dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (09/19/83)
Replies to: jobe@ssc-vax.UUCP (John W Jobe) pollack@uicsl.UUCP velu@umcp-cs.UUCP (Velu Sinha) ============================================================================= >>>From: jobe@ssc-vax.UUCP (John W Jobe) >>>Because, my friend, the Israelis have shown an incredible tendency to annex >>>everything they get their hands on, they moved into Lebanon one hell of a lot >>>further than the 25km they said they were going to, and they've already >>>de facto annexed the West Bank. The Israelis are invaders in Lebanon, as much >>>as the Syrians (if not more!). The U.S. Marines are there to try to help >>>Lebanon become the nation that it once was before the PLO, the Syrians, the >>>Civil War and all its assorted religious militias, *AND THE ISRAELIS*!! >>>The marines aren't there to expand their borders, we know that for sure. >>>But we sure as hell don't know that 'bout Israel. Come off it. Israel has no intention of "expanding borders" into Lebanon. Israeli towns were being shelled on a regular basis by PLO artillery from Lebanon. The Lebanese government wasn't able to do anything, so Israel moved in. If Cuba were shelling Florida, what would the U.S. do? Israel moved beyond the 25km in an effort to wipe out the PLO militarily. There wouldn't be much point simply pushing them back a few km, moving out and letting them come back in. The PLO had totally taken over southern Lebanon, turning it into a virtual PLO state and generally terrorizing the inhabitants: Lawyer M.A. Jaouhazi, 41, is a member of a well known law firm in Sidon and describes Lebanon under the PLO as a country with "No judge and no judgment". "The authority of the state was declining day by day and the legal system became disrupted, and then the PLO took over. The result was a gradual paralyzation of our courts. When a legal dispute between a Lebanese and a Palestinian was brought before the court and the latter was found guilty, the verdict could not be executed for fear of the PLO." Nabatiye regional governor Adnan Ibrahim directs the municipal services in the towns and villages of the region. In an interview with New York Times correspondent David Shipler appearing on July 25, 1982, Ibrahim explained about PLO rule: "I worked without having power - they did not want the police here. We were never free to say what we thought... They [the PLO] drink the water, they light the building, they use the roads - without paying a piastre. I am working in a mine field. A Palestinian officer comes here to my office, I salute him. It is a necessity." Tyre Police Inspector Saad Allah, 29: "Since the PLO took the law ito its hands, our detention cells were barren and out police force immobilized. True, we received our monthly pay, but we did nothing. We were prevented from performing even our elementary duties." Dr. Ghassen Hamoud, the owner-director of the largest and best-equipped of Sidon's 11 hospitals: "The PLO made me hate them, not because they demanded their wounded be treated free of charge, nor behaved as if my hospital belonged to them. It was when they broke into the operating theatre and forced us to stop surgery and treat their wounded instead - and badly beat one of our doctors who refused to obey them - that I realized they were beasts from the jungle." Hamoud, who earned his medical degree from the University of Bonn, West Germany, is a Sunni Moslem who shares the resentment of Lebanon's Christians of the PLO. "They posed as national heroes fighting the Zionist enemy. In fact, over 90 percent of the PLO patients treated by us were wounded in clashes and quarrels among themselves. Are these freedom fighters, or just hooligans and criminals? ... They call it a revolution. If so, it is the dirtiest and most wicked, the richest and most brutal one in history. Every junior PLO officer used to race through our streets in a brand new Mercedes with machine guns sticking out. "Their conduct inside the hospital was equally intolerable. Every time a PLO patient needed a nurse, he would simply fire his pistol at the ceiling." [all quotes from "PLO: Now the story can be told", Department of Information, WZO, P.O.Box 92, Jerusalem, copyright 1982] The PLO was running southern Lebanon, and attacking Israel from it. Since the Lebanese government was powerless, Israel was fully justified in moving in. ============================================================================== >>>(ssc-vax!jobe) >>>Because, my friend, the Israelis have shown an incredible tendency to annex >>>everything they get their hands on WHAT??????????????????? I seem to recall Israel giving up a land mass about TWICE the size of Israel itself, complete with valuable oil fields, air bases and training areas, in exchange for a piece of paper and the hope of peace. I hardly call this "annexing everything they can get their hands on". ============================================================================== >>>From: pollack@uicsl.UUCP >>>Israel came "under such international pressure and bad press" because >>>Israel "defended" its northern border with Lebanon in the same fashion that >>>Russia "defended" its southern border with Afganistan. Oh, really? The Afghans were shelling the Soviet Union? Afghanistan was being run by a group which was actively working on ways to destroy the USSR and expel all of its inhabitants? ============================================================================== >>>From: velu@umcp-cs.UUCP >>>Israel has every right to defend itself, and its people. There >>>is no denying that. But - Israel itself is setting double standards. >>>When a country is formed out of land on which someone else was living >>>(I think they are called 'squatters laws' in many coutries) the other >>>people have to be compensated for. They cannot be treated as the Palestinians >>>have been in Israel - and the entire region. All the Palestinians >>>really want is a place to call home - just as the Jew's wished in the >>>mid 40's. The Jews got Israel - but the Palestinians