, but the evidence is right in front of you. Maybe you don't see a war of ideology, but the Muslim public, by and large, does. This is not a conspiracy theory belied by evidence. The evidence is clear and unequivocal.
Here it is again: http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/253.pdf
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Doublethink plusgood comrade
[Read the article: Why Israelis believe they're right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The current hostility is not about two Israeli officers, it's about a fifty year occupation. Israel knows what it needs to do to stop the aggression. Its steadfast refusal to make it happen abrogates their claim to innocence and moral superiority.
Yep, pretty fascist of them to leave Lebanon 6 years ago, and Gaza a year ago. Both pullouts were recognized by the UN as legitimate borders.
And pretty colonial of them also to elect a government whose primary platform was a major pullout from the West Bank.
We all know the terrorists stopped attacking them after they ended the occupations in Lebanon and Gaza.
Glad we got that all cleared up.
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I heard that man!
[Read the article: The "boy crisis" in the newsroom]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For many young people, broadcast news means The Daily Show or it means nothing at all.
Yeah, the networks really, really suck. I get all my news from print or NPR. It seems like John does too, because usually I've already heard about what he's reporting on.
It's actually pretty cool, how Salon will break a story, and it shows up on the Daily show a day or two later.
There's only so many white-girl-goes-missing-and-people-are-looking-for-her
stories I can bear to watch. May be a coincidence, but that seems to be the lead story whenever I turn on the local news, and the rest of it is fluff. The national news is only slightly better.
Now, even 60 minutes can't do a show without the last third of it being some fluff piece about some entertainer. They still try to be hard-hitting, and ask the celeb tough questions about their past, or highlight someone who has a terrible problem, like autism, etc, but in the end, it's not news. What gives?
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Newsflash: Israel not targeting civilians
[Read the article: Why Israelis believe they're right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So because I deplore the State of Israel's indiscriminate targetting of Lebanese civillians I am a racist pig and you want to smash my head in with a rock?
Not only are they not "targetting [sic] [...] civilians," they are warning them 24 hours in advance before they strike.
If they wanted to target civilians, they could carpet bomb civilian areas and they would have killed hundreds of thousands by now, rather than about 400.
It's amazing to me, as weapons get more precise, and countries become more moral, and intentionally try to avoid civilian casualties, the rhetoric heats up until a few hundred dead is the worst thing since Hitler. This is one of the cleanest wars in the history of the Earth, due to modern technology and the ethics of the Israeli leadership.
I'm not minimizing the innocent deaths that have occurred, rather I'm saying it's ridiculous to suggest Israel is targeting civilians. And yeah, I think your prevarication on the issue is probably due to bigotry on your part. Either that or lack of any sense of morality.
Hezbollah targets civilians. Unlike Lebanon, Israel actually has big military targets for their enemies to hit. Hezbollah hides under old women's skirts, so that any response to them will bring civilian dead, and fires into Israeli civilian areas, on purpose.
Not to mention the fact that we don't really know who is in Hezbollah, and who is a civilian, except by taking Hezbollah's word for it. Of course they're going to claim that only 3 of their fighters have been killed/injured. The fact that you (and the rest of the world) believe it shows that people will believe anything.