| Wednesday,
Open with this:
Hello,
Ive been treading your webpage for quite a while and
always found it interesting. I'm dissapointed howevert with the one-sided
tone of your and some readers comments on the Israelian - Palestinian
issue.
Some thoughts :
- There is a big difference between the violence of
the Palestinians and Israel.
The bombings of some Palestinian extremists are
definitely wrong and there is no excuse for it. Unfortunately a small part
of the Palestinians are able to discredit an entire population.
The actions of the Israeli government are state
sponsored terrorism. This , in my opinion is much worse. A democracy must
defend itself , but not at the expense of an entire population. If a
democracy wants to prosecute a criminal ( & terrorists are criminals )
it must do so by legal means. You must arrest the criminal and prosecute
him according to the democratic laws. Bombing buildings where 'there might
possibly suspected criminals' is contradictory to those rules of legal
justice. And a democracy where the legal system is put aside so easily is
wrong to me.
- More Palestinian women and children have been
killed in this conflict than Israelis.
How can this be if Israel
is only prosecuting terrorists ? The truth is that Israel is fighting an
all-out war against the Palestinian population, not against the
terrorists. The Palestinian population ( and I'm not talking about the
terrorists here ) only wants what the US got from England a couple of
hundred years ago, Independence and some place to live. How can that be
wrong ? But Israel keeps fighting just that.
- Israel keeps on laughing with UN resolutions.
And these are very weak , low key resolutions
because the US has used its veto right ( another one of these democratic
notions ) repeatedly to make sure that the ones that got through weren't
to harsh on Israel. And even then Israel fails to comply.
- One of your readers makes the simplistic statement
that to arabs its 'them against the infidels'.
That is one of the most single sided , simplistic
remarks Ive read on your website recently. Its right in the league with
those comments , flames from those AMD fanatics you got. hmmm... guess it
would'nt do to conclude from that remark from that Steven guy that all
Americans are......
- Everybody knows the solution to the Israel -
Palestine issue.
Acknowledge the Palestinian state. Give let it have
part ( is it the east part ? ) Jerusalem as its capital. Exchange the
settlements with the palestinians for Palestinian land that is physically
attached to Israel. Pay some kind of money to the Palestinians that have
been deported ( or is it politically incorrect to use that term ?) from
Israel. Stop spending mony on arms for Israel and use that money to build
housing , schools , hospitals in Palestina. Sign a peace treaty between
the arab nations & Israel.
Given that, the terrorists will no longer be seen as
martyrs , but as what they are , criminals that have to be prosecuted.
Diether De Coninck ------
I am not responsible for reader comments, and I
try to provide a spectrum of sane opinions.
Regarding Palestinian demands: The problem is
that everything you say they want was offered, and rejected, at Camp
David. The only issue left was "right of return" and while
Israel will never grant that, compensation is certainly negotiable. And
the Camp David offer was rejected in favor of renewing the war.
But leave that: my concern is what the US ought
to be doing in this situation. My views are well known. I want to put
resources into energy independence and get out of entangling alliances and
imperialism anywhere. Mind our own business and make our business as local
as possible. We aren't doing that, but it's what I want. I trust our
engineers more than I trust our diplomats and politicians.
Second, I cannot accept the moral equivalence
blowing up a supermarket and going into an area known to harbor people who
do that. There are always civilian causalities in war. Always. The
question is not will there be civilian casualties, but "do we go to
war knowing that civilians will die?" The Palestinians say they are
at war, and that the suicide bombings are their best weapon.
Now if the Palestinians confined their bombings
to military targets == blow up check points, military barracks, and
patrols == it would be much harder to condemn them. They don't. And I do
not consider it morally equivalent to blow up a supermarket and to go to
that market to buy peppers as happened to the "two teen age
girls" featured in a recent Newsweek.
Given the situation in Palestine, the only thing
that is going to end it is to build a wall. Where that wall is put is up
to Israel because they have the military supremacy to put it where they
want. Anywhere they want. The US isn't going to bomb Tel Aviv to
make the Israeli government give up the war any more than we are going to
bomb Gaza to make the Palestinians give up their Intafadah. It won't
happen either way. We have only so many knobs to twist, and I weary of
Europeans who seem to delight in accusing the US of thoughtcrime.
