Canajew,
You make some good and interesting points. I have one thing to ask though:
What is your solution for the conflict to end?
Home | Canajew,
You make some good and interesting points. I have one thing to ask though:
What is your solution for the conflict to end?
I can offer a solution - repatriation of the non-Israeli Arabs to Jordan and Egypt.
This solves all the problems. Jordan and Egypt can then represent the thus repatriated Arabs, and be held accountable for any violence committed. The most hardcore militants will stay, choose to defend their camps, and die to the IDF, doing for the Arabs what they cannot seem to do for themselves, ridding them of the worst of their own criminal class. Israel then has defensible borders. The increase in difficulty of the target combined with the price paid by the murdering class is a deterrence that historically has worked quite well to end such wars once and for all.
Thats a better solution than takeo's, and it faces reality. If, as takeo asserts, Israel must be forced into making peace why not simply force Jordan and Egypt to take back their citizens...Originally posted by David_in_NYC
I can offer a solution - repatriation of the non-Israeli Arabs to Jordan and Egypt.
This solves all the problems. Jordan and Egypt can then represent the thus repatriated Arabs, and be held accountable for any violence committed. The most hardcore militants will stay, choose to defend their camps, and die to the IDF, doing for the Arabs what they cannot seem to do for themselves, ridding them of the worst of their own criminal class. Israel then has defensible borders. The increase in difficulty of the target combined with the price paid by the murdering class is a deterrence that historically has worked quite well to end such wars once and for all.
I have no solution. I'm not really sure there is one. I can say that so long as Arab rejectionism continues unabated and Arab resort to terrorism against Israeli civilians is a first resort rather than a last resort, that peace is impossible and conflict management should be the order of the day.Originally posted by danholo
Canajew,
You make some good and interesting points. I have one thing to ask though:
What is your solution for the conflict to end?
I like the separation fence, its a good idea, and Israel should never again consider talking to Arafat.
But none of this will solve the conflict. this conflict will not be resolved until the Palestinians exorcise the cult of death from their population, and focus on education, health and public services for their oewn people, rather than on the destruction of Israel.
But I have no idea how to get there, only that if these issues are ignored that 'getting there' is a complete fiction, as there is nowhere to get.
I don't support this but the problem with this is that Palestinians, at the moment, are, let's say, "ultra-nationalistic" and that would never happen, nor would it be possible for Palestinians to give up, what they think as, their homeland.Originally posted by David_in_NYC
I can offer a solution - repatriation of the non-Israeli Arabs to Jordan and Egypt.
This solves all the problems. Jordan and Egypt can then represent the thus repatriated Arabs, and be held accountable for any violence committed. The most hardcore militants will stay, choose to defend their camps, and die to the IDF, doing for the Arabs what they cannot seem to do for themselves, ridding them of the worst of their own criminal class. Israel then has defensible borders. The increase in difficulty of the target combined with the price paid by the murdering class is a deterrence that historically has worked quite well to end such wars once and for all.
I support unilateral separation on Israel's terms. Jerusalem stays as part of Israel. This city can not be divided.
If the Tanakh has any credibility Jerusalem will be the final battleground - and Israel will win.
I fleshed it out some and made it its own post... guess we can pursue it on that thread as it will simply be drowned out by the flood of propaganda refutation here.Originally posted by Lowell
Thats a better solution than takeo's, and it faces reality. If, as takeo asserts, Israel must be forced into making peace why not simply force Jordan and Egypt to take back their citizens...
like your theoretical assumption that the PA has and will renounce all violence and negotiate in good faith.Originally posted by takeo
all those are theoretical solutions which will never work in reality.
Syria has engaged in posturing mimicing willingness in order to provide justifications to people like you who claim that it is Israel's fault. Pure and simple.syria made clear time after time its willing to recognise israel on the condition israel returns the golan-heights, the only problem during negociations was how much golan should be given back.
