Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 15:41:00 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Sam Habash <the@llama.com> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Islam (was: Religions (was Re: helping victims of terror)) Message-ID: <3BD34EFC.D97448B4@mindspring.com> References: <1003617187.3bd1fba3d31ff@webmail.neomedia.it> <1003617187.3bd1fba3d31ff@webmail.neomedia.it> <4.3.2.7.2.20011020213927.048a1780@localhost> <200110211547.f9LFlIB27704@dungeon.home> <3BD32635.EC54F003@mindspring.com> <20011021135816.A12222@llama.com>
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Sam Habash wrote: > I didn't know that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank had > citizenship. Your word usage makes your bias quite clear... It's not occupied, it's territory won in war. To be occupied, a war would have to be active right now: | Main Entry: oc=B7cu=B7py = | Pronunciation: '=E4-ky&-"pI | Function: transitive verb | Inflected Form(s): -pied; -py=B7ing | Etymology: Middle English occupien to take possession of, occupy, | modification of Middle French occuper, from Latin occupare, from \ | ob- toward + -cupare (akin to capere to seize) -- more at OB-, HEAVE | Date: 14th century [ ... ] | 3 a : to take or hold possession or control of <enemy troops occupied | the ridge> So either it's not "the occupied West Bank", or you are claiming that there is an active war in progress, in which case, they are defending themselves. > Maybe Israel should have just annexed "Judea and Samaria", so > that the "Palestinians" there could have done just that. I think they didn't because the Palestinians there didn't attack them, so the Israeli's didn't kick their butt and take their land, like they kicked the butt of the Palestinians on the West bank. > If the Israels didn't have to deal with that very question, > they would have done so long, long ago. 34 years later, we see > the consequences of leaving the question of the West Bank and Gaza > up in the air. You're right. It was a huge strategic blunder, which I'm sure they regret. > Relatively little is mentioned in the US about the Israeli Arabs > who -have done- and -do- just as you been asking. That's because we don't have news stories about things that work, only about things that don't work. > Oh, but they aren't Palestinians then, right? I think that they could probably be fairly identified as Palestinian-Israeli's. I think it would be idiotic to do that; it seperates you from the people around you when you hyphenate the name of your nationality to put another nationality first. Much of the (much milder) problems in the U.S. stem from self identification into groups, and the leaders of those groups keeping the seperation intact in order to obtain some measure of political or economic power, at the expense of the people the "lead". If it were up to me, it would be illegal to ask for any information on ethnicity, former nationality, etc., even on government forms -- including census forms. People are not their enthicity, nor are they their former nationality, once they have citizenship. Some of the problems in Oakland, CA, which has the highest concentration of Afghani immigrants of any city in the U.S., are because we are identifying these people as being in a group distinct from all other Americans: Afghan-Americans. It damn well doesn't matter where they came from: they are just Americans, now, like the rest of the U.S. citizenry. > = > I find this interesting reading: > = > http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/arabstat.html Me too. The results of a seperatist educational system are fairly clear in the resulting society. Perhaps one of the reasons the U.S. has been so successful at homogenizing its people is the forced integration of schools, beginning in the 1960's. > Overall, it's bad to look to Israel as a "guiding light" in > such matters...I really do not care to adopt the tactics of a > garrison state, despite what the Israeli lobby in the > United States would like for Americans to pay, er, think... > assssination and collective punishment have no place in societies > dedicated to preserving the rule of law, period...the terrorists > would like for nothing better than to have their purported victims > continue their dirty work. This is a common anti-death-penalty stance, regardless of the method of imposition. We need to remind ourselves that the purpose of any penalty, ge it a fine, imprisonment, or even death at the hands of the state, is _not_ rehabilitation of the criminal, and _not_ punishment of the criminal: it is, instead, intended as an object lesson to the society, of the penalty for antisocial behaviour. In fact, to this day, we still call it "the penal system". > Yes, I am a US citizen. Yes, I am "Palestinian" by national origin. No, you're not a Palestinian. You are an American. If your national origin was Plastinian, it doesn't matter: when you obtained U.S. citizenship, you forswore all loyalties to all other nations. > I do not believe that a state run by Arafat's Fatah would be in the > best interest of anybody who values freedom and democracy, since > Arafat and his organization are corrupt, murderous thugs that > have used the plight of the Palestinian people for their own > advantage. Yes. Exactly as the self-identification seperatist organizations in the U.S. are used by their leaders. > However, I am not one to contest the will of the people there, as > misguided as I feel that it is. Clearly, this is the general U.S. perspective, or we would have intervened in the internal affairs of many more nations, and Afghanistan in particular, well before events dictated we must. > Or are we truly against self-determination because Palestinians > are all terrorists and deserve to have their houses demolished, > their people arrested, beaten, and tortured, etc.? Clearly not. The U.S., I think, is all for the participation of citizens in the duly constituted governmental processes of the region in which they reside. What this means for Palestinians is that, so long as they live on Israeli soil, they are subject to Israeli rule. They may not like the fact that it's Israeli soil, but Israeli soil it is, and that is unlikely to ever change. > The Israelis, as rotten as their record has been--Ariel Sharon himself > is *directly responsible* for thousands of civilian deaths (c.f. > http://electronicintifada.net/forreference/keyfigures/sharon.html)-- > at least *have* a track record as a pluralistic, multiethnic society. Only partially; your earlier reference indicated a distinct lack of multiethnicity in the primary education system. I have to say that your Intifada reference backs up my past conclusion that Israel has been strangely tolerant. Historically, most nations winning land in war have either put the indiginous population to the knife or forcibly naturalized them (destroying their cultural individuality, in the process). The U.S. did this with a vengence on several occasions, as have most nations which have survived to this day. > Despite the massive economic and emotional toll their occupation of the= > West Bank has inflicted, and the shocking level which the Israeli > lobby will go to protect continued US aid, and the corrupting influence= > of said aid, I hold a fleeting hope that Israel will come to its senses= > and not continue on its path of brutality and aggression. > = > I liked it much better when the chat was about FreeBSD, but there's no > chance of that happening any time soon, is there? I think the sooner people realize that the U.S. is not playing at a war on terroism, the sooner they will quit trying to cast the events of September 11th as a result of U.S. policy, and realize that the terrorists ultimately are responsible for their own actions, regardless of what "provocation" may or may not exist. The U.S. _will_ hold them responsible for their actions, and the U.S. _will not_ permit terrorist acts to control U.S. foreign policy. Do not expect the U.S. position on the Israeli/Palestinian situation to change as a result of the attack; expect the U.S. position to become even more firmly entrenched. If we even suspect that the motivation was over a particular U.S. foreign policy issue, expect a knee-jerk reaction opposite of the one the terrorists wanted to force us into. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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