The facts are that Israel may be persuaded to pay
compensation for property seized since 1948. Some of that property belongs
to Christian friends of mine so I sure won't object. Some belongs to a
Christian Order I belong to and I'd love to have some money for that if we
can't get our clinic back. Israel is not going to be persuaded to accept a
million non-Jews as new citizens, and the US and the rest of the world
have no means to make them do it, but they should be persuaded to pay for
seized property.
The Palestinians are, many of them, displaced, or
descended from displaced persons. Between 4 and 20 million Germans were
displaced at the end of WW II. About 2 million Poles were displaced at the
end of WW II. No one demands a right of return for them, and they don't
live in DP camps now. Some still claim property stolen after WW II and a
few are actually getting some compensation. Those are legal matters and
blowing up grandmothers at dinner isn't part of the tactics of recovering
that property.
War is brutal. I certainly do not want the
Israeli Army running around tearing out walls and tearing holes in houses
and widening streets with bulldozers. At the same time, were one of my
kids in that army as a citizen called to arms, I would damned well tell
him to be careful, and if being careful meant being more violent than
either of us wanted, then what?
War is Hell, said Sherman. When you unleash the
dogs of war you summon demons. There is no help for that. There is no such
thing as clean, surgical, war.
If you Europeans == from the cleanup I had to do
in spelling and grammar on your letter I conclude that English is not your
first language == want to send peace keepers to Israel and can get the
Israeli government to accept them, that's your concern and I applaud. I
don't want to send our own. And we are not going to invade Israel.
When the Palestinians send people to blow
up supermarkets and dinner parties, they must expect the relatives of the
victims to retaliate. I don't expect to like the retaliation even if it's
done by my troops; I sure don't have responsibility for what Israel does.
Build walls. Sometimes it is the only way. And
the sooner the better. Note that when you build a wall you de facto say
"What's outside is yours, not mine..."
This from Joel Rosenberg:
I found your European correspondent's comments very,
well, unsurprising, but very revealing -- thanks for printing them. I
could go point by point, but I save that for discussions with people I've
been given reason to respect; I'll just take one of his claims.
"The truth," he writes, "is that
Israel is fighting an all-out war against the Palestinian population, not
against the terrorists."
Huh? Even the (I believe, dramatically inflated;
time will tell) PA claims of 500 Arabs being killed in Jenin makes it
clear that that's not so. The population of Jenin is roughly 15,000. An
"all out war" against the population would not have resulted in
the deaths of less than 3% of the population -- and that's accepting the
Arab estimates. In an all out war against a population, one doesn't call
upon noncombatants to flee, and then let them do so.
There are numerous complaints from Arabs in Jenin
about Israelis having detailed maps with specific houses circled -- if one
is engaging in a mass slaughter or even a mass destruction, there's no
need to send soldiers from house to house, or to select houses for
demolition -- just bulldoze them all.
I think some people haven't read history, and don't
know what an all-out war is.
For an on-the-scene report from Jenin, check out:
http://www.nationalpost.com/search
/story.html?f=/stories/20020415/642590.html&qs=jenin
Some highlights, which, I suggest, may be
indicative:
A grocery store owner near Jenin spoke in a hushed
voice about seeing Israeli troops loading the bodies of massacred
Palestinians into a refrigerated truck which he said was still parked on a
nearby hill.
Asked to elaborate, he declined. "The people
that are sitting there are collaborators," he said.
The refrigerated truck was parked on a grassy hill,
where Israeli troops were resting with their tanks and armoured vehicles
listening to Alanis Morissette on a stereo.
When a National Post reporter inspected the truck,
it contained not bodies but apples and other food and supplies for the
troops.
....
The contorted bodies of four Palestinian men,
blackened by decomposition, were found in a living room apparently hit by
a missile. Andeera Harb, 34, a child psychologist whose relatives owned
the house, said the four men had been eating dinner.
However, there was a helmet on the head of one body.
What appeared to be pipe bombs were partially hidden under a coat.
---------- No. This was, as I argued last week, a
demonstration, and as the Israelis have been saying, an attack on the
terrorist infrastructure.
