response 475 of 604:

May 29 00:48 UTC 2002

Guffaw.  (snort).  Um...(sicker)...what a way to (churtle)... sorry.

If the foundation of facts you start with is unsound, then the arguments
you base upon those facts, no matter how logical, stands a strong chance
of being flawed.  Only in mathematics is it possible to construct a
perfect argument.  Some fields of science approach mathematics in
perfection.  Other fields are, for various reasons having to do with
scaling & ethics, are not so easily perfected.  By the time you get to
history, sociology, psychology, ethics, and religion, perfection is a
distant and unobtainable ideal.  Terms such as "political science" are
almost inherently a contradiction, especially in the US where it's
almost expected that politicians will cheat & steal.  If an argument in
mathematics is a light saber duel, and a scientific discussion is a
battle of steel rapiers, then a conversation of modern politics and
ancient history is like battling with nerf bats while dancing on rubber
rafts afloat in a pool.

It is said that "history is written by the victor".  All history is
biased, and since much of it is written by the successors to people who
won, it's amazing how much of history consists of the bad guys being
defeated by the good guys.  There is no sharp dividing line between
history and propaganda.  The two form a broad continuum, with "perfect"
history representing an unobtainable ideal pole or horizon, not
reachable in practice.  News is a flavor of history/propaganda noted
mainly for concerning itself mainly with the recent past; the main
difference being that it's not possible to use historical hindsight,
because those events are still in the future.  There's another branch of
all this, prophesy, which is out of fashion just at present.

So just how does one go about battling, rubber on water, limp sticks
ablazing? Asking everyone to pretend your rubber stick is a steel rapier
is not it.  Pushing everyone else into the water isn't necessarily a
better strategy.  I presume the "goal" is to meld everyone into one big
nerf army; that which divides does not help.

One of the things I think is "self-evident" is that many of us are made
"differently".  That is, there are core beliefs we each of us hold, that
is complete and utter rubbish to some of the rest of us.  To take what I
hope is a harmless example: Jep here has made life choices that are
certainly radically at odds with mine, such as getting married and
reproducing.  He has principles underlying those choices, that are
certainly also different than mine; I think he regards the institution
of marriage itself to be more sacred than the transient wishes of its
participants, and the result to be worth any momentary discomfort,
whereas I think that would be a hellish trip to lay on anyone, and the
real goal is to find someone you love and respect enough to take the
gamble that the two of you will be happy together "happily ever after".
(I hope I haven't mis-represented John too much).  Even though I don't
agree with John's reasoning here, I don't respect him any the less, and
I can see both advantages and disadvantages to his way of thinking.
What he believes is not better or worse than what I believe; it's merely
"different".  The underlying core beliefs are not something we can
choose rationally.  Even though John is a different person, we still
have enough commonality that it's possible to have a discussion and to
identify those points where "we agree to disagree", and each come away
knowing something more of what the other person thinks and why they
think that.  I think part of what makes that possible is that John and I
have somehow, implicitly, agreed that it's ok if "we agree to disagree".

response 477 of 604:

May 29 22:46 UTC 2002

You don't get it.  In this battle, nerf bats is all you get.
Insisting that your nerf bat is a steel rapier is only going to
make you the laughing stock of the pool.

History and politics.  Well, most of us know about modern politicians
and the truth.  The truth there is certainly at least somewhat
elastic, although opinions on which politician is full of the most
latex seems to bounce quite wildly from subject to subject.  History
is, well, written by people on balloons, which are then launched
into the air.  99% of them burst and are lost forever, and only
the strongest survive where they are collected by chinese monks,
who select only those with the right I-ching value, and record them
onto sheets of neoprene, which is then stretched over pavement and
driven on by numerous unemployed mothers as part of a public relief
program.  The pavement in the corners is then collected, transcribed
again by rich irish leprechauns, and used to clean old cars.
Eventually, some starving grad student visits the junk yard and
collects a definitive version.  If he doesn't starve to death first,
it becomes history.  The accuracy, needless to say, depends on the
length of bungee cord that's needed to stretch between the current
copy, and the original balloon.

