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Topic: Or armageddon

topic by Prove_You_right 4/6/2002 (16:03)

reply top http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=53591 Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Islam's death wish The Washington Post The Washington Post Friday, April 5, 2002 Islamic nations held a conference in Malaysia this week in an effort to refute the connection between the Muslim world and terrorism. Sadly, they managed to accomplish the opposite. Despite appeals from the Malaysian and Bosnian representatives, the 57 assembled states adopted a resolution that specifically rejected the idea that Palestinian 'resistance' to Israel has anything to do with terrorism. As the Muslim governments would have it, the Palestinian who killed himself and 26 Israeli civilians who were sitting down to a Passover Seder in an Israeli coastal city last week was not practicing terrorism; neither were those who organized and dispatched dozens of other young people to kill themselves and scores of innocent Israelis in recent months. In effect, the Islamic conference sanctioned not only terrorism but also suicide as legitimate political instruments. Though the governments were right in describing Islam as a peaceful religion, they were terribly wrong about themselves. It is hard to imagine any other grouping of the world's nations that could reach such a self-destructive and morally repugnant conclusion. The refusal of Muslim states, particularly those in the Arab Middle East, to separate themselves from the suicide bombers demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge faced by the United States in combating international terrorism. Arab governments say they reject the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States and support the campaign against Al Qaeda. But they are unwilling to renounce either terrorism itself or the extremist Islamic ideology that underlies it. On the contrary, their schools and media help feed the terrorist cause with anti-Western and anti-Semitic incitement, and their governments often help pay for it with donations to radical Islamic groups. Even now, Arab states are subsidizing the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, rewarding them for their acts of savagery and thereby encouraging others to follow them. Muslim spokesmen protest that terrorism is not easily defined; one purpose of this week's conference - which was not achieved - was to come up with an Islamic definition. It's true, of course, that some governments seek to discredit conventional military rebel movements by labeling them as terrorist; it is also true that terrorism is sometimes employed in the name of legitimate causes. And yet it should not be hard to agree that a person who detonates himself in a pizza parlor or a discotheque filled with children, spraying scrap metal and nails in an effort to kill and maim as many of them as possible, has done something evil that can only discredit and damage whatever cause he hopes to advance. That Muslim governments cannot agree on this is shameful evidence of their own moral and political corruption. It is also a sign of dangerous obtuseness. Anyone following the destructive Israeli offensive against Palestinian towns in the West Bank - the Muslim governments, of course, were shrill about Israel's 'state terrorism' - can see how deeply terrorism has damaged the Palestinian national cause. For most of the 1990s, Israeli hard-liners like Ariel Sharon railed ineffectually against the Oslo process, which aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and granting the Palestinians a state. Relatively few Israelis supported them, and the United States ignored them. Now, thanks to the suicide bombers and the terrible choice of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to tolerate them - and maybe even aid them - Sharon is Israel's prime minister and has won both a domestic mandate and U.S. tolerance for his ambition to destroy the authority, along with any chance of a viable Palestinian state in the foreseeable future. The Palestinian national cause will never recover - nor should it - until its leadership is willing to break definitively with the bombers. And Muslim states that support such sickening carnage will risk not just stigma but also their own eventual self-destruction. Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune

reply by JC 4/6/2002 (16:06)

reply top Excellent post!

reply by prove_me_wrong 4/6/2002 (16:09)