So far, the latter appears to be working -- instead
of one or more suicide bombings a day, there have been three over almost
three weeks, and the capture of some of the terrorist leadership --
including the head of Arafat's Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, Marwan Barghouti
-- should put something of a crimp in the shaheeds. Even in the PA, one
can't simply walk down to the local grocer and order a pound of Semtex --
the bombing campaign requires recruitment and indoctrination of shaheed
candidates, materiel, and transport. Right now, the IDF has captured and
killed much of the leadership, and the rest are keeping their heads down;
huge quantities of explosives have been found (one big stash in a mosque,
unsurprisingly); and it's getting harder and harder for the shaheeds to
get across the Green Line. (Note that neither of the three recent ones
have come from Gaza, the hotbed of shaheed recruitment -- Gaza's bottled
up.)
It's not the end of the matter, and it's being
endlessly discussed in Israel.
But, apparently, it hasn't been a sufficient
demonstration. While I don't ascribe to his longterm view, in the short
run, Shlomo Gazit has it about right --
see: http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2002/04/16/Opinion/Opinion.47062.html
-- except that he isn't thinking "wall".
He should be, and many Israelis are. If the Israelis don't build the wall,
as they should, the all out war may be coming, but if and when it does, it
won't be APCs delivering infantry for house-to-house fighting, while
ignorant Europeans complain about "an all-out war against the
Palestinian population."
And from: http://www.nationalpost.com/home/
story.html?f=/stories/20020417/664239.html
(A story, basically, about how the IDF hasn't
cracked the Nablus problem.)
The soldiers say they often see armed men in the
city but do not fire on them because there are so many women and children
around. The rule in Nablus is to shoot only when fired upon.
"In the middle of these children, we see
sometimes guys with guns," said Maj. Kachel. "It's a problem to
shoot them. Even if they shoot us, it's a problem to shoot at this place.
If I miss by 10 centimetres, I shoot a child. That's why we avoid
shooting."
Captain Doron Sitbon said the Israeli troops could
take Nablus if they were so ordered. But the army apparently wants to
avoid another messy fight like Jenin, where it has been accused of a
massacre.
"We have the capability," he said.
"It's a matter of will."
-------------------------------
It's their call, of course; Israel has to live with
the consequences, either way.
In war the morale is to the physical as three is
to one. Napoleon Bonaparte
It is almost always a matter of will.
Jerry,
Just a note on something that I think you especially
might find interesting. I am currently working on a novel and tend to keep
my files split into chunks of around 50-60 pages or so. I have kind of a
micro Chaos manner setup here and I work on the novel on one of three
machines, each of which boot into various operating systems. I was working
on my novel on my XP machine (winXP pro and Office XP) and noticed that it
was taking a very large time to save the file each time it autosaved the
file. I then looked at my saved file size and it was at nearly one meg. I
found this odd and checked. It was something that WordXP was doing. I'm
not sure exactly what but when I told it to save using only features
available in Work 2K or earlier the file size went back down to 233K.
I'm not sure what WordXP is doing, but it has done
it twice now and it completely blows performance (on a fairly fast
machine) out the door when it super-sizes my file. I tried turning off
smart-tags, but that made only a small difference. This is a big deal for
anyone who deals with even moderately large files. Quadrupling the size of
files and killing their performance just isn't acceptable.
Just thought you might want to know and to see if
you with your contacts in MS could maybe find out what is happening.
Thanks for your work,
Dave Bennett Ergoface Consulting
Clearly I need to install and try Windows XP. I
have been using 2000 only, so I have no experience with the problem.
Dear Doctor,
Came across this little thorn in my morning perusal
of the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62695-2002Apr16.html
Jon Eveland
Ugh. Or? Dunno, need to think.
Airline Security
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2064257
"The hardest task facing any would-be terrorist is not getting his
weapon on the plane. That's just a game of hide-and-seek, and the seeker's
odds in that situation are never particularly good. The real problem for
the terrorist is getting himself onto the plane. People about to commit
violent acts make mistakes. They get nervous. They have to construct
elaborate cover stories for themselves and fall back on training that may
have been conducted months or even years before in a country far
away."
Owen Strawn
Thanks
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