The right of return is a UN resolution? What does this mean? the general assembly? That would make it non-binding. Context? Was it a security counsel resolution? What did it say? Were there reciprocal responsibilities imposed? What is the impact of one party not fulfilling its obligations on the obligations of the other? Or do you really care about any of this?the right of return is a un-resolution and will happen sooner or later, it is even included in the roadmap. the first intifadeh led to the oslo-proces, so clearly resisting the occupation is in their interest (but not the killing of innocent people)
The roadmap contemplates dealing with the refugees because the Arabs wouldn't accept it without it. that does not make the claim legitimate.
does it though? As history tells us, the occupation LED to increased investment, education, health care et al, not the reverse. An end to the occupation MAY lead to a further increase in all of these, but given the state of the PA and its history of corruption, they are more likely to produce another North Korea or Sudan than an Asian tiger.they already gain more than that, but anyway yes they would, palestinians want economic devellopment very badly, but they also aknowledge this requires an end to the occupation.
lies. The PLO was NOT a 'ressistance organization'. It was a terrorist organization. Since its inception it has relied on the PURPOSEFUL TARGETING OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS and this has been its primary method of 'ressistance'. thus, it is not a ressistance organization but a terrorist one. Don't manipulate definitions in order to get what you want. People can see through it.insanity. the plo was a resistance organisation as anywhere in the colonised world, it is the most moderate of all palestinian organisations. In postwar germany many germans didn't like nazism so denazification was easy, in palestine every single palestinian is engaged in their national liberation, which by the way isn't as close to nazism as israel's Eretz Israel-ambitions are. the so called "denazification" of iraq didn't succeed either, because many people still support the baathist party, the same reason why the nazi's "desovietisation" during WWII completely failed. you will have to live with the plo, like it or not. the alternative is hamas, jihad or al-aqsa...
A working definition of terrorism: Terrorism is the purposeful targeting of innocent civilians for political purposes.
This definition is not perfect, and it may be succesptable to changes, but you must change and redefine it explicitly before saying the PLO didn't fit within it. That would make it easier to show you why you are wrong in this regard.
Again, wrong. The German and Japanese societies were cvompletely destroyed. Economic and physical infrastructure was almost totally destroyed, and I think we can all agree on that. From asocial point of view, the Germans were moved from facists embracing Nazi race-purity and all the rest of the NAZIs garbage, while the Japanese were also unquestionably 'aware of their own inherent superiority' to, say, the Chinese and the Americans. The allied powers took control of these countries and all of their military and civilian institutions, imposed legal systems and constitutions on the vanquished, and proceeded to recondition those within these societies to act like civilized human beings. The Japanese Emperor stayed for cosmetic purposes. He lost all power and had to admit to the Japanese people that he was not a god (which would have been unherd of before defeat).the japanese and german society were never rebuild from the ground, and never had foreign masters. the germans and japanese did it all themselves (even the japanese emperor stayed), they just changed sides because the allied could offer them once again an independant and strong state. Israel can't offer anything like this to the palestinians. the case of iraq, and before colonialism, shows that without the population cooperating nd without strong incentives nothing can be achieved. [/B]
That you use this as an example demonstrates that you are being disingenuous with your arguments, as everybody who has even remotely looked at the issue of Japan in WWII knows why the emperor stayed on and what his role was. And I am pretty sure that you knew it too.
they did NOT 'change sides'. they were the side. Without Germany and Japan there was no side to turn from. They lost the war and were occupied by enemy powers. They did not resist because they had been unequivocally destroyed before-hand, and had their will to fight driven into the ground.
Israel cannot do this because the world never let her. So fine. The world must do something. But if it does not do all that israel needs it to do, then Israel is fully justified in saying no - that there shall be no state dedicated to the destruction of Israel in the Palestinian territory, and no state can exist as long as it teaches its children the most base forms of Anti-semitism while promoting genocide against the Jews (i.e. kill them wherever you find them et al).
another lie. Not yours, but still. the Syrians lie. I know it. You know it. Dogs know it. How you could put any faith in anything they say is beyond me. Syria wants the destruction of Israel. Syria has acted in a way, over the past 60 years, that is ENTIRELY CONSISTENT with the premise that they have always wanted only the destruction of Israel. It is for you to demonstrate their good faith.Originally posted by takeo
no need to, Syria wants the golan heights, that's it.
Oslo was violated by the PA from the very beginning, as they never stopped incitement. Period. They also very quickly broke the agreement with respect to armaments, security apparati and the like. So Netanyahu was faced with either continuing to fulfil Israel's obligations notwithstanding that the Palestinians were not fulfilling theirs, or to say, "from this point forward we will only comply if they will". Seems the correct position from here, and as a legal position it is beyond raproach.so what about netanyahu not agreeing to the oslo-process? what about Bush refusing to implement kyoto? etc. ...
most democracies as well lack transparancy and predictability.
