Unhappy Israelis

[ThePresence]

CNN Link

Shuhada Street had been closed to Palestinian traffic since February 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler and immigrant physician from New York City, shot 29 Muslim worshipers to death in a Hebron mosque.

BBC Link

In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a US-born doctor from Kiryat Arba burst into the mosque and shot dead 29 Arabs at prayer before being beaten to death.

2nd BBC Link

The observers were put in place after radical Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein stormed a mosque and killed 29 praying Palestinians in 1994.

From the UN report

Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshippers in the Cave of the Patriarchs in February.

Hardly pro-Israeli sources. I think some of the the sources that you qouted were referring to the total deaths after the ensuing clashes. Again, the point is moot so this is a silly argument.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
considernig you only consider the opinions of those that are morally relativistic to the point of meaningless as valid, you cannot claim to be open minded. nothing changes the fact that your examples are absurd stretches and do not hold up, so stop with the patronizing personal attacks.
=====================
This is an absurd stretch and I'm an absolutist so I'm right. Why not just say neener neener, it would sound as right.

he said neener neener, so i said neener neener.

i'm not mature, but i'm fine with it since its more fun


and u know the bbc and cnn are owned by the jews seems all that so called "research" you did was a waste of time.

 

[cumhail]

Umm... I never made any suggestion that you were using pro-Israeli sources, ThePrescence. The only person whose "research" I called into question was our dear 0roo0roo, who typed three words into google. This methodology is neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestinian... it's just irrelevant. What the real number is that died in the Hebron massacre, I don't know. Maybe it was 29, maybe it was 50.... "There are at least two sides to every story, and then there's the truth," as the saying goes. The point of my post citing references was just to show where I got the number of "about 50" from, rather than let it seem I pulled the number out of thin air.

All that said, this has all become something of a red herring, whether or not it was intended to deflect from the point of the post. Labelling all arabs or all muslims or palestinians as terrorists or as being fundamentally inferior is no better than what was done to jews in Europe, leading up to the atrocities in WWII, what was done to blacks and the "native americans" in the United States, etc. There is likely no ethnic or religious group on earth without some members, in their history, who've committed terrible acts. And as I think I made clear in my post, and in others, my point is not to turn this into a discussion of whether palestinians or israelis or better or worse than each other; but rather to acknowledge that such discussion is counter-productive and bound to lead only to more hate, violence, death, etc.

I've made post after post where I've said, quite clearly, both that the acts of violence are deplorable and that lumping a whole group of people in with those who've committed them is deplorable. And I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I bet/guess that there are some in this forum, one of whim is very likely 0roo0roo, who could not point to a single post they've ever made where they've even considered that whichever side they favor in any argument has been in the wrong... unless the post they point us to shows an new edit, of course. When someone says all blacks are bad, it is wrong, when someone says all whites are bad, it is wrong, when someone says all jews or israelis are bad, it is wrong, and when someone says all muslims or palestinians or arabs are bad, it is wrong. And when someone cannot even agree with that much, then I'm comfortable being so "closed-minded" as to say their opinions are not worth listening to, at least in discussions pertaining to those matters where their prejudices are so apparent.

cumhail

Originally posted by: ThePresence
CNN Link

Shuhada Street had been closed to Palestinian traffic since February 1994, when Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish settler and immigrant physician from New York City, shot 29 Muslim worshipers to death in a Hebron mosque.

BBC Link

In 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a US-born doctor from Kiryat Arba burst into the mosque and shot dead 29 Arabs at prayer before being beaten to death.

2nd BBC Link

The observers were put in place after radical Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein stormed a mosque and killed 29 praying Palestinians in 1994.

From the UN report

Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshippers in the Cave of the Patriarchs in February.

Hardly pro-Israeli sources. I think some of the the sources that you qouted were referring to the total deaths after the ensuing clashes. Again, the point is moot so this is a silly argument.

 

[ThePresence]

Originally posted by: cumhail
Umm... I never made any suggestion that you were using pro-Israeli sources, ThePrescence. The only person whose "research" I called into question was our dear 0roo0roo, who typed three words into google. This methodology is neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestinian... it's just irrelevant. What the real number is that died in the Hebron massacre, I don't know. Maybe it was 29, maybe it was 50.... "There are at least two sides to every story, and then there's the truth, as they saying goes." The point of my post citing references was just to show where I got the number of "about 50" from, rather than let it seem I pulled the number out of thin air.