In the field of physics, models often do a good job of describing
reality (within a circumscribed limit of conditions, to a given
degree of accuracy.)  Interesting failures in weather forecasting
computer models have lead to the discovery that even in a "perfect"
model, small differences in initial conditions soon lead to large
differences in output, giving rise to the new mathematical field
of study, "Chaos Theory".  Physics tells us it's impossible to
eliminate those small initial differences.  Science cannot even
guarantee us that the solar system is stable; that there is not
some future confluence of orbits that will result in planets
colliding (the restricted mathematical newtonian model of this is
the "4 body problem".)

There are some fields of endeavor where people are perfectly
satisfied with a descriptive model that covers past behavior; never
mind the future.  History is certainly one of them; another is the
stock market, where if there are economists who can successfully
predict the future ahead of the rest, they are all happily retired
in Cuba and not writing any tales.

Your confusion above regarding what I said about the statute of
limitations, and your insistance here that you hold a steel rapier,
are I think both clues to something vitally different about your
set of core beliefs.  I'm not sure that I am really at all close   
to verbalizing them in words that you would agree describe your
beliefs.  Perhaps such verbalization is impossible, the commonality
may be lacking.  For instance, to me, it kinda looks like you have
core beliefs that there is an absolute truth, that it exists in
history, and that this truth can always be recovered to any necessary
degree of accuracy at any point in the future.  I rather expect
those are not the words you would use, and you'll likely disagree
with at least one of these clauses.  I suppose that what I am saying
is that this is all starting to boil down to what looks like a
Godel, Escher, Bach sort of problem, and it's one rooted right in
the definitions of the words themselves.

Actually, I think you approached that, when you said:
...
> You seem to say that I can't really know what I'm saying, but that
> somehow you know it not to be true.  Because it might not be true.
> It's an attack not just on epistemology but on knowledge itself.
...(and later)...
> Don't ask me to respect the premise that we know nothing and that
> thus all presumptions and opinions are equally valid or flawed.

Neither of these is really what I'm saying, but perhaps they're
the best I can hope for.  While I'm not at all sure that what you
said totally makes sense to me, it certainly dances around the
kernel of what I was trying to communicate.  What I'm saying is
not an "attack" on epistemology, but it's certainly based on
epistemology.  In a trivial sense, what you said is actually sort
of a model for communications, in which the I has some "truth" to
pass to "you", who might not be willing to accept it on face value.
You have 2 I's lined up in the 1st sentence, "I know what I'm
saying".  What's missing here is "we".  If "we" can't agree that
parallel lines never meet, then one of us is talking non-euclidean
geometry, and no amount of logic is ever going to get us past that
hurdle.  Let me try to phrase something slightly different: "What
I believe I know has nothing to do with my ability to communicate;
what I believe the other person knows, and how well I tie that to
what I choose to try to communicate, has everything to do with my
ability to communicate".  In technical writing, this is called
"know your audience".  Perhaps you are worried that this is too closely
related to the similar logic in marketing, "you can sell anything if you
can only make him want it badly enough." There's a difference there
which I guess relates to how well you respect the other person's
thinking, but not everyone gets that.

response 479 of 604:

May 30 05:25 UTC 2002

Marcus, I'm afraid you missed my point. It wasn't that I believe there
is an absolute truth to which I alone am privy. It's that there are
historical documents and sources available and that we can try to piece
them together to form a representation of what is likely true.

I'll tell you what I find akin to a belief that parallel lines intersect:
it's your assertion that lack of evidence fails to clear Israel of guilt.
Do you often abandon western norms of presuming innocence -- or only with
respect to Israel?  You might even be right that we will never know all
the details, the absolute truth, but does this mean we should accept as
valid the claims of alleged eyewitnesses that 500-3000 civilians were
massacred when the total number of dead and missing is about 50 (most of
them combatants)?

My problem isn't one of communication, it's your premise that because
we don't have access to the absolute truth, all theories are just as
[in-] valid. That's only true if you choose to stick your head in the sand.

Thus I might bring to the table an 1849 map. Sure, it may have some
topographical or geographical flaws that in today's technological world
would be obvious, but that doesn't mean we can't learn anything from it,
especially regarding geo-political boundaries.

Similarly we can look at the writings of various travelers and their
descriptions of the region 100, 250 and 500 years ago. Sure, some of
them may have exaggerated or had some bias or another. Others (like
Twain's "realism") may be held in high regard by historians -- who
of course may also have a chip on their shoulder.