reply top Of course I posted it .. It kind of prove my point of who really wants war!! and why we have to kill you .. NOW. http://www.iht.com/articles/53466.html Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Palestinians will go on fighting for independence Marwan Bishara IHT Thursday, April 4, 2002 PARIS As Israel wages war on the Palestinians in the name of peace - violating international law and compromising universal values in the process - it is important to break away from the dramatic images of tanks and suicide bombings to analyze the underlying political and historical dimensions of the Middle East conflict. If someone had told the Jews who formed 10 percent of Palestine's population at the turn of the last century that one day they would have a state spreading over 78 percent of the country, with 80 percent of Jerusalem as its capital, they would have dismissed this as no more than a beautiful dream. If the other 90 percent of Palestine's population were told that one day they would give up three quarters of their land, after three quarters of their population had been forced to become refugees, and that they would be forced to live in less than 10 percent of their homeland, perforated like a Swiss cheese by 200 illegal settlements protected by a nuclear-armed neighbor run by an infamous general, they would have thought they were being offered a nightmare. Now that the nightmare is becoming a reality, more and more Palestinians are ready, like the biblical Samson, to bring down the temple on Israelis and themselves. After Israel responded to stone-throwing and sniping by terrorizing Palestinian cities with F-16 warplanes and Apache helicopter gunships, Palestinians resorted to suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. If life under occupation has become impossible, Palestinians say, then the price of maintaining the occupation must become unbearable. Instead of addressing the causes of this alarming change in Palestinian attitudes, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has exploited it to step up a vicious cycle of retaliatory violence. Politically, the escalation of violence has come about because of Israeli and Palestinian attempts to achieve by force what they couldn't attain through diplomacy. Palestinians want an independent state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, while Israel reserves the right to determine the nature and borders of the Palestinian entity within the constraints of the security imperatives of its illegal settlers. The current military operation is a typical response from Israelis who reckon that military force is a safer bet than diplomatic channels. But Israel's failure to translate its numerous military successes into political gains through a peace agreement is precisely what has led to its current insecurity. Ariel Sharon, like his mentor Yitzhak Shamir, promised the Israeli people security with or without peace, but his government has failed on all levels of security - deterrence, prevention and projection of force. Sharon's new war will not stop the suicide bombers. Instead, in the vain hope of producing alternative leaders who might agree to his fantasy of a Greater Israel, he is destroying whatever is left of the Palestinian economic and political infrastructure. For their part, Palestinians' identity has been molded by political disappointments and military losses. The Palestine Liberation Organization came to prominence in the aftermath of the Arab failure in 1967 war, but its failure to improve the Palestinians' situation, and Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, led to the popular uprising against the Israeli occupation in 1987, which ended with the beginning of the peace process. The peace process produced 10 years of negotiations in stages and implementation in phases, and only caused more Palestinian disappointment. As illegal Israeli settlements doubled, Palestinian economic and social conditions worsened. Eventually the failure of the peace process to deliver liberty and dignity drove the Palestinians to their last option - defying the occupation. Israel, however has an alternative option. Sharon's attempt to portray the current war as an extension of Israel's 1948 war of independence is misleading; it is clearly a war of choice, not so different from Sharon's 1982 war in Lebanon. Twenty years later, Sharon is leading the region into another explosion. During recent visits to several moderate Arab countries, no one I met was in the mood for moderation. The way back is not the way out. The parties must be coerced not just into a cease-fire, but beyond to a pact on peaceful separation of their peoples. Israel should accept an internationally guaranteed peace that ensures its security and Palestinian sovereignty. Otherwise, like Israelis, Americans and many other peoples before them, Palestinians will continue to use all means at their disposal to attain independence. The writer, who teaches international relations at the American University in Paris, is author of 'Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid?' He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune. Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune

reply by _ 4/6/2002 (16:21)