All that said, this has all become something of a red herring, whether or not it was intended to deflect from the point of the post. Labelling all arabs or all muslims or palestinians as terrorists or as being fundamentally inferior is no better than what was done to jews in Europe, leading up to the atrocities in WWII, what was done to blacks and the "native americans" in the United States, etc. There is likely no ethnic or religious group on earth without some members, in their history, who've committed terrible acts. And as I think I made clear in my post, and in others, my point is not to turn this into a discussion of whether palestinians or israelis or better or worse than each other; but rather to acknowledge that such discussion is counter-productive and bound to lead only to more hate, violence, death, etc.

I've made post after post where I've said, quite clearly, both that the acts of violence are deplorable and that lumping a whole group of people in with those who've committed them is deplorable. And I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I bet/guess that there are some in this forum, one of whim is very likely 0roo0roo, who could not point to a single post they've ever made where they've even considered that whichever side they favor in any argument has been in the wrong... unless the post they point us to shows an new edit, of course. When someone says all blacks are bad, it is wrong, when someone says all whites are bad, it is wrong, when someone says all jews or israelis are bad, it is wrong, and when someone says all muslims or palestinians or arabs are bad, it is wrong. And when someone cannot even agree with that much, then I'm comfortable being so "closed-minded" as to say their opinions are not worth listening to, at least in discussions pertaining to those matters where their prejudices are so apparent.

cumhail

Suprisingly enough I agree with most of what you said in the quoted post. Of course there are Israelis who committed terrible acts, but you don't see mass support among Israelis for the killing of Palestinian civillians, while Palestinian crowds cheered wildly as a lynch mob beat 2 Israelis to death. That, I think is a fundamental difference. Of course the Israeli military itself does not try to kill innocent Palestinians while the Palestinian terrorists TRY to kill innocent Israeli civillians.

 

[cumhail]

I think what you are saying is largely a matter of perspective... your pointing to examples of some arabs demonstrating support of the killings of Palestinians or my pointing to examples of some Israelis painting Goldstein or Sharon or anyone else as a hero would serve only to polarize the argument, once again, into a discussion of which group is better... when neither is fundamentally better or worse. Looking at the symptoms and not the cause will never get us anywhere... it's like trying to stop a river by just putting up a wall, without giving the water anywhere else to go. Eventually, that wall will break.

In the mid-to-late 1960's, riots broke out in the United States, summer after summer, in cities across the country... almost entirely in urban areas. To look at these riots and the fact that they kept on happening, year after year, and claim that they came as a result of a predisposition toward violence or of an idolization of militant movements such as those led by Malcolm X or Huey Newton is to allow the conditions leading to them to continue. Doing so does nothing to address what drives people to express their frustration through acts of destruction... it only strengthens their belief that nothing will ever get better.

Similarly, looking to lay blame for the acts of violence in Israel solely on one side or the other... to claim they come as a result of some fundamental flaw in the ethnic arabs or in the Israeli jews is to perpetuate the system that caused them in the first place. Whenever innocents are killed by either side, apologists quickly come out to lay blame on the other side. Those sympathetic to the Israeli cause will see incursions into civilian areas as a response to the latest suicide attacks; those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause will see the suicide bombing as a response to the latest Israeli incursion. And at the end of the day, both are right... and both are wrong. As I said in my first post in this thread, there's a very easy way to dramatically lower, if not quite bring an end to, suicide bombings: make living preferable to dying. With remarkably few exceptions, people who have something to live for will not kill themselves just to kill others.

Riots, I believe, occur because hope is lost... because the belief that things will get better is no longer there; when you just want to strike out at the world that has made your life meaningless and no longer care about some longer-term happiness because you can no longer conceive of one. Suicide bombings are much the same, I believe. Those who just have lost hope in themselves kill themselves. Those who have lost hope in the world and lay blame for that on some specific thing (whether it be a jilted lover or a troubled teenager or a would-be suicider bomber) seek to kill those others and themselves. It is not right... nothing excuses it. But to fail to acknowledge some of the things that might help explain it is to allow it to continue.