So should we look for a common denominator in those writings? Should we
take note that many of these people, presumably with many different
perspectives and biases, record similar impressions? Or should we ignore
them entirely and just believe whatever suits our fancies?

If your argument is that we can't learn the "absolute truth", you might
be right. But so what? Shouldn't we try to get as close as we can? Might
there not be an educated and reasonable approximation of that truth?

response 481 of 604:

May 30 06:51 UTC 2002

Hogwash. A fact you omit is that Jews lived in Judea and Samaria before
it was termed as Transjordan's "West Bank" in 1948 -- just 54 years ago.
(They had been living there since "a long time ago.")

A question you omit is why Jews living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are
a "problem". If there really were peace, they could safely continue to
live there as citizens of a nascent Palestinian Arab state. The problem
is that even Israel's Arab citizens fear living in such a state and thus
oppose land transfers that would put those Jews in Israel and those Arabs
in "Palestine". So the 3rd solution, worked out by the Clinton team, was
for Israel to retain a net 3% of the disputed territories, an area in
which the majority of the Jews reside, leaving 100% of Gaza and a
contiguous 97% of the WB for an independent Arab state.

response 483 of 604:

May 31 14:39 UTC 2002

Marcus, thanks for continuing the flow of myths:

> the same 19th century colonial model that
> the English used to found Israel in the 1st place

Except that the English didn't found Israel. Nor were the Jews more "colonial"
than the Spaniards when they managed to free Spain from the Moors (after 7
centuries, whereas "Palestine" was a  desolate and nearly abandoned region
until the start of Jewish development). The restoration of the Jewish homeland
was in the works prior to WW I, only after which the English gained control
of the region.

>  Israel is clearly not interested in assimilation, so they've
> moved onto "terror", only in a "civilized" way, using lawyers,
> courts, settlers, and legalized discrimination of various forms.

See, it's statements such as "they've moved into 'terror'..." that display
your bias. I don't know why, but evidently you want to believe and ride
this faulty premise (which you repeatedly fail to demonstrate or support).

To the contrary, as Aaron was quick to point out, Israel's independent
judiciary has ruled against both the Israeli government and Jews -- yet you
would have us believe that the Jews are terrorists in law suits and robes.
Can you even cite any examples of "legalized discrimination of various forms"?

Or, as in Jenin, does the lack of any evidence only fail to clear Israel
of guilt?

response 485 of 604:

Jun 1 03:47 UTC 2002

Is that why you keep repeating your premises but fail to support or
defend them?

response 487 of 604:

Jun 1 05:38 UTC 2002

Are you sure you know what a premise is?  In mathematics, a premise
often cannot be defended using logic; it is that from which logic
starts.  Perhaps you have a different understanding of the word
"premise"?

response 489 of 604:

Jun 1 15:23 UTC 2002

Marcus, look up "begging the question". The problem is that your premises
and your conclusions are one and the same. There is no logic involved there.

Brian, in almost every "mideast" item you keep bringing up "settlments" and
then saying they are irrelevant. So I'm not sure if this is important or
not. Tell you what, why don't you start a new item to specificlaly discuss
this topic?

As for populations, how many people does it take to hold a homeland?
When did the Holy Land, in toto, become "Arab land"? When the number of
Arabs (backed by military empires) outnumbered the Jews who were there?
If so, then it became Jewish land when that was reversed. 

You also keep referring to the 1948 borders -- do you mean the proposed
borders in 1947 that were rejected by the Arabs or the 1949 Armistice
line?  Here's an interesting excerpt from the NY Post (2 Jan 1947):

        You cannot wage a war with an insurance policy in your pocket. You
        cannot invade a country and shell its cities, and then, when you are
        thrown back and beaten, declare that the war was a trial on your part
        and now you would like to have all the advantages of a compromise
        that you rejected and violated by arms.

        By rejecting the partition resolution of Nov. 29, 1947, the General
        Assembly of the United Nations at Paris destroyed the document that
        served as an insurance policy for the Arabs when they declared war
        on Israel.