I would rather be a businessman in China or singapore than in India or bangladesh... [/B]
Come on now. Barak refused to deal with Arafat because HE DID NOT BELIVE ANYTHING THAT CAME OUT OF HIS MOUTH. Which makes a whole lot of sense, given that past behaviour is a fairly good indicator of future behaviour, especially with regards to a willingness to lie in international agreements. Barak said no because he did not believe the offers were real. And guess what? they weren't. Sharon wasw elected because Israel was done with Arafat and his Palestinians. They started a war while negotiations were ongoing (or struggling or at a standstill, whatever, it doesn't really matter), and Israelis responded by fighting back. And as Palestinian targeting of Israeli civilians became the norm in the war, Israelis were prepared to elect someone who was prepared to more forcibly fight back. Not fight like the Plaestinians (as this would involve bombing random civilian targets ON PURPOSE, which Israel has never done) but fight back and not cave in to another round of terrorism. You are being disingenuous with this argument.Originally posted by takeo
[B]Arafat said on many occasions that the Barak-offer could be a starting point for further discussions, but barak said "no", untill the last weeks of his government, when negociations suddenly resumed but all the sudden ended when sharon was elected.
I will recharachterize. If the Palestinians want peace, they must, give up their right of return, give up their claim to most of Jerusalem including 'Israeli occupied East Jerusalem" and recognize that Israel will not, nor is it legally bound to, withdraw from all the territories. They must also recognize Israel's right to exist as an independent democratic Jewish state. This is just as true as what you say above, rather you like putting all the burden on Israel, while I prefer to assign benefits and concessions based on the moral culpability of the actors involved and the general tendancies of their populations. We can go into this if you like, but I am quite confident that on ANY sort of moral accountability basis the palestinians and their Arab 'bretheren' are far more morally culpable than the Israelis for what has happened to the Palestinians, for their ongoing plight, and for the continued conflict in the middle east.Israel need to return to the 1967-borders, if it wants peace at least. not in return for promises, in return for achievements, as elaborated in my "roadmap". if israel ever wants peace with syria it will have to return the stolen Golan-heights, if not Syria can continue to be at war with israel which means it can sponsor all kinds of terrorist organisations as well as continue to sponsor the hesbollah. The principle "peace for land" rules here as well... you can't call Syria a vilain-state if you yourself are still occupying a part of this country, an act which makes your own country a vilain.
this of course is takeo, the renound international legal scholar, reading this provision as a legal document. Right? What seems clear to you was purposely designed (1) for ambiguity and (2) to expressly reject the assertion that you make that Israel must withdraw from all territories. It was designed for ambiguity to allow the US and Russia to back the same plan, so that they could tell their populations (and their clients) different things. However, the word "all" territories was purposely excised from the text in order to show that Israel need nopt withdraw from ALL territories. Making your 'clear to me' reading wrong.this resolution called on israel to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, pretty clear to me!
Again, you are wrong, and again, this seems a purposeful manipulation of fact. the 1949 armistance agreement specifically stated that the armistance lines WERE NOT PERMANENT BORDERS between states. In fact, the agreements did not allow that Israel might have a right to exist at all. So, when Israel conquored the West bank as part of a defensive war (you can argue all you want that israel started the war against Egypt (though you would be wrong as blockade=war in international law) but you cannot argue that Jordan fired first (and repeatedly) before Israel attacked back), not all the territories were required to be returned. This was explicitly recogniozed in 242, where reference to ALL territories was omitted. Further, your reference to 'secure and recognized boundaries' is a misinterpretation. The reference to secure is particularly significant, of course, because the armistance lines were not secure boundaries. period. Everyone knew that at the time, and given the drafting parties' knowledge and the language of the text, it seems probable that the inclusion of this term further implies that there would be some adjustment of the final border between Israel and Egypt/Jordan in any eventual peace agreement.israel is also called on to return to recognised borders, which of course means the borders recognised by the entire world in 1949, when israel became a member of the un. Any futile attempt to keep part of the occupied territories( without giving anything in return) will make peace impossible, this is a conclusion to memorise!
"Any futuile attempt" by the Palestinians to move Israel back to the 'Auchwitz' borders of 1949 "will make peace impossible, this is a conclusion to memorise!"
Now, this is true. You say your proposition is true as well. Given they are both true, is there any room left for a peacable agreement? Doesn't look like it.