In any case... we've all pretty much crapped lozina's thread to death. And for my part in that, I apologize. Neither of us is going to convince the other, I think... nor should we expect to. But hopefully, we're both at least listening to and, at least once in a while, learning from each other .

I'll bow out of this now,

cumhail

Originally posted by: ThePresence
Suprisingly enough I agree with most of what you said in the quoted post. Of course there are Israelis who committed terrible acts, but you don't see mass support among Israelis for the killing of Palestinian civillians, while Palestinian crowds cheered wildly as a lynch mob beat 2 Israelis to death. That, I think is a fundamental difference. Of course the Israeli military itself does not try to kill innocent Palestinians while the Palestinian terrorists TRY to kill innocent Israeli civillians.

 

[ThePresence]

Originally posted by: cumhail
I think what you are saying is largely a matter of perspective... your pointing to examples of some arabs demonstrating support of the killings of Palestinians or my pointing to examples of some Israelis painting Goldstein or Sharon or anyone else as a hero would serve only to polarize the argument, once again, into a discussion of which group is better... when neither is fundamentally better or worse. Looking at the symptoms and not the cause will never get us anywhere... it's like trying to stop a river by just putting up a wall, without giving the water anywhere else to go. Eventually, that wall will break.

In the mid-to-late 1960's, riots broke out in the United States, summer after summer, in cities across the country... almost entirely in urban areas. To look at these riots and the fact that they kept on happening, year after year, and claim that they came as a result of a predisposition toward violence or of an idolization of militant movements such as those led by Malcolm X or Huey Newton is to allow the conditions leading to them to continue. Doing so does nothing to address what drives people to express their frustration through acts of destruction... it only strengthens their belief that nothing will ever get better.

Similarly, looking to lay blame for the acts of violence in Israel solely on one side or the other... to claim they come as a result of some fundamental flaw in the ethnic arabs or in the Israeli jews is to perpetuate the system that caused them in the first place. Whenever innocents are killed by either side, apologists quickly come out to lay blame on the other side. Those sympathetic to the Israeli cause will see incursions into civilian areas as a response to the latest suicide attacks; those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause will see the suicide bombinb as a response to the latest Israeli incursion. And at the end of the day, both are right... and both are wrong. As I said in my first post in this thread, there's a very easy way to dramatically lower, if not quite bring an end to, suicide bombings: make living preferable to dying. With remarkably few exceptions, people who have something to live for will not kill themselves just to kill others.

Riots, I believe, occur because hope is lost... because the belief that things will get better is no longer there; when you just want to strike out at the world that has made your life meaningless and no longer care about some longer-term happiness because you can no longer conceive of one. Suicide bombings are much the same, I believe. Those who just have lost hope in themselves kill themselves. Those who have lost hope in the world and lay blame for that on some specific thing (whether it be a jilted lover or a troubled teenager or a would-be suicider bomber) kill themselves and seek to kill those others and themselves. It is not right... nothing excuses it. But to fail to acknowledge some of the things that might help explain it is to allow it to continue.

In any case... we've all pretty much crapped lozina's thread to death. And for my part in that, I apologize. Neither of us is going to convince the other, I think... nor should we expect to. But hopefully, we're both at least listening to and, at least once in a while, learning from each other .

I'll bow out of this now,

cumhail

Well, I must respond. I don't think it's really a matter of prespective, it's hard facts. The few Israelis that demonstrate to support Goldstein and the like are hardly the mainstream of the Israeli population. Case in point, these fringe groups erected a monument on his gravesite, and the Israeli government tore it down because there is a law against having monuments to terrorists. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of cheering Palestinians at Hamas rallies. The terrorists have mainstream support among the Palestinians. And although I understand you when you say that arguing about which side is better doesn't get anyone anywhere, I just can't sit by while people try to equate both sides, because they are so glaringly unequal. As far as addressing the symptoms not the cause, who knows what the cause really is? We know that most if not all of the terrorist groups call for the destruction of Israel, not to live side by side peacefully. Who's to say what the cause of the 1929 Hebron riots (in which 69 Jews were killed) was? Were they being oppressed by the Israeli government then? As far as the suicide bombers go, how do we know that it's because they have no reasonto live, maybe they are blinded by extreme hatred or religious zeal?

