Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Intifada in its death throes?

The Jerusalem Post has published a very interesting interview with Zakaria Zubeidi, the leader of Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin. He says that the intifada is in its "death throes". Here is the last paragraph:

"It is a double-edged dagger," said Zubeidi contemplatively. "If we give up, then we live a life of humiliation. But to keep fighting – it only brings destruction."

Discussions - 16 Comments

52% of palestinians live below the poverity level, why do you think they are rising up??
why can’t America help them like it helps Israel???
America is so near-sited.
Jobs = Peace

I’ll be happy to answer your questions, "New Thinking":

1. They’re rising up because their leaders tell them that Israel is the source of all that is wrong with their world. That is a lie - and their poverty level is a reflection of the so-called leadership they receive from Arafat, et al., not the Israelis.

2. America won’t help them because they won’t accept Israel’s right to exist. America has no right to be kind to the party which is at fault for the lack of peace.

As a final comment - you’ve got it backwards. The creation of jobs will not bring peace.

But for the need to mobilize to raise & equip a military which could win a World War, the United States economy during WW II would have completely tanked - war is not good for the "non-mobilization" economy of any country.

The Palestinians have no war industry (other than finding young men & women willing to blow themselve up, that is), so their being in a state of war only brings uncertainty & instability - hardly the conditions required to develop the businesses, etc. which expand employment.

Before the Palestinians will see jobs, they have to create the environment in which those jobs are not at constant risk. In short, they have to accept peace.

Thus far, they refuse.

A response like BradDad’s is what you can expect from a site like this.
It’s easy to say its there own fault and as such they have to suffer till they conform.
So if I understand BradDads argument, 1. There leaders are lying to them, 2. There poverty is caused by there own leaders, 3. They wont accept peace and as such we have no oblagation to them, and 4. If we let them have jobs they will build there own army and win a world war??
If you think like that its easy to dismiss there sufforing.
After all, its there own fault for not doing as there told.
Yes Yes, Peace is on the way........

And a response like yours is so easy to predict, New.

You exempt the Palestinians from having any responsibility whatsoever for their own actions ... everything is always someone else’s fault.

Sorry - no sale. Their leadership prefers war to peace; their leadership prefers using Israel as a scapegoat to solving the problems of their own society.

The Palestinians suffering will begin to end when they accept Israel’s right to exist & end their war against her.

They’ll get there one of two ways -

* Faced with a choice between surrender or complete, utter & devestating defeat, they surrender; or

* Palestinian leaders arise who change the way the Palestinian people think about Israel & their own place in the world - in short, they decide they should work & play well with others.

If the Palestinians won’t elect the latter, they will eventually get the former.

New,

You are trying to establish a causal relationship between poverty and "rising up," but it has already been pointed out a thousand times that there are far poorer people in the world who don’t engage in terrorism. Clearly there are other factors involved. You also ignore the fact that the Arabs attacked Israel three times while the West Bank was in Arab hands. The "occupation" is not the reason for the attacks, because the attacks preceded the occupation. Instead, the driving force is Israel’s existence, as noted by B’s Dad.

Indeed, the Palestine Liberation Organization was formed in 1964, three years before the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. What the PLO seeks to "liberate" is all of Palestine--in other words, they seek nothing less than the destruction of Israel.

I’d like to pose a question.

What if the UN, based on verifiable claims to occupation during an earlier time, granted the Hudson River Iroquis tribes the right to reoccupy upstate NY?

What would New Yorkers do? What action would people of the world sanction for them to re-take control of their territory (I will FULLY grant suicide bombing is out).

I visit this blog often (my evangelical father recommended it) and I am curious to know what regular readers/contributors think about this idea.

Yes the Arabs hold alot of the blame, Yes the PLO wants Isreal to vanish and good point Sterling. I think both sides would try to use that argument in there favor.
BradDad I am not exempting Palestinians from responsibility and Mr. Fly you cannot argue that just because the poor do not rise up all the time that the Palestinians are wrong to do it now.
If you have food to feed your family, If you have health care for your kids, If you feel like you are not being oppressed you are much less likely to rise.
The PLO feeds on the disenfranchised.

New,

Stay on topic. I disputed the claim that poverty "causes" terrorism.

Sterling,

NYers would do nothing. Because the Iroquois are not going to try to replace the highly developed State of New York with League of the Iroquois 2.0.

If there had been anything remotely resembling a ’NY of Mandated Palestine’ in terms of infrastructure, government services, security of property and enforcement of contracts in the 1940s, the soient-Israelis would have simply bought houses there and sought naturalization.

This would have required a different national character than the Palestinians had then. Or have now.

Sterling: If Hudson River Iroquis tribes had already started the process of reinhabiting this region, and if the current ruling (foriegn?) administartion was dissolving, then the Northern New Yorkers should work for change from within their new government, and the Sourthern New Yorkers should go about their own lives, and not try to reconquer lost land and exterminate its inhabitants.

If my first two provisos are not met, then your analogy does not apply to understanding this situation. The question may still be useful, however, for other situations (French control of the Rhineland?).

Sterling,

Setting aside the fact that your hypothetical isn’t really parallel to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, I can say that I’m certain that upstate New Yorkers wouldn’t be strapping explosives to their children to kill Iriqios civilians, nor would they be living in squalor in New York as refugees rather than simply moving somewhere else and getting on with their lives.

If you kill there children, destroy there homes, leave them without the meens to provide and take there freedom do you really think upstate New Yorkers would simply move somewhere else and get on with their lives Dominick Roark?

How are their means of support being taken away? Thousands of Palestinians work in Israel. Thousands more are citizens of Israel. How many Jews are allowed to work in Palestine? How many Jews would be allowed to become a citizen of a Palestinian state? The fact is that the PLO and other terrorist groups want to destroy Israel and all the Jews in it. They want to commit genocide, in other words, and are only prevented from doing so by there own weakness and Israel’s strength and resolve. Israel is certainly n ot blameless for the situation, but the weight of the responsibility for any continued killings lies with the Palestinians.

You will never be able to solve this problem until you stop thinking like Rob. Thousands of Palestinians work in Israel so rob thinks they should be happy. (My job sure doesn’t make me happy!) and what about the 52% who are jobless? Thousands more are citizens of Israel (the fact is Israel offered citizenship to many Arabs in the region as policy many years ago). Rob also thinks that the Palestinians should not have a right to control there own immigration.
Sure the PLO wants to destroy Israel, so tell them to get in line! Who in that area wants anything but that?? Again I say: The PLO feeds on the disenfranchised, the more mistakes we make, the more you turn a blind eye to there plight, the easier you make it for the PLO recruiters.

Sterling,

Your hypothetical is invalid on its face. The UN has no soveriegnty over the US, thus the premise is entirely false.

End of discussion.

Leave a Comment

* denotes a required field
 

No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: https://nlt.ashbrook.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/4732


Warning: include(/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2004/08/intifada-in-its-death-throes.php on line 862

Warning: include(): Failed opening '/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/opt/sp/php7.2/lib/php') in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2004/08/intifada-in-its-death-throes.php on line 862