This scenario was repeated in 1967 and 1973, after which (respectively)
UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 were passed. 338 isn't often
discussed since it simply reconfirms 242, which established what is known as
the "land for peace" formula: an unspecified Israeli withdrawal upon the
conclusion of a negotiated settlement. UNSCR 242 serves as the basis of
the Oslo Agreement (signed by Arafat).

response 491 of 604:

Jun 2 04:49 UTC 2002

Ah.  Today, Leeron insults me by claiming my responses have no logic to
them.  Apparently, it is illogical to point out that a premise does not
necessarily need any logical support.  Interesting.

Klg's colonial definition seems quite consistent with what's happening
in the west bank.  It's a "new" territory (even Leeron admits it was
"barren desert" before (and who cares what the palestinians think, eh?)
-- and they clearly retain plenty of ties with the parent state.
Regardless, if klg feels uncomfortable about the term "colony", it would
be fascinating to know what term klg would prefer to decribe what is
happening with the settlements.  "Border adjustment"? "Land
reclaimation"?  "Native population attitude correction"? "Aggressive
territory expansionism"? "Peaceful bridge building with the indigenous
population"?

response 493 of 604:

Jun 2 16:05 UTC 2002

"new" territory???  I suppose that when mdw goes away on vacation for a
week, he thinks he has to re-register to vote when he gets back home!
The Jews were returning to an area from which they had been evicted less
than 20 years earlier.  "New"?, my foot!

response 495 of 604:

Jun 3 00:31 UTC 2002

I think klg & lk are myth making again.

http://www.cactus48.com/truth.html

response 497 of 604:

Jun 3 08:53 UTC 2002

I don't know why you are impressed with this site (perhaps because it is
allegedly run by Jews?). It fails to quote any primary sources, instead
quoting the likes of Edward Said (who may be a great man in his field, but
his lies about his personal life -- drawing himself as the prototypical
"refugee" when in fact he grew up in Egypt and was not a refugee -- hardly
make him a qualified source. Do you also believe him when he claims that
Iraq didn't gas the Kurds?).

Consider this example -- from an Arab source:

        "[During the Middle Ages,] North Africa and the Arab Middle East
        became places of refuge and a haven for the persecuted Jews of
        Spain and elsewhere... In the Holy Land... they lived together in
        [relative] harmony, a harmony only disrupted when the Zionists
        began to claim that Palestine was the 'rightful' possession of the
        'Jewish people' to the exclusion of its Moslem and Christian
        inhabitants." Sami Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."

Realizing the extremity of this claim, evidently someone attempted to soften
it by inserting that the harmony was only "relative". But it was rarely
harmonious at all.  Consider these facts:

1. Jews were *always* "dhimmi" (second class citizens, at best) in Muslim/Arab
countries and the times of "harmony" were short and well defined, e.g. the
Andalusian period, which ended with the massacre of 5000 Jews in Grenada in
1066, long before the Spaniards retook it in 1492 and began the Christian
Inquisition.

2.  Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted in Egypt
and Syria (1014, 1293, 1301), Iraq (854, 1344) and Yemen (1676). Forced
conversions (or death) in Morocco (1275, 1465, 1790) and Baghdad (1333, 1344).

3. What "harmony" was it that forced Jews to, for the first time, wear
a yellow star as a "badge of shame" in Iraq in the 9th century? Was it
anti-Zionism which caused the murder of 6,000 Jews in Fez in 1033?  For
what reason were all but 11 Jews in Fez murdered in 1465? Why were hundreds
of Jews murdered in Libya in 1785? In Algiers in 1805, 1815 and 1830? In
Damascus in 1840? In Morroco in 1864 and 1880? Were these pogroms different
from the allegedly "anti-Zionist" backlash against Jews in Arab countries
in the first half of the 20th century?

4. What of the Jews of Ottoman "Palestine"? In 1660, Jerusalem's Jewish
population was massacred (there was 1 survivor) and again in 1834.
Travelers didn't quite see the harmony here, either. In 1674, Father
Michael Naud wrote that Jews were "paying heavily to the Turk for their
right to stay here. -- They prefer being prisoners in Jerusalem to enjoying
the freedom they could acquire elsewhere... The love of the Jews for the
Holy Land... is unbelievable." [R. P. Michael Naud, Voyage Nouveau de la
Terre-Sainte (Paris, 1702), pp. 58, 563.]  Earlier travelers of the 17th
century, Johann van Egmont and John Hayman, recorded that the Jews were
so opressed by the Turks that "they pay for the very air they breathe."