never got an atonomous >>>Palestine. (they never got ANY Palastine!) OK, let's get some facts straight. In 1947, the plan was for TWO states, one Jewish, one Arab, side by side. The Arabs rejected this and attacked Israel. After 1948, Jordan moved in and took control of the West Bank. **** WHERE WERE THE CRIES FOR A PALESTINIAN STATE THEN??? **** All of a sudden, after Israel gained control of the West Bank, we hear about setting up a Palestinian state on it. The Arabs had 19 years to do it in. The PLO covenant (Articles 9 and 10) clearly calls for the destruction of Israel. Any attempt to set up a PLO state on the West Bank is a prelude to taking over all of "Palestine". Yes, I agree the Palestinians should have a home. It is called Jordan. Individual Palestinian Arabs who stayed in Israel have become Israeli citizens. After 1948, Israel took in and resettled HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Jews from Arab lands. The Arab countries (of which there are over 20) refused to do anything to resettle the Palestinian refugees, preferring to keep them as political pawns instead of being concerned about the human suffering. The land which the Jews occupied before 1948 was not "squatted" but purchased. The Arabs were not independent before. The land was under Turkish, then British, control. Britain handed over the decision about its colony to the U.N., which agreed to the setting up of two states. Much of the land was completely barren before it was settled by the Jews. To come TODAY and talk about two states is too late. It's applying yesterday's solution to today's problem. Where else in history does the loser in a war which it started come back and say "Oh well, we lost. But let's go back to square one. Give us our land back." Sorry. Israel has sacrificed too much for that. The Palestinians do have a country where they are in the majority, where they are given automatic citizenship, and where they exercise a large amount of political and economic influence. It is Jordan, and it takes up about 77% of the British colony of "Palestine" before 1922. 77% for the Arabs and 23% for the Jews sounds fine to me. ============================================================================== >>>From: velu@umcp-cs.UUCP >>> The tactics which the Palestinans >>>are using ARE terrorist tactics - and the should be condemned. BUT - the >>>same tactics which the Palastinians are using now were used by Begin and >>>his group to insure a free Israel. (Who blew up the King David Hotel? ... >>>etc. etc. etc...) The King David Hotel was the headquarters of the British administration in Palestine. Before the bomb went off, the British were informed so that the building could be cleared. They chose to ignore the warning. Jewish "terrorist" activities were almost exclusively aimed at military targets (with the exception of Deir Yassin, which I agree was inexcusable). There have been many many Palestinian terrorist actions PRIMARILY directed at innocent civilians. Taking over children's schools, hijacking school buses, the Munich Olympics, the Lod airport massacre, bombings and machine-gun attacks on European synagogues - these have absolutely no justification and no relation to the struggle. ============================================================================== >>>From: velu@umcp-cs.UUCP >>>Basically - what I am tring to say is that if Israel should continue to >>>exist then Palastine should surely be allowed to exist also. The >>>Israeli are no better than the Palastine - and vice versa - the jew and the >>>palastine were even brothers in blood at one point long ago - the Egyptians >>>and the Romans succeeded in splitting the group and starting rivalries >>>which continue till this day. I think that it is time that both groups >>>reasses the situation and realize that this conflict which has been running >>>now for > 2000 years has no place in OUR society. I'm not sure what you mean about "the Egyptians and the Romans splitting the group and starting rivalries". Israel has been seeking a genuine peace since before the country was independent. The Arab countries could not swallow their pride and put up with an independent Jewish state in their midst - even on a tiny sliver of land. The Camp David agreements call for Palestinian autonomy within the West Bank, but no military role and no independent state. Surely Israel is entitled to such limitations. Look at the restrictions which were imposed on Germany and Japan after WWII. Given the history of the region, the Arabs have absolutely no right to demand a Palestinian state on the West Bank. Let them stay on the East Bank. ============================================================================== >>>From: velu@umcp-cs.UUCP >>>And yes, I am almost done, Israel is not the regualtor >>>of who does what ANYWHERE - much less the middle east. >>>Israel- who will not let its on reactors be inspected by the >>>International commisions has no right to blow up an Iraqui (sp?) >>>reactor which has been duly inspected. Tell me, did Israel put the resources and effort into, and take the risk of sending planes thousands of miles across hostile territory to execute a pinpoint mission, because they had nothing better to do? When such matters as Iraq's building an atomic bomb are at issue, the conventional wisdom doesn't work. Israel would not have done what they did unless there was a very real danger. Something we learned out of the Holocaust is not to wait for other people to come and save us. I would rather there be a breach of interational law and a bombed reactor than have even a small chance of another four million dead Jews (for which we would again get the world's sympathy, of course). ============================================================================== Sorry if this has been rather long, but I did want to address all of the points at once. Dave Sherman A proud Jew and a proud Zionist Toronto -- {cornell,decvax,floyd,ihnp4,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver,watmath}!utcsrgv!lsuc!dave