I have recently entered into a written dialogue with Michael of Ramallah, who sympathizes with the plight of Palestinian living segragated from Israel. I thought we united over our vision for a one-state solution, but once he started justifiying terror that explicitly targets women and children, I realized just how different we are. Here is my response to “>my article about my day with the far-Left NGO. I'm not sure that we agree on MachsomWatch in the end. We agree the two-state “solution” is not a solution, and that Jews and Palestinians (aren't you happy I don't call them “Arabs'?) should live together under civil law, but you believe that checkpoints and the like are liable to create terror. I believe misguided values are liable to create terror, i.e. the wholesale massacre of innocencts. You and MachsomWatch's Daniela Gordon give moral justification to terror as a mainstream policy, at the very least sympathize with it.
Please don't presume what I know or think. I atually feel little connection to Jews expelled during the Roman/Bablylonean exile, and don't think any religious claim to the land is what justifies Jewish presence here. How's that for not following a narrative? I sympathize more with the Jews of Gush Katif for humanitarian reasons. Still, I don't think they should blow-up Israeli government officials or Arab children to claim the land they lost. Jews returned to Israel through rational means (purchase, diplomacy, and, yes, measures of force, largly in self-defense) to escape genocide and build a free country that today grants freedoms to its Arab minority. I also wouldn't liken savage Roman aggressors with Jewish refugees seeking to settle in the land of Israel to make a better life for themselves. (Aren't Arabs who came to Palestine from other Arab regions also invaders?) You can revise history all you want or, with a twisted bias, absolve all the Arab states of their war crimes because you don't have sympathy for Jewish self-defense. If you think Arab states fought a just war, well, then, accept defeat. Adults accept responsibility for their actions and bad choices.
You say “pacificism” is a “white luxury.” You're saying, then, that non-white people can be savages? Isn't that racist? Martin Luther King, Jr., as a black person, would disagree with you. He held all human beings to the same moral standards, and the first is: Thou shalt not murder. Because you don't consider Palestinians as “white” and “Western,” you allow them the privilege to murder. We can all understand motivations for murder. Doesn't make it right. Having moral absolutes isn't seeing through “rosy glasses.”
Even if there is a minority of public teachings that promote the hatred and wanton killing of Jews–that's bad! I wish orgs like Palestinian Media Watch and Memri didn't exist. The fact that PA teleivison aired “>Reuters was propoganda. Tell Reuters they made a mistake in Abbas' translation and that he didn't say that Jews wouldn't be allowed to live in “Palestine.” I'm surprised why you're keen on defending Abbas and Arafat, even though you told me the corruption of the PA sickens you.
Of course I am subjective because many Arabs out there want me killed or stripped of my rights simply for being racially Jewish. Do you not want me to protect my life? My family's life?
We agree the State of Israel needs an overhaul. Would you agree that Palestinian society needs an overhaul as well? Who should install the overhall? Would Palestinians accept the defeat of their corrupt leaders and an installation of a government system that protects indivdual rights and separates state and religion–their ultimate liberation? Yes, the Quran would support the two-state solution–as a means to end Israel. The model takes inspiration from Muhammad, who made a truce with Jewish tribes only to slaughter them when they were caught off guard and weakened. Muhammad states: Islam is deceit.
There is no moral equivalence between Christian evangelicals and jihadists. While both have their fair share of mysticism, Christians follow the first commandment: thou shalt not murder.
About trash sewage, I think it should be the province of private companies and not public companies. But still, you seem to blame every ill of Palestinian society on Israel. Israel actually offered to hook up many Arab villages to Israel's water and sewage system, but PA leaders refused because it would appear like a form of annexation.
I'm sorry that you don't have as much faith in the Palestinian people as I do to use their minds, spirits, and resourcefulness to better their lot. I'm sorry you allow them savagery, laziness, constant victimization.They lose any moral standing when they resort to murder to achieve rights. The ends don't justify the means, because the means are the ends. I refuse to believe they are below peaceful means. Then again, any leader who would publicly renounce terrorism or seek to learn from and work with Israel on how to build a free society would probably be publicly hanged.
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