Arafat was 'elected' in an 'election' conducted 8 years ago in a race where there was only one real candidate. He has not made any material efforts to hold additional elections when his term expired, and the Plaestinian authority has involved itself in far more serious human rights violations than Israel has even contemplated. But once again this demonstrates that the left does not really hold its 'fundamental' values to be so dear.arafat's election was approved by the un and the us alike, according to the principles of modern multi-party elections. it's not his fault that the plo at that time was tremendously popular.
So what? the UN recognized Arafat in the 1970s when he was ONLY a terrorist, planning a campaign of international terrorism against Israelis and Jews. He even showed up in the UN with a GUN! Yasser Arafat is a terrorist leader. israel will not and should not talk to him. the palestinians want to talk? they can get someone else. of course, they arn't really interested in talking anyways....the eu, china, Russia, etc. still recognise arafat as the leader of the palestinian people and visited him in this position.
May I ask what the chances are that this was compared side by side to broken Plaestinian commitments, with time lines comparing these viollations and some sort of quantitative or qualitative assessment of the relative magnitudes of such breaches? No? I didn't think so. The PA never even started fulfilling their commitments in good faith. Why Israel was to continue with its moves years later is beyond me.oh man, i could write a whole threat on that! but just visit the website of the israeli peace-movement gush shalom , they made an interactive map on which all the new settlements are indicated build when he was prime minister, as well as the agreed upon withdrawels he didn't achieve.
I noted someone already made the point that the US had not formally accepted Kyoto, and so Bushes 'renunciation' of the treaty was not really a case of walking away from a binding treaty.bush didn't, but clinton did, as the president of the us, so Bush should respect the treaties signed by his predecessor. 3, yes more or less.
As for 3 (why the US walked from Kyoto) the issues are complicated, but it really was the kind of agreement they should have walked away from (and I have a fairly big environmental conscious). It was flawed from the start. A different thread, but again, we can get into it if you like.
You are playing a shell game. yes democracies are not really transparent (or even truly accountable in any complete sense (but this varies between countries) and yes dictatorships are also not trasparent, but to insinuate through this comparrison that they are both the same in terms of transparency is ridiculopus. Revisit this please.nor are most democracies, not even the us. The iraq-crisis was a good example, very few people knew the truth about the WMD, which was not communicated to the outside world.
First, 1 person's personal experiences are not really evidence of anything, rather only a single piece of datum to be put into a larger pool, and second, China is better than these countries because China's government is more brutal. Period. Sanctions are higher so illegal conduct is curtailed. But there is a tradeoff between the moral values a society adopts and the moral values which determine the relationship between the state and its citizens /subjects and the moral values within which a society determines proper penal sanctions. And on this China fails miserably. So while I may be prepared to assume China is has the most functional market, it is only because they are prepared to be the most brutal, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.well i know businessmen who had experience on all those countries and he assured me china was paradise compared to some of those "democracies", where corruption is almost legal, the autority of the government week, and every new government completely rids itself of the laws and the policy of its predecessor, which of course leads to chaos.
And Israel treats the Palestinians better than the Chinese treat their own, and most certainly better than they treat the Tibetans. (just a reminder for those who always think Israel is the 'worst' of everything. In reality it is almost universaly among the best)
Again, talking about peace and a willingness to secure peace are different things. they talk about peace in order to gain sympathy and to allow people like you to characterize them as a peace-loving nation. It is a lie. And you are believing and repeating a lie for your own gratification. I find this distasteful.so in fact here you admit that not syria but israel is refusing to talk about peace!!!
and so the same thing can be done for the palestinians. Only it will take maybe more time, and the clock has not started yet. they may have been occupied for 35+ years, but the 'rebuilding" (i.e. denazification (for lack of a better word)) has not yet begun.perhaps but they ruled those countries only very limited time, after which the old parties, this time with a new image and american help, reappeared.
Incorrect again. Colonialism never entered into their minds. You can redefine colonialism in order to make it fit, but once again that does not really accomplish anything. The Americans are trying to build a strong secular democracy (secular because religious democracy (a la Iran) is an oxymoron). maybe 'in their own image', maybe not. But in either case, certainly not colonialism.I mean in Iraq, the population is not cooperating to the foreign occupiers, who want to reinstall a modern version of coloniasm. [/B]
Posted by Canajew:
The right of return is a UN resolution? What does this mean? the general assembly? That would make it non-binding. Context? Was it a security counsel resolution? What did it say? Were there reciprocal responsibilities imposed? What is the impact of one party not fulfilling its obligations on the obligations of the other? Or do you really care about any of this?