 

[lozina]

Originally posted by: ThePresence

Originally posted by: cumhail
I think what you are saying is largely a matter of perspective... your pointing to examples of some arabs demonstrating support of the killings of Palestinians or my pointing to examples of some Israelis painting Goldstein or Sharon or anyone else as a hero would serve only to polarize the argument, once again, into a discussion of which group is better... when neither is fundamentally better or worse. Looking at the symptoms and not the cause will never get us anywhere... it's like trying to stop a river by just putting up a wall, without giving the water anywhere else to go. Eventually, that wall will break.

In the mid-to-late 1960's, riots broke out in the United States, summer after summer, in cities across the country... almost entirely in urban areas. To look at these riots and the fact that they kept on happening, year after year, and claim that they came as a result of a predisposition toward violence or of an idolization of militant movements such as those led by Malcolm X or Huey Newton is to allow the conditions leading to them to continue. Doing so does nothing to address what drives people to express their frustration through acts of destruction... it only strengthens their belief that nothing will ever get better.

Similarly, looking to lay blame for the acts of violence in Israel solely on one side or the other... to claim they come as a result of some fundamental flaw in the ethnic arabs or in the Israeli jews is to perpetuate the system that caused them in the first place. Whenever innocents are killed by either side, apologists quickly come out to lay blame on the other side. Those sympathetic to the Israeli cause will see incursions into civilian areas as a response to the latest suicide attacks; those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause will see the suicide bombinb as a response to the latest Israeli incursion. And at the end of the day, both are right... and both are wrong. As I said in my first post in this thread, there's a very easy way to dramatically lower, if not quite bring an end to, suicide bombings: make living preferable to dying. With remarkably few exceptions, people who have something to live for will not kill themselves just to kill others.

Riots, I believe, occur because hope is lost... because the belief that things will get better is no longer there; when you just want to strike out at the world that has made your life meaningless and no longer care about some longer-term happiness because you can no longer conceive of one. Suicide bombings are much the same, I believe. Those who just have lost hope in themselves kill themselves. Those who have lost hope in the world and lay blame for that on some specific thing (whether it be a jilted lover or a troubled teenager or a would-be suicider bomber) kill themselves and seek to kill those others and themselves. It is not right... nothing excuses it. But to fail to acknowledge some of the things that might help explain it is to allow it to continue.

In any case... we've all pretty much crapped lozina's thread to death. And for my part in that, I apologize. Neither of us is going to convince the other, I think... nor should we expect to. But hopefully, we're both at least listening to and, at least once in a while, learning from each other .

I'll bow out of this now,

cumhail

Well, I must respond. I don't think it's really a matter of prespective, it's hard facts. The few Israelis that demonstrate to support Goldstein and the like are hardly the mainstream of the Israeli population. Case in point, these fringe groups erected a monument on his gravesite, and the Israeli government tore it down because there is a law against having monuments to terrorists. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of cheering Palestinians at Hamas rallies. The terrorists have mainstream support among the Palestinians. And although I understand you when you say that arguing about which side is better doesn't get anyone anywhere, I just can't sit by while people try to equate both sides, because they are so glaringly unequal. As far as addressing the symptoms not the cause, who knows what the cause really is? We know that most if not all of the terrorist groups call for the destruction of Israel, not to live side by side peacefully. Who's to say what the cause of the 1929 Hebron riots (in which 69 Jews were killed) was? Were they being oppressed by the Israeli government then? As far as the suicide bombers go, how do we know that it's because they have no reasonto live, maybe they are blinded by extreme hatred or religious zeal?

I believe there may be some misreperesentation in that account of 'tens of thousands of Palestinians cheering Hamas'. I don't think it is fair to label those people terrorist supporters, because those demonstrations usually have greater implications, like the call to end the occupation. Just for an example so you can see what I'm trying to say: In the anti-war Washington DC protest last week, there were various groups representing themselves as socialists or even neo-nazi, but you can;t label that demonstration as a pro-nazi rally.

 

[ThePresence]

Originally posted by: lozina

Originally posted by: ThePresence

Originally posted by: cumhail
I think what you are saying is largely a matter of perspective... your pointing to examples of some arabs demonstrating support of the killings of Palestinians or my pointing to examples of some Israelis painting Goldstein or Sharon or anyone else as a hero would serve only to polarize the argument, once again, into a discussion of which group is better... when neither is fundamentally better or worse. Looking at the symptoms and not the cause will never get us anywhere... it's like trying to stop a river by just putting up a wall, without giving the water anywhere else to go. Eventually, that wall will break.

In the mid-to-late 1960's, riots broke out in the United States, summer after summer, in cities across the country... almost entirely in urban areas. To look at these riots and the fact that they kept on happening, year after year, and claim that they came as a result of a predisposition toward violence or of an idolization of militant movements such as those led by Malcolm X or Huey Newton is to allow the conditions leading to them to continue. Doing so does nothing to address what drives people to express their frustration through acts of destruction... it only strengthens their belief that nothing will ever get better.

Similarly, looking to lay blame for the acts of violence in Israel solely on one side or the other... to claim they come as a result of some fundamental flaw in the ethnic arabs or in the Israeli jews is to perpetuate the system that caused them in the first place. Whenever innocents are killed by either side, apologists quickly come out to lay blame on the other side. Those sympathetic to the Israeli cause will see incursions into civilian areas as a response to the latest suicide attacks; those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause will see the suicide bombinb as a response to the latest Israeli incursion. And at the end of the day, both are right... and both are wrong. As I said in my first post in this thread, there's a very easy way to dramatically lower, if not quite bring an end to, suicide bombings: make living preferable to dying. With remarkably few exceptions, people who have something to live for will not kill themselves just to kill others.

Riots, I believe, occur because hope is lost... because the belief that things will get better is no longer there; when you just want to strike out at the world that has made your life meaningless and no longer care about some longer-term happiness because you can no longer conceive of one. Suicide bombings are much the same, I believe. Those who just have lost hope in themselves kill themselves. Those who have lost hope in the world and lay blame for that on some specific thing (whether it be a jilted lover or a troubled teenager or a would-be suicider bomber) kill themselves and seek to kill those others and themselves. It is not right... nothing excuses it. But to fail to acknowledge some of the things that might help explain it is to allow it to continue.

In any case... we've all pretty much crapped lozina's thread to death. And for my part in that, I apologize. Neither of us is going to convince the other, I think... nor should we expect to. But hopefully, we're both at least listening to and, at least once in a while, learning from each other .

I'll bow out of this now,

cumhail

Well, I must respond. I don't think it's really a matter of prespective, it's hard facts. The few Israelis that demonstrate to support Goldstein and the like are hardly the mainstream of the Israeli population. Case in point, these fringe groups erected a monument on his gravesite, and the Israeli government tore it down because there is a law against having monuments to terrorists. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of cheering Palestinians at Hamas rallies. The terrorists have mainstream support among the Palestinians. And although I understand you when you say that arguing about which side is better doesn't get anyone anywhere, I just can't sit by while people try to equate both sides, because they are so glaringly unequal. As far as addressing the symptoms not the cause, who knows what the cause really is? We know that most if not all of the terrorist groups call for the destruction of Israel, not to live side by side peacefully. Who's to say what the cause of the 1929 Hebron riots (in which 69 Jews were killed) was? Were they being oppressed by the Israeli government then? As far as the suicide bombers go, how do we know that it's because they have no reasonto live, maybe they are blinded by extreme hatred or religious zeal?

I believe there may be some misreperesentation in that account of 'tens of thousands of Palestinians cheering Hamas'. I don't think it is fair to label those people terrorist supporters, because those demonstrations usually have greater implications, like the call to end the occupation. Just for an example so you can see what I'm trying to say: In the anti-war Washington DC protest last week, there were various groups representing themselves as socialists or even neo-nazi, but you can;t label that demonstration as a pro-nazi rally.

Well, if the Neo-Nazis were the ones putting on the demonstration, then I'd think that most people who attended sympathize with their cause.

Here's a link for you.

 

[0roo0roo]

the polls show 87% of palestinians believe that suicide bombings are right. the same % believe that all of palestine should be theirs, which means no compromise is possible. since they believe so deeply in collective punishment, its kind of hipocritical for them to complain that it is used against them.

many people more desperate then the palestinians have not resorted to suicide and attrocities, and involving their children in it. arafats own wife who lived in luxury in france was quoted as saying that she would be proud to have her son be a suicide bomber. thats not desperation, thats simple zealous mindless hatred. when a society decides its ok to glorify death to its children, and send its children off to die and kill innocent civilians.. the society is seriously corrupt.