Comments on: Gaza: The Peace of the Clumsy

By: george a. hilborn

george a. hilborn — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 16:28:41 +0000

Y. As I recall the Stern gang and their cohorts included those who murdered innocents in the name of the future State of Israel and one of them became Prime Minister.It seems that their conduct was justified because the Jews had been historically oppressed and the outrageous Holocaust gave them justification for their actions to achieve a country of their own. Now you ask who can trust this murderer to speak for an oppressed people(I’m sorry you don’t think their oppressed)?King George and Lord North thought the military revolution by the Colonys’was the handiwork of terrorists like Jefferson and Adams who were responsible for the deaths of innocent British “Red Coats “;sound familiar doesn’t it?
My wife , who had a Jewish grand father,after going to Israel is convinced that Israel has the biggest propaganda machine running in the Near East and she thinks Americans’ have been “brainwashed” to buy their B–S–T.I don’t subscribe to that approach but I think we spend too much time worrying about what happens to Israel rather than getting out of the Near East altogether and getting us out of policing the world which brought down the British Empire. Further I feel the former Democrat Joe Lieberman should formally acknowledge his de facto status with Likud and get a job driving Rev.Hagee’s church bus down there in Sugarland Texas where the collective I.Q.of the congregation is the same as his hat size.

By: Y. Ben-David

Y. Ben-David — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:58:33 +0000

A couple of further points:

(1) Regarding supposed support for the “2-State Solution” by Barghouti and a majority of Palestinians according to Shikaki’s poll, it is important to ask if this phrase means the same thing them as it does to Israelis who want it. Does it include full implementation of the so-called “Palestinian Right of Return”? Does it guarantee Jewish access to Jewish holy sites in Palestinian control?
Israelis assume that the Palestinians will accept only a limited, “symbolic” right of return of some tens of thousands of refugees, but no Palestinian leader has ever agreed to that. Israelis like Tzippi Livni say that it means a “right of return” of refugees to the Palestinian territories, but the Palestinians could never agree to such a thing because there is no room for them and the current Palestinian residents of those territories view the refugees as aliens and don’t want them there as neighbors.
Regarding the Jewish holy places, I can only remind everyone that Barak was willing to hand over sovereignity of Judaism’s holies place, the Har HaBayit (Temple Mount) but with the minor condition that the agreement contain a clause that the Palestinians recognize the fact that the Jews also view it as a holy place. Arafat adamantly refused, even after being berated by Bill Clinton on the matter. Official Palestinian propaganda says the Jews have no business being in the country at all, so don’t count on them protecting our holy places.

(2) Regarding freeing Barghouti since some feel that “he is the only one who can make peace” in spite of the minor technicality that he is serving a life sentence in prison because of five counts of first-degree murder-
It is important to keep something in mind. Those who advocate freeing him will say “you can’t choose your peace partners”. That is simply not true. While it is true that Churchill and Roosevelt had no choice but to deal with mass-murderer Stalin in the Second World War, we must remember that Stalin was already the leader of the USSR at the time their alliance with him was forged. Churchill and FDR also refused to deal with the Nazi regime in power. They said it had to be defeated totally and didn’t claim “you make peace with your enemies”. Barghouti is not now and never was the recognized head of the Palestinians. Those who advocate freeing him have all sorts of Machiavellian tricks up their sleeve saying “the fact that he is a murderer will give him more credibility in the Palestinian street”. This is simply morally unacceptable. How can anyone think that someone like him really would make peace anyway? It is this sort of thinking that got Israel into the Oslo disaster in the first place, and I would like to think that those who advocate things like this would be discredited.

By: Y. Ben-David

Y. Ben-David — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:32:51 +0000

(1) I really don’t know anything about Shikaki and his polling organization, but I have been following his polls for some time. By an interesting coincidence, the polls always seem to show large support for whatever policy the Palestinian Authority if following, i.e. if there is a war, like there was after Arafat turned down the Camp David-Taba, then there is massive support for suicide bombings, no compromise with Israel, etc, etc,. If the policy is to have negotiations, as is the case now, then there is increased support for this, instead of the “hardline positions”. Now, taking into consideration that the Palestinian territories are not a “democracy”, and the media is tightly controlled there, then I think it is legitimate to ask who exactly is financing Shikaki’s organization, and is he stilting the results to please some powerful person or organization, instead of giving straight, honest results.

(2) So Barghouti being a convicted murderer is a problem because HAMAS instead of FATAH might benefit from the release of such a popular leader who has blood on his hands. (One the counts of first degree murder that he was convicted of was the murder of a girl who had attended my synagogue. Another was a Greek Orthodox priest who was killed because he had a beard like a religious Jew). Why should murder get in the way of a beautiful political relationship?
All the arguments we hear now about why Barghouti is so good for Israel have been heard before “he is strong, reports are that he supports the 2-state solution, he is popular, he will reign in the ‘extremists’, he is the only one who can sign a deal with Israel, sure he is a killer but who is a saint in this part of the world, anyway?”. All these wonderful qualities were attributed to Arafat. Now, thousands of dead and wounded later, the “progressives” want to try the same thing with somebody else. Didn’t someone define insanity as “trying the same thng over and over again but expecting opposite results”.

By: Chris Dornan

Chris Dornan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:19:51 +0000

Gershom, I really get the sense that Israel is very much where N.I. is when first Sinf fein were being excluded from the process and then Paisley. By trying to manoeuvre to isolate Hamas you strengthen them–maybe that is a good thing. But at the end of the day you are going to have to deal with Hamas (unless they do something to discredit themselves with the Palestinians–but that is in their hands). If Barghouti is the unifying candidate then he will have to represent Hamas and they will have to be given the credit and encouraged into the process.

It is totally and entirely pointless for Israel to try and politically undermine Hamas–if it succeeds then they go back to pursuing the military option; if it fails (which it surely will) then it is so much time and energy wasted. They have to be encouraged to enter the political process, and the bitter pill–the one that every one has to swallow everywhere is that those on the other side that were the most effective ‘terrorists’ enbd up with the political credit. Is there not something of this in the history of Israel? (That is a question; it is my understanding but I am open to being corrected.)

Abbas/Fatah will probably go the way of Trimble/UUP and Hume/SDLP. Get used to it.