It's a General Assembly Resolution 194 dated to December 11th 1948. Look at the section eleven. The resolution is posted below.
The General Assembly,
Having considered further the situation in Palestine,
1. Expresses its deep appreciation of the progress achieved through the good offices of the late United Nations Mediator in promoting a peaceful adjustment of the future situation of Palestine, for which cause he sacrificed his life; and
Extends its thanks to the Acting Mediator and his staff for their continued efforts and devotion to duty in Palestine;
2. Establishes a Conciliation Commission consisting of three States Members of the United Nations which shall have the following functions:
(a) To assume, in so far as it considers necessary in existing circumstances, the functions given to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine by resolution 182;(S-2) of the General Assembly of 14 May 1948;
(b) To carry out the specific functions and directives given to it by the present resolution and such additional functions and directives as may be given to it by the General Assembly or by the Security Council;
(c) To undertake, upon the request of the Security Council, any of the functions now assigned to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine or to the United Nations Truce Commission by resolutions of the Security Council; upon such request to the Conciliation Commission by the Security Council with respect to all the remaining functions of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine under Security Council resolutions, the office of the Mediator shall be terminated;
3. Decides that a Committee of the Assembly, consisting of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, shall present, before the end of the first part of the present session of the General Assembly, for the approval of the Assembly, a proposal concerning the names of the three States which will constitute the Conciliation Commission;
4. Requests the Commission to begin its functions at once, with a view to the establishment of contact between the parties themselves and the Commission at the earliest possible date;
5. Calls upon the Governments and authorities concerned to extend the scope of the negotiations provided for in the Security Council's resolution of 16 November 1948 and to seek agreement by negotiations conducted either with the Conciliation Commission or directly, with a view to the final settlement of all questions outstanding between them;
6. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to take steps to assist the Governments and authorities concerned to achieve a final settlement of all questions outstanding between them;
7. Resolves that the Holy Places - including Nazareth - religious buildings and sites in Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured, in accordance with existing rights and historical practice; that arrangements to this end should be under effective United Nations supervision; that the United Nations Conciliation Commission, in presenting to the fourth regular session of the General Assembly its detailed proposals for a permanent international régime for the territory of Jerusalem, should include recommendations concerning the Holy Places in that territory, that with regard to the Holy Places in the rest of Palestine the Commission should call upon the political authorities of the areas concerned to give appropriate formal guarantees as to the protection of the Holy Places and access to them, and that these undertakings should be presented to the General Assembly for approval;
8. Resolves that, in view of its association with three world religions, the Jerusalem area, including the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem, the most western, Ein Karim (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern Shu'fat, should be accorded special and separate treatment from the rest of Palestine and should be placed under effective United Nations control;
Requests the Security Council to take further steps to ensure the demilitarization of Jerusalem at the earliest possible date;
Instructs the Commission to present to the fourth regular session of the General Assembly detailed proposals for a permanent international régime for the Jerusalem area which will provide for the maximum local autonomy for distinctive groups consistent with the special international status of the Jerusalem area;
The Conciliation Commission is authorized to appoint a United Nations representative, who shall co-operate with the local authorities with respect to the interim administration of the Jerusalem area;
9. Resolves that, pending agreement on more detailed arrangements among the Governments and authorities concerned, the freest possible access to Jerusalem by road, rail or air should be accorded to all inhabitants of Palestine;
Instructs the Conciliation Commission to report immediately to the Security Council, for appropriate action by that organ, any attempt by any party to impede such access;
10. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to seek arrangements among the Governments and authorities concerned which will facilitate the economic development of the area, including arrangements for access to ports and airfields and the use of transportation and communication facilities;
11. Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;
Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations;
12. Authorizes the Conciliation Commission to appoint such subsidiary bodies and to employ such technical experts, acting under its authority, as it may find necessary for the effective discharge of its functions and responsibilities under the present resolution;
The Conciliation Commission will have its official headquarters at Jerusalem. The authorities responsible for maintaining order in Jerusalem will be responsible for taking all measures necessary to ensure the security of the Commission. The Secretary-General will provide a limited number of guards for the protection of the staff and premises of the Commission;
13. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to render progress reports periodically to the Secretary-General for transmission to the Security Council and to the Members of the United Nations;
14. Calls upon all Governments and authorities concerned to co-operate with the Conciliation Commission and to take all possible steps to assist in the implementation of the present resolution;
15. Requests the Secretary-General to provide the necessary staff and facilities and to make appropriate arrangements to provide the necessary funds required in carrying out the terms of the present resolution
Makes no difference whether its takeo's lie or whether he merely passes it on, only a Marxist like takeo would believe the lies of the Marxist Arafat.Originally posted by Canajew
another lie. Not yours, but still. the Syrians lie. I know it. You know it. Dogs know it. How you could put any faith in anything they say is beyond me. Syria wants the destruction of Israel. Syria has acted in a way, over the past 60 years, that is ENTIRELY CONSISTENT with the premise that they have always wanted only the destruction of Israel. It is for you to demonstrate their good faith.
