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Dispatch from Jerusalem: Violence And The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict |
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 by Paul Widen, May 23, 2008 |
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When the Germans cast their votes on March 5, 1933, 43.9% voted for Adolf Hitler's
At the funeral NSDAP. This party, though clearly anti-Semitic, did not win this election, the last German election before World War II, based on promises to exterminate Jews. People voted for them because they were sick of their shattered economy, sick of the humiliation after a war that was lost, and sick of the failed leadership of the Weimar Republic. And well, sick of the Jews, too, but that goes without saying.
The civilized countries of the world tried to negotiate. They compromised, they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the outrageous steps that were being taken by the Nazis with increasing audacity, steps that an idiot could tell would lead Europe and the rest of the world straight to hell. It took almost nine years for the civilized countries of the world to unite and get their act together, but by then the Holocaust was consuming tens of thousands of Jews a day and most of Europe was occupied by a death cult. It took another three years before Germany and its allies were defeated. By then, 72 million people were dead. Read that again: 72 million.
The victory over the Nazi evil was accomplished by an unflinching determination,
In mourning which in practice meant a willingness to sacrifice massive numbers of soldiers. Just paving the way for D-Day killed 12 000 men, with another estimated 10 000 allied soldiers killed on that one day.
But more to the point, the victory was accomplished by holding the Germans and the Japanese responsible for their leaders. Women, children, and other non-combatants were seen as legitimate targets by the Allied forces. In order to break the morale of the German and Japanese soldiers, systematic bombing of civilian targets was adopted. Hundreds of thousands of German women and children were killed in the name of the civilized nations of the world. Two atomic bombs were dropped on civilian targets in Japan just to make a point. It sort of took the fun out of winning, but the objective was accomplished: Unconditional surrender.
Bekitzur, as they say here in Israel, in short: If you get into a conflict with an enemy that is hell-bent on your annihilation, you win only by repaying the courtesy. You kick their ass until they cry uncle. First of all, however, you need to believe in the fundamental righteousness of your cause. You have to not just think that you are right: You have to know that you are right.
In the renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, both sides, as well as
In anguish US-representatives, have repeatedly said that the conflict can't be solved through violence. This is nonsense, of course. The Arab/Muslim world doesn't have the means to solve it through violence, though they have tried (and failed) repeatedly for the past 60 years. Just a couple of weeks ago, PA President Mahmoud Abbas explained to the Jordanian daily Al-Dustur that he is opposed to ”resistance” (Palestinian code for terrorism), not because it's wrong, mind you, but because he doesn't think the Palestinians can succeed. He didn't, however, rule it out as a future option. Israel, on the other hand, doesn't have the will to solve the conflict through violence: The Jews can't stomach the utter carnage this would entail. Not even after the slaughter of eight Yeshiva students in the heart of Jerusalem on March 6, the subsequent celebrations in Gaza, and the official PA daily Al Hayat Al Jadida's extending honor to the perpetrator, does official Israel react with more than stern condemnations. Israel seems unable to tell friend from foe even when the friend is bleeding to death in a Synagogue and the foe openly celebrates this in the street. But let's not fool ourselves: This conflict can be solved through violence like any other conflict. It's usually how conflicts are solved.
So what is violence? How can we understand it? ”When a people uses violence, it is
In despair an instrument, a tool by which to try to pry loose resources unobtainable by other means,” Roger Friedland and Richard Hecht write in their book To Rule Jerusalem. ”But violence is also an expression of commitment, a demonstration of what one holds most dear. Violence leaves bloody traces: wounds and corpses. It marks a community's values on human bodies, through blood sacrifices that only make sense in terms of the purposes for which the were offered. Violence is a language; force simultaneously a physical and a moral phenomenon. Efforts to decompose it must inevitably crumble.”
When the Palestinian Arabs cast their votes on January 25, 2006, 44.45% voted for Hamas. This party, though clearly anti-Semitic, did not win this election, probably the last Palestinian Legislative election before World War III, based on promises to exterminate Jews. People voted for them because they were sick of their shattered economy, sick of the humiliation after several wars that were lost, and sick of the failed leadership of the Fatah party. And well, sick of the Jews, too, but that goes without saying.
(Above: Scenes from the funeral of the victims of the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva; Photography by Paul Widen.)
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jewlicious
Swedish?
Are you sure? Man, you must be the life of the party at the bar of the American Colony Hotel.
---------------------------------
I blog at Jewlicious.com
Penny Sue
Violence Justified, violence as a means to an end
This is a well written, extensively thought out piece. Yet if sufficient violence is the answer to the evils of this world, has there not been enough to have resolved it? Earth is saturated with blood of every race and creed. What happens to our hearts when we become as violent as those we consider evil? Where is the righteousness in being what we claim to loathe?
Cori C
Penny...
You'll have to be more specific. So far, I see no comparison.
Cori C
http://cori-c.blogspot.com
coriac@gmail.com
Anonymous
Violence is not the answer
Resistance can be, and often is, non-violent. Resistance is not a cover for terrorism, and you are incorrect for promoting that idea. Right now Palestinian casualties are four times higher than Israelis since 2000. But if you condone attacks on civilian populations, which I personally do not, how can you call the Palestinians terrorists? If Israel did the same, it wouldn't be terrorism? What's with the double standard?
AQ Khan
Support my networq
Some Western military and intelligence were shocked to learn that Iran had the blueprints for making a nuclear warhead that could fit onto its Shehab-3 missiles. The discovery was released by the former UN weapons inspector, David Albright, Sunday, June 16, ahead of the report on his investigation of the nuclear smuggling ring run by the father of the Pakistan nuclear bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan. He alleged that the nuclear blueprints passed to Libya, Iran and North Korea included “previously undisclosed designs for a compact warhead that could fit on Iran’s medium-range ballistic missiles.”
On May 22, Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, disclosed that, last December, the destruction had been ordered of a batch of 30,000 documents detailing construction plans for nuclear weapons, gas ultra-centrifuges to enrich weapons-grade uranium and guided missile delivery systems , evidence in a criminal case of a Swiss family of three engineers involved in the Khan ring.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive sources disclosed on May 30 that these nuclear blueprints were sold in underhand deals to those countries - and possibly also to al Qaeda - in the second half of the 1990s. Tehran has therefore had those designs for between 10 and 13 years.
This discovery makes nonsense of the supposedly definitive judgment in Western and Israel intelligence that Iran lacks the technology for building a nuclear missile delivery system. Because of these estimates, Western governments have been able to keep their sanctions-cum-diplomatic track with Iran rolling as though tomorrow would never come.
It is now evident that not only North Korea and Iran have known for some time how to build and deliver a nuclear warhead, but unknown recipients of A.Q. Khan’s merchandise, including terrorist organizations, may also command hazardous nuclear knowledge.
The three Swiss engineers, members of the Tinner family, are the father, Friedrich, whose ties with Khan went back decades, and his sons, Urs and Marco.
The Khan ring set up marketing headquarters in Dubai and Malaysia. The brothers have awaited trial for four years in a Swiss jail. Their father is out on bail and confined to Switzerland. The evidence against Urs Tinner, the hard disk he stole containing the incriminating nuclear documents, has now been destroyed by the Swiss authorities under the supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military experts reported on May 30: If Urs Tinner, a small cog in the Khan network, was able to steal a hard drive containing a mass of the network’s nuclear secrets, three conclusions are inescapable:
1. That Khan did not retain an efficient security system for the data he was selling. Therefore, his system was full of holes and his confederates and agents, whether employed on the technical or marketing side of the business, were able to help themselves to documents, diagrams and other illicit nuclear materials that were put on sale and, perhaps, go into business on their own.
2. It is an open secret among the American and Western intelligence services involved in uncovering the Khan ring that large sections are still going strong out in Pakistan, the Far East and the Middle East through channels still unexposed. They are bound to assume that the documents destroyed by the Swiss government may exist in copies still in circulation.
3. Some of their holders may have hung onto them for the last four or five years and then destroyed them when the Khan ring was exposed, for fear of being linked to the trafficker. On the other hand, it is possible that some of A. Q. Khan’s agents and accomplices sold his nuclear plans and secrets to terrorists linked to al Qaeda
Ghaniel Khoophler
Actually, Hamas and Iran
Actually, Hamas and Iran have no comparison to the Nazis. The Nazis killed and vaporized Jews thru the use of crematoria, whihc would not be permitted today because of emissions and global warming, while Hamas and Iran only want to kill Jews. When Ahmadinejad dsays Marg bar Yahudi, he doesnt mention anywhere their desire to incinerate Jews, just kill them. Incinerating Jews would increase their carbon footprint and thus endanger the the polar icecaps and threaten the polar bear. The world wouldnt stand for this. Thus Jewry and Israel need not worry about Iran and Hamas, and instead should coordinate plans with them so that Jews can be disposed of in an environmentally sound manner. I am a Kleenex Scholar at Ochsford
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