Postmodern Palestine
The new amorality in the Middle East.

March 2002
Victor Davis Hansen.
NRO

There is a postmodern amorality afloat — the dividend of years of an American educational system in which historical ignorance, cultural relativism, and well-intentioned theory, in place of cold facts, has reigned. We see the sad results everywhere in the current discussions of the Middle East and our own war on terror.

Palestinians appeal to the American public on grounds that three or four times as many of their own citizens have died as Israelis. The crazy logic is that in war the side that suffers the most casualties is either in the right or at least should be the winner.
Some Americans nursed on the popular ideology of equivalence find this attractive. But if so, they should then sympathize with Hitler, Tojo, Kim Il Sung, and Ho Chi Minh who all lost more soldiers — and civilians — in their wars against us than we did.

Perhaps a million Chinese were casualties in Korea, ten times the number of Americans killed, wounded, and missing. Are we then to forget that the Communists crossed the Yalu River to implement totalitarianism in the south — and instead agree that their catastrophic wartime sacrifices were proof of American culpability? Palestinians suffer more casualties than Israelis not because they wish to, or because they are somehow more moral — but because they are not as adept in fighting real soldiers in the full-fledged war that is growing out of their OWN intifada.

We are told that Palestinian civilians who are killed by the Israeli Defense Forces are the moral equivalent of slaughtering Israeli civilians at schools, restaurants, and on buses. That should be a hard sell for Americans after September 11, who are currently bombing in Afghanistan to ensure that there are not more suicide murderers on our shores. This premise hinges upon the acceptance that the suicide bombers' deliberate butchering of civilians is the same as the collateral damage that occurs when soldiers retaliate against other armed combatants.

In fact, the tragic civilian deaths on the West Bank make a less-compelling argument for amorality than the one revisionists often use in condemning the Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo bombings. Then British and American planes knowingly incinerated civilians in their quests to shut down the warmaking potential of the Third Reich and imperial Japan. Unlike what the B-17s and B-29s did to stop fascist murdering on a global scale, the Israelis are not carpet-bombing indiscriminately. Rather they are doing precisely what we ourselves were forced to do in Mogadishu: Fighting a dirty urban war against combatants who have no uniforms, shoot from houses, and are deliberately mixed in with civilians. So far the Israelis have probably killed fewer civilians in a year of fighting on the West Bank than our trapped soldiers did in two days of similar gun battles in Somalia.

An ignorance of historical context is also critical for such postmodern revisionism. If the conflict is due to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, then the first three wars for the survival of Israel itself must be conveniently ignored. If there is a push for the exchange of land for peace, then we must overlook that some in the Arab world who have suggested just that bromide in the past three decades were either assassinated or executed. And if we accept that both sides are equally culpable for the current killing, we must forget that less than two years ago the Palestinians rejected an Israeli offer to return 97 percent of the West Bank, along with other major concessions — assuming that unleashing the present intifada could get them still more.

Facts mean nothing. The dispute is purportedly over the principle of occupation — but next-door Syria holds far more Lebanese land than Israel does the West Bank. The dispute is supposedly over ethnic intolerance and gratuitous humiliation — but Kuwait, quite unlike Israel, ethnically cleansed their entire country of Palestinians after the Gulf War..............."

more at
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson032902.asp

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No, here's what makes me angry, not numbers, merely incidents:

Just two months shy of her 10th birthday, Ghadeer Jaber Mokheimer died today of injuries sustained when, sitting in a United Nations school, she was hit by gunfire from an Israeli military position in the Gaza Strip, the UN relief agency helping Palestinians reported.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.as...r=palestin&Cr1



Israel Defense Forces troops on Tuesday opened fire on two teenaged Palestinian girls approaching the separation fence near the West Bank town of Tul Karm, killing one and wounding the other.

The slain girl was identified as 14-year-old Da'ah Abed al-Kadr, and her wounded friend was named as 12-year-old Rasha Shalbi.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/802990.html





Safa was shot in the left side of her chest while she was inside her home in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. An ambulance tried to reach her but Israeli soldiers opened fire at it, wounding a paramedic and causing the tires to lose air, and so she bled to death three hours after she was wounded.


http://nationalexpositor.com/News/1071.html



The killing of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl, shot dead in the playground of her school in southern Gaza yesterday, threatened to undermine a tentative truce after Hamas blamed the Israeli army and retaliated by firing mortars into a Jewish settlement.

Noran Iyad Deeb was shot in the face as she lined up for assembly at the UN-run school in Rafah refugee camp. A second girl was hit in the hand.
http://www.rense.com/general62/ten.htm



Doctors at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said the girl, Asmaa Abu Edaba, died after being shot in the back of the head. Her sister, Sahar, 14, said the younger girl was shot at close range by a soldier as the sisters made their way home from school in the Shati refugee district. The older girl said troops were chasing rock-throwing students from the refugee area's elementary and middle schools as the two sisters turned into an alley near their home.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...51C1A96E948260



A Palestinian girl was shot dead by enraged Jewish settlers yesterday as they rampaged through the West Bank city of Hebron following the funeral of an Israeli killed by Palestinian militants, Palestinian witnesses and hospital sources said.