Oslo was violated by the PA from the very beginning, as they never stopped incitement. Period. They also very quickly broke the agreement with respect to armaments, security apparati and the like. So Netanyahu was faced with either continuing to fulfil Israel's obligations notwithstanding that the Palestinians were not fulfilling theirs, or to say, "from this point forward we will only comply if they will". Seems the correct position from here, and as a legal position it is beyond raproach.
From a Naomi Ragen newsletter
The KGB's Man
By ION MIHAI PACEPA
The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an "obstacle" to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades.
Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world's "kings, queens & despots," with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts.
"I invented the hijackings [of passenger planes]," Arafat bragged when I first met him at his PLO headquarters in Beirut in the early 1970s. He gestured toward the little red flags pinned on a wall map of the world that labeled Israel as "Palestine." "There they all are!" he told me, proudly. The dubious honor of inventing hijacking actually goes to the KGB, which first hijacked a U.S. passenger plane in 1960 to Communist Cuba. Arafat's innovation was the suicide bomber, a terror concept that would come to full flower on 9/11.
In 1972, the Kremlin put Arafat and his terror networks high on all Soviet bloc intelligence services' priority list, including mine. Bucharest's role was to ingratiate him with the White House. We were the bloc experts at this. We'd already had great success in making Washington -- as well as most of the fashionable left-leaning American academics of the day -- believe that Nicolae Ceausescu was, like Josip Broz Tito, an "independent" Communist with a "moderate" streak.
KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in February 1972 laughed to me about the Yankee gullibility for celebrities. We'd outgrown Stalinist cults of personality, but those crazy Americans were still naïve enough to revere national leaders. We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace.
Right after that meeting, I was given the KGB's "personal file" on Arafat. He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.
The KGB's disinformation department then went to work on Arafat's four-page tract called "Falastinuna" (Our Palestine), turning it into a 48-page monthly magazine for the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah. Arafat had headed al-Fatah since 1957. The KGB distributed it throughout the Arab world and in West Germany, which in those days played host to many Palestinian students. The KGB was adept at magazine publication and distribution; it had many similar periodicals in various languages for its front organizations in Western Europe, like the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Trade Unions.
Next, the KGB gave Arafat an ideology and an image, just as it did for loyal Communists in our international front organizations. High-minded idealism held no mass-appeal in the Arab world, so the KGB remolded Arafat as a rabid anti-Zionist. They also selected a "personal hero" for him -- the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the man who visited Auschwitz in the late 1930s and reproached the Germans for not having killed even more Jews. In 1985 Arafat paid homage to the mufti, saying he was "proud no end" to be walking in his footsteps.
Arafat was an important undercover operative for the KGB. Right after the 1967 Six Day Arab-Israeli war, Moscow got him appointed to chairman of the PLO. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Soviet puppet, proposed the appointment. In 1969 the KGB asked Arafat to declare war on American "imperial-Zionism" during the first summit of the Black Terrorist International, a neo-Fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. It appealed to him so much, Arafat later claimed to have invented the imperial-Zionist battle cry. But in fact, "imperial-Zionism" was a Moscow invention, a modern adaptation of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and long a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to foment ethnic hatred. The KGB always regarded anti-Semitism plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism.
The KGB file on Arafat also said that in the Arab world only people who were truly good at deception could achieve high status. We Romanians were directed to help Arafat improve "his extraordinary talent for deceiving." The KGB chief of foreign intelligence, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, ordered us to provide cover for Arafat's terror operations, while at the same time building up his international image. "Arafat is a brilliant stage manager," his letter concluded, "and we should put him to good use." In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch.
In April 1978 I accompanied Ceausescu to Washington, where he charmed President Carter. Arafat, he urged, would transform his brutal PLO into a law-abiding government-in-exile if only the U.S. would establish official relations. The meeting was a great success for us. Carter hailed Ceausescu, dictator of the most repressive police state in Eastern Europe, as a "great national and international leader" who had "taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community." Triumphant, Ceausescu brought home a joint communiqué in which the American president stated that his friendly relations with Ceausescu served "the cause of the world."
Three months later I was granted political asylum by the U.S. Ceausescu failed to get his Nobel Peace Prize. But in 1994 Arafat got his -- all because he continued to play the role we had given him to perfection. He had transformed his terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile (the Palestinian Authority), always pretending to call a halt to Palestinian terrorism while letting it continue unabated. Two years after signing the Oslo Accords, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists had risen by 73%.
On Oct. 23, 1998, President Clinton concluded his public remarks to Arafat by thanking him for "decades and decades and decades of tireless representation of the longing of the Palestinian people to be free, self-sufficient, and at home." The current administration sees through Arafat's charade but will not publicly support his expulsion. Meanwhile, the aging terrorist has consolidated his control over the Palestinian Authority and marshaled his young followers for more suicide attacks.
Mr. Pacepa was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. The author of "Red Horizons" (Regnery, 1987), he is finishing a book on the origins of current anti-Americanism.
hate to break it to you, but Palestinian violence was DESIGNED to get Israel to over-react, thereby increasing sympathies for the Palestinians and their cause. They have done this for some time and this is not a newly adopted strategy. they do not give a damn about the lives of their own people. they put children on the firing lines, hide in civilian populations and the rest in order to CAUSE palestinian civilian casualties. And 100s of 'demonstrators' were never killed. This is an embellishment of the highest order.Originally posted by takeo
[B]the early launch of the second intifadeh without waiting for more proposals was a mistake, but it was made worse by the israeli violent response: 100's of demonstrators killed, israeli arab demonstrations bloodily oppressed (for which this latest week the Israeli high court blamed the israeli autorities). the intifadeh started because of a general palestinian outrage over the failed osloproces and israeli broken promises, oslo actually made palestinian life worse in stead of better(the formal cause was the visit of ariel sharon to the temple mount). Than both parties however reconciled and new peacetalks started, abruptly ended by the new prime minister Ariel Sharon.
the 'intifadeh' started because the Palestinian Authority decided time was right to launch a terrorist campaign in order to extract more concessions, while at the same time allowing Arafat to cement popular perception of him as a 'liberator'. This is fairly well documented and next chance I get I'll give you everything i have on it.
In the meanwhile, everyone interested in this issue should read Alan Dershowitz' "the Case for Israel". he is a renound legal (and moral philosophy) professor at Harvard, and his legal reasoning is top notch. People like takeo will certainly have problems with the factual assessment that Dershowitz engages in, but this is (1) beside the point and (2) mostly wrong, as his research looks really good.
He pretty much goes, point for point, though all of the 'left's' arguments about Israeli actions. Even Israel opponents like you takeo would gain much from assessing this perspective, even if you do not agree with it. A wonderful piece of legal and moral reasoning.
maybe we should try to change this? You would be in favour of sanctions against the Palestinians then? Of course, you might say, this needs to change or we will never be able to stop the spread of terrorism unless we are constantly giving in to their demands. But I doubt it.yes, as in palestinian society war and violence actually rewards the extremists, this is all over the world.
Israel would facilitate Plaestinian elections. I believe this. So do many here. But this has about as much empirical support as your crazy statements about Arafat's willingness to make peace, Syria's amicability and the rest. They are just ridiculous assumptions couched as logical propositions. They are as ludecrous as this statement, which may be true (were Arafat excluded).anyone could have participated in those elections, hamas refused to do so it was their decision, not Arafat's. since 2000 elections are impossible because of the war going on, israel in the current conditions would make elections impossible.
it's kind of rude to say to someone who is concerned with protecting the lives of innocent Israeli civilians PURPOSELY targeted by the Plaestinians that they support Yasser Arafat. Oh, you mean SHARON the war criminal. Let me stop laughing for a sec.BS, they support peace between two nations, while you support a war-criminal.
If you would be so kind, I would like to digress. Now murder is against the law. Anyone who commits murder (murder as it is defined, i.e. actus reas, mens rea, a lack of defences or excuses and the rest) is a criminal.
Agree? (and if you think they were justified then it may not have been murder, so exclude those cases).
Now, stealing is illegal. Anyone who steals (again, using legal standards and ignoring marginal cases) is a criminal.
Crossing the street against a red light is illegal. Anyone who crosses the street against a red light is a criminal.
and on and on.
Now, it is nominally correct to say that murderers AND thieves are criminals. However, any semi-intelligent person would be able to distinguish between both the magnitude of the crime and the moral blameworthiness of the two criminals.
I think we all agree on this. Now the contentious part. Yasser Arafat has been responsible (direct and indirect - Sharon's 'crimes' are assessed on an 'indirectly blameworthy" standard so Arafat's should too) for far more civilian deaths than Ariel Sharon. This isn't really a disputed fact (I think).
thus, for people to call Sharon a war criminal at every opportunity when at the same time not referring to Arafat as a worse war criminal is manipulation of information and generally dishonest.
Sharon may have been 'indirectly responsible' for Sabra and Shatilla, and likely was directly responsible for blowing up Jordanian civilian homes before 1967 (I add this for honesty, third parties should contrast this against opposing arguments), though I do not know how many.
Yasser Arafat was the leader of an international terrorist network witha focus on civilian airlines, olympic athletes, international travellers and other Israeli and Jewish civilian targets of opportunity. He has purposely targeted civilians at almost every opportunity. he has also committed many MANY crimes against his own people, denying them basic rights and seeing over a security apparatus responsible for torturing and killing its own citizens. He has, throughout his entire life, spread the worst of antisemetic propaganda and has made many speaches which would be sufficient to bring him within the ruberic of 'incitement to genocide', (which, as you seem to be keen on pseudo-legal type arguments, is sufficient to constitute a crime against humanity).
So if you are to speak of Sharon as a war criminal, you MUST, for consistency and credibility, refer to Arafat as a more serious, more aggregious, larger or bigger war criminal than Sharon. Even were collective punishment, house demolitions, and targeted assassinations all war crimes (which they are not, but we can go through this later) Arafat would STILL be a far far far more aggregious violator of laws against war crimes and crimes against humanity. To say otherwise is to be disingenuous and to lie.
revisionist history at its best. Israel was still being atatcked in the late 1960s, just as it was being attacked in the early 1960s and the late 1950s and the early 1950s and the late 1940s. Come on man.in that time there wasn't peace and israel just declared war upon the entire arab world and palestinian people.
in retrospect an obvious mistake brought on by delusional wishful thinking.arafat was supported by the israeli leades and the us back in the 90's, remember?
In 1963? you have to do a little better than that. And the PLO has as its primary tactic, PURPOSELY TARGETED CIVILIANS since its inception. So even by your erroneous characterization above they would still never have been a legitimate movement.the establishment of the plo/fatah was a reaction to illegal israeli occupation, an act of war which legitimises acts of violence (but not against civilians)
My solution is conflict management. It is not a solution, but you are assuming that a solution is possible. It is not. the 'right of return' is one irresolvable issue. A 'full withdrawal' is another issue. The division of Jerusalem is another. And nothing is even remotely resolvable while the palestinians teach their children to tplay with trading cards of muder/suicide bombers PURPOSELY TARGETING Israeli civilians (have I mentioned they PURPOSELY TARGET CIVILIANS, it is an important point to keep in mind). Peace with the Palestinians is not possible. Genocide is not acceptable. Deportation is not acceptable (at least until the palestinians manage to kill thousands in a terrorist attack. If that happens I say kick them all out). But capitulation to terrorism is also not an option. There are no solutions to this problem in the short term, and in the long term all is dependant on the direction of palestinian society. But they must change their society first. israel should not stick its neck out for the palestinians again, especially since they started setting off their children as firecrackers for their own amusement.so what's your solution, genocide of the palestinian people? my solution is on the contrary a reasonable one, a roadmap were both sides are forced into compliance, unlike Oslo. both sides, that's right, while you would prefere one-sided pressure! people like netanyahu would never again be in a position to postpone or block the withdrawel without facing the consequences.
misrepresentations and mischaracterizations. The Barak 'peace talