Letters to the Editor
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From Joan Walsh
Thanks to everyone for their patience with our scheduled maintenance, which kept the letters threads closed for a few hours. Everything looks fine now. Please let us know what you think! It was a very eerie quiet -- Salon just didn't feel like Salon without readers' voices.
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Sparta
"Perhaps most significant, the hardened status quo hinders the Jewish state's eventual acceptance in the Middle East, already a difficult goal."
I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor, with little success. What universe are you living in? A difficult goal? What insanity makes anybody think this is even remotely in the realm of real possibilities? There has always been a nasty streak of 19th Century colonialism about the Israeli project.
And while from an Israeli point of view, there may be a defacto two-state solution in place, but for any Palestinian that idea would be a very bad joke indeed. All that has happened is that Israel has refused to employ & feed its Helots anymore, without relinquishing its iron control of them.
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The inconvenient truth
Excellent article. Of course there will be the usual letters of left-wingers attacking Israel actions. These are the same people who, if a home-made rocket exploded 50-miles away from their home, would be screaming "Death to all Palestinians". It is easy to be haughty when you are so far away of any danger.
All arab world is in economical stagnation and social turmoil because their religion makes them addicted to the powerful drug called "victimism". Instead of admiting their mistakes and trying to correct them, they only blame others. Of course, Arab world has been target of injustices (each part of the world has been). But, instead of thinking how to solve the problems, they only dream about fighting the infidels and achieve conquest by way of weapons (as their Prophet did).
A middle country (like Spain or Greece) publishes more books in a single year than the whole Arab world in HIS WHOLE HISTORY. Enough said.
So the Palestinians, instead of developing a economy by its own, with independence from Israel, only want to throw the Jews to the see. It is not going to happen.
Israel only wants to be left alone.
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So Benn's argument is...
...the Israelis aren't using the West Bank, anyway, so they might as well give it to the Palestinians? And *then* Israel will be accepted by the Arab world? That is, if the Israelis would stop acting so stuck up?
There will *never* be peace in the Middle East so long as there's an Israel. Palestinian state or not.
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That Didn't Take Long
The anonymice of the world just waiting to crawl out from their dark spaces to ejaculate their hatred on the Palestinians, liberals and those who don't toe the Likud / Bushie world view. Behind the arrogance and the curling lip, you can't help but be amazed at the totally f@cking ignorance, nay, even worse, the pride taken in being so f@cking ignorant. We should feel sorry for these poor pawns, but somehow I can't stomach this crap anymore. The Israelis are mean and nasty buggers, and the aim from day one has been to take the land and drive the present occupants off. No compromise, no quarter given. And the scary thing is, they've taken the jackboot approach, and are using weak ignorant fools like anonymous to do their biding. You look good in your brownshirt, anonymous -- bet you'd just can't wait to get the boots in on the poor bastard writhing on the ground.
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Take it easy, totallybase (from the previous anonymous)
Bad day, today, uh? Please take a cup of coffee and relax. Take it easy.
"The Israelis are mean and nasty buggers"???!!!!! You accuse me of hatred towards Palestinians but I wonder whether you will use this language when talking about Palestinian. Who is the hater here? Which letter is fuller of hatred and anger?
"weak ignorant fools like anonymous". Thank you. I appreciate your compliments. I love you too.
You are using the "red herring" fallacy (saying other things - in this case anger language- to deviate the attention for my arguments) and the "straw man" fallacy (putting things in my mouth I haven't said). You do everything but argue with logical arguments.
Of course, Israelis are not saints. Far from that. But I don't understand people who depict Palestinian as saints and Israelis as devils (or should I say "mean and nasty buggers?").
In our Western world, due to our Christian and Socialist heritage, we have sympathy for the weak. But the weak can be good or bad (the same as the strong). Neonazism in Europe is weak (nowadays), for example.
Palestinians have to stop blaming Israel of all their faults and start making self-criticism, to correct their mistakes. But they can't so becuase they are victimism junkies. Instead of trying to solve the problems of their fucked-up society (so they would be stronger even to deal with Israel), they only produce suicide bombing, hatred and violence.
When Israel left Palestinians alone in the Gaza strip, they begin fighting between them. Somewhere they found a way to blame Israel of their civil violence. Palestinian Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr said: "Hamas and Fatah are like two brothers in a cage. If you put two brothers in a cage, and deprive them of food, they will fight each other". It's never their fault even when they kill each other. It's always Israel's fault, Western world's fault or some weird conspiracy theory (like when arabs claim that the Twin Towers crash was produced by the Moshad to victimize Muslims). They are inherently good and everyone else is inherently bad (you only hava to red the Quran to see this). This way the Palestinians (and the Arab world) will only get worse and worse
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Responsibility
Anonymouse RE: words from your post
"Hamas and Fatah are like two brothers in a cage. If you put two brothers in a cage, and deprive them of food, they will fight each other
Just who do you think is responsible for this deplorable situation?
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The Israelis are being used
This is an excellent article, although I don't think it goes far enough in its analysis nor criticism.
I lived briefly in Israel in the early 1970's, so I can confirm firsthand Mr Benn’s description of that time. I have friends who have volunteered as non-violent, western witnesses in Palestine in recent years, and from them I hear stories of poverty, deprivation, unwarranted acts of violence against civilians, and utter despair on the parts of displaced Palestinians.
Rather than engage in arguments over which side—Israelis or Palestinians—is morally superior, I just want to point out that the hostile situation between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East greatly benefits US and, to a lesser extent, European foreign policy. It offers ready markets for advanced weaponry—a huge and profitable industry. But most importantly, it guarantees that the brilliant technical know-how of the Israelis will never be partnered with the oil fortunes of the various Arab countries to transform the Middle East into a regional power capable of challenging American and European hegemony in the area. As a result, US-led multinational corporations—and their Saudi stooges—keep tight control over the most lucrative oil fields on the planet.