Nivin Musa Jamjoum, 14, was shot in the head as she stood on her balcony near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, also known as the Machpelah Cave, a disputed religious site, the hospital sources said.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/...818488751.html


The nine-year-old girl's parents realised she was gone as they watched the election results on television. They do not know precisely what happened, but the Israeli army later said Aya was behaving in a suspicious manner reminiscent of a terrorist - she got too close to the border fence - and so a soldier fired several bullets into the child, hitting her in the neck and blowing open her stomach.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5...103681,00.html


An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.

The soldier, who has only been identified as "Captain R", was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/16/israel2



"Israeli soldier found not guilty": 2,140,000 matches

google



Israel can kill all the militants they want. In fact fill your boots, but at least don't pretend that the above is not at minimum a mirror image of what happens to israeli civilians. There is an amorality around at the moment, and it's the one telling us Palestinian civilians aren't to be compared to israeli. The assumption is that all palestinian civilian deaths are accidents.

Also, just to make a point about the futility of trying to claim high moral ground via the "purity of arms' theory:
the breaking bones strategy [thanks, ariel sharon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/wo...ld&oref=slogin

it's hard to imagine that the israelis would not have allowed the Palestinian Fullbright scholars to travel had the US state department pressed them on the matter. rather than mitigating the ill will this action will cause the zionists, that state department reluctance to seek a reasonable outcome magnifies the reality that the present American regime is very willing to facilitate the israeli oppression of the Palestinian people

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“Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple: the truth.”

[Frontiersman editorial, 2/7/97]

Akira,

Some very relevant points - all of which gets white washed and swept under the rug in the US media.

Remember the Israelis are GOD's CHOSEN PEOPLE.

They can do whatever they want - the OLD TESTAMENT GOD is a very violent, revengeful and Spiteful GOD.

Is it any wonder WHY Jesus rejected Judaism and the barbaric OLD TESTAMENT immorality? And why the Jews till this very day dont recognise Jesus as their mesiah?

I think we have a very good example on this thread of the difference between expressing criticizm of Israeli policy/actions and the expression of antisemitism.

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I've had a perfectly wonderful evening......... but this wasn't it. -- Marx

And I am sure that YOU will be the ONLY living person on this blue planet that is CAPABLE of providing a definitive linguistic interpretation of this difference.

anti-semitism is a fraudulant moral hammer that is used to marginalise and demonise critics of Israeli actions as well as a means by which to divert and discredit any evidence made public that exposes these Illegal Israeli actions.

Its a not new tactic - you can go back the ancient Greek and Roman empires and find example of this phenomenon.

Then there are the 2 back up plans - Plans B and C

Plan B involves discrediting the critic of Israel by associating them with "Holocaust Denial" claims

Then plan C can be used to discredit actuall Jewish descent, within and external to Israel's national borders. The famous "Self-Loathing Jew" insult.

And Allah endorses the slaughter of jews, the defiling of children, the subjugation of women, and the murder of gays/lesbians.

The new testament endorses the subjugation of women, the slaughter of Jews, and has been used to support the murder of gays/lesbians.

I don't really think that any of these religions has cornered the market on peace and love.

But, I do find it interesting that some posters are only concerned with bashing Judaism, without recognizing the moral failings of other religions.

Foolosophy, since you've been kind enough to share your thoughts on issues with Judaism, do you think you would be willing, on another thread, to discuss Islam's abuses of gays/lesbians, children, and women? There are several in the religious conflicts section of the board.

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

Furthermore, I would love to see evidence of the above. The Jews were a tiny, marginalized minority in the Roman empire. However would they have managed to marginalize and demonize their critics? This is by far one of the most interesting claims i've ever heard.

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

You have pointed to several ABUSES over the 8 Year Intifada by Israel.

But there is no "Mirror Image".
Israeli Operations are Targeting Militants..
While Palestinians By and large Target Civilians.

More Israeli Civilians have died in Many INDIVIDUAL Attacks than all the ones you post put together.
So many in fact - I'm not going to List them

But let's take just One.

The Bombing of the Hebrew University Cafeteria (Many Bus, Restaurant, and Wedding Bombers, etc have killed Many More) .

5 Israelis Students and 4 Americans Students were killed by this intentional Bombing of Young Civilians. Not the Cruel or renegade act/abuse of one man- but the Well Planned act of a 'Government'/Group.


After which there were several Celebrations by the Palestinians for this "success" .. one of 10,000 People:


©2002 Reuters/Ahmed Jadallah
Palestinians wave Hamas flags and flash victory sign at Hamas rally in Gaza to Celebrate Attack on Hebrew University in Jerusalem (July 31)

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive...0cafeteria%20-


No, not only is there no "Mirror Image" of the acts themselves in intent.. but there's not even, sad and remarkable to say, a "mirror image" in the two peoples.

These Societal Blood-Lust Celebrations by the Palestinians for the death of innocents (such as after 9/11 as well) would be Inconceivable in Israel.
(That's what Gets ME Mad!)

No, No 'Trials' for these Murdering Palestinians.. they'll have streets named after them in Downtown Gaza and have martyr Posters all over. Children will trade their Martyr Cards like American Children trade Baseball Cards.


Yeah "Mirror Image".

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