In the 20th century, Jews started turning to European powers for "protection".
The British consulate recorded scores of anti-Jewish incidents between
1848 and 1878.  By the end of the century, conditions got so bad that 1/3rd
of the Jewish population had *E*migrated!

5. The anti-Semitism of the 20th century, we are to believe, was the result
of what was really anti-Zionism because the Zionists were *allegedly*
looking to exclude Moslems and Christians. Given that the premise is false,
its hard to put much faith in the conclusion. Perhaps Hadawi (who by-the-way,
is a Holocaust denier or skeptic or whatever they're calling themselves)
can be more specific so we can tell exactly when acts of anti-semitism in
Arab/Muslim lands stopped and were replaced by anti-Zionist acts. If you were
about to respond that the switch was gradual, well, then there you have it.

6. The "explanation" that Jews were targeted in Arab countries in response
to what Jews elsewhere were *allegedly* doing should leave you stupified.
So it's not racist for me to burn a cross on a African American lawn because
I believe an African American in Alabama did something bad? I'm just
expressing anti-Alabama sentiment?

Anti-Jewish (anti-Semitic) acts in Arab countries in the 20th century, like
those before, were precisely that: anti-Jewish acts.


So what else does your allegedly Jewish source provide? A quote from
Rashid Khalidi (an Arab) in a book edited by Said (another Arab!). So
let's evaluate this:

        Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were
        being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners.

OK, so the land was being *purchased* (not "stolen"), but what lands were
the Jews buying and who was being dispossessed?  Let's turn to the Peel
Commission which investigated this following the Arab riots of 1929:
[Palestine Royal Commission, p. 242]

        much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp
        and uncultivated when it was purchased.... there was at the time...
        little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or
        training needed to develop the land.

        [Any Arab land shortage was] due less to the amount of land acquired
        by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.

This was as Louis French found in 1931, when the British made an effort to
provide lands to displaced Arabs. After reviewing 3000 applications, only
100 landless Arabs qualified and received alternative plots.  Not exactly
the forced transfer or stealing of land depicted by your source.

Your source also speaks of lands being cultivated by fallahin for generations,
yet French recorded [pp. 259-260] that "individual plots changed hands
annually."


Of course, one should also judge your source by its omissions. There is no
mention of the 1923 partition of Palestine (which established Transjordan
as the Palestinian Arab state on 80% of historic Palestine). While Deir
Yassin is covered, there is no mention of any Arab massacre, not in 1921,
or 1929, or 1936-39 nor in 1948. Read this site and you'll never find out
about the 1937 partition compromise (rejected in principle by the Arabs).

Finally, the "future" section provides the best laugh. Not only because it
reads like a list of Arab demands but because it so blatantly contradicts
itself. Having told us how the Jews stole Arab lands and took over their
villages and fields, the site attempts to lull us into believing that there
would be no problem with 3+ million Arabs "returning" because most Israelis
don't live where these Arabs had lived. Beyond the obvious contradiction,
suddenly the people who were claiming that there was no room for the Jews
without dispossessing the Arabs when the population of the country was well
under 1 million are saying that there is no problem adding 3+ million to
the existing 6 million.

response 499 of 604:

Jun 3 14:12 UTC 2002

Marcus, perhaps you haven't been reading what I post (which would explain
much), but I've frequently mentioned "'Palestinian' Jews" and that prior to
the latter half of the 20th century, "Palestinian" referred to Jews whereas
the Arabs of Palestine were usually called "Arabs" or self-identified as
"Syrian".  At the other end, I have never argued that "there were no Arabs
living there at all". Neither of these contradict the fact that Jews who
had been living under Arab or Muslim rule were for the most part subject to
the same anti-semitism that was exhibited in Christian Europe.

So what's the contradiction? You pointing to web sites saying that Jews
lived in "harmony" with Arab/Muslims prior to evil Zionists making life
miserable for Jews around the world (the modern excuse for anti-semitism)
only to then say that you know that Jews (and Christians) were victims of
discrimination and persecution -- even if not as bad as some other groups
who didn't even rate "dhimmi" status.

Frankly, I'm glad to see that you yourself don't believe all the drivel
that can be found on the very web-sites you have referenced in this item.