reply top Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com Sharon is exploiting America's 'war on terrorism' William Pfaff International Herald Tribune Thursday, April 4, 2002 PARIS Israeli policy today rests on a wishful fiction, complicated by its conflation of the facts and fictions underlying Washington's proclaimed war on terrorism. The Israeli fiction is that Yasser Arafat alone is responsible for the terrorism afflicting Israel, and that he is alone capable of halting it. 'It is being directed, promoted and initiated by one person,' Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday. He may believe this, but not many others do. The history of Palestinian-Israeli conflict over the last 54 years suggests better explanations. Israel avows that its war is against terrorism, but Sharon's war actually is a war to destroy Palestinian resistance to Israeli policy in the occupied territories and to deny the Palestinian claim that the refugees have a right to return to homes they left or from which they were expelled. The reciprocal illusion is that of the Palestinians: that they can ever go back. This illusion caused Yasser Arafat to turn his back on the settlement terms offered by Ehud Barak. As Israel considers that claim a threat to its national existence or integrity, proclamation of 'war against terrorism' is subterfuge and propaganda. It is war, period. That is what the two sides are waging. The only solution now is an imposed compromise. The Bush administration, the only international actor capable of such an initiative, demonstrates no interest in this, for which it may one day be very sorry. A third illusion is promoted by the Bush administration and cynically exploited by Sharon: that terrorism exists apart from the political causes that inspire it and can be dealt with without addressing those causes. The U.S. war is actually against certain organized radical Muslim movements and their supporters in disorderly Third World countries, and against the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. It is propaganda and expedience for Washington to join Iraq's supposed threat to the United States with that of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. However, it is, for Israel, a useful expedient, as it offers Israel a ride on the U.S. government's post-Sept. 11 obsessions. The Israeli Army has reportedly now assured Ariel Sharon that it needs only three to four weeks to complete the mission he has given them, which is 'to eliminate terrorism and its infrastructure,' meaning the elimination of Palestinian resistance. The military leaders say their operations have been a success by their criteria. There have been few Israeli military casualties and few incidents provoking international outrage. On the other hand, the Israeli press reports that there has been little positive to show from the operations. Many young men were arrested and had numbers written on their arms (an unfortunate choice of methods to keep track of them); but few were on the Israeli lists of wanted men. The only arms seized were light weapons and home-made rockets. The Foreign Ministry is concerned that international reaction might force the operation to stop ahead of schedule. Others in Israel are concerned about where this is taking Israel. Yoel Marcus, a commentator in the liberal daily Ha'aretz, asks, 'What constitutes victory? … Ministers seem pretty much in the dark about where this rolling offensive is actually rolling to.' Surely, that much is clear. It is rolling toward more repression, and away from Israeli democracy. International Herald Tribune Los Angeles Times Syndicate Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune

reply by JC 4/6/2002 (17:41)

reply top War will kill many people. Palestinan and Israeli. I for one do not want such a war. If you are intent on killing Israelis, however, I hope that they wipe out your rejectionist type. Maybe then the two sides can resume meeting again at the peace table and hammer out an agreement. Just remember that many more people will die in any war.

reply by John Calvin 4/6/2002 (19:05)

reply top Just typical : you say you don't want war but every argument you make is one that supports 'the necessity of war' You and Barb are definately birds of a feather- TURKEYS!

reply by TheAZCowBoy 4/6/2002 (19:15)

reply top Re: Palestinian terrorism? In the old west, which is where I'm from, they used to lynch cattle/horse rustlers, claims jumpers, thugs, murderers, thiefs and there was nary a word of protest from the people. So when the two IDF 'Death Squad' assassins were lynched in Ramallah some 18 months ago by the Palestinian's we passed the hat and sent the lynchers two new spools of synthetic nylon rope. The Passover massacres were 'self defense' because in the prior 10 days prior to Zinni's arrival the IDF parasites had murdered 40 unarmed Palestinian's in cold blood ( 3 of them children under the age of 5 according to Har-aretz, 02-2002 )--so like Reagan used to say when covering up US financed CONTRA terrorism in Central America, this assassination was 'much a do about nothing' in fact, it was 'only' Palestinian JUSTICE delivered with 'extreme prejudice.' Sort of like an IDF Extra-Judicial aassination 'on a shoe string.' TheAZCowBoy,

reply by pROVE_ME_wRONG 4/6/2002 (20:36)

reply top If i wanted war .. you think I would have watsed my time on this board? If arafat was the big terrorist .. You think he would have kept the best weapons for himself? If any media outlet in the us was more than a fealthy propaganda tool .. you think Zionists would have had ownershp of most of it?

reply by ozzie hooper 4/6/2002 (21:38)

reply top It's impossible to PROVE YOU WRONG! Let JC drool over his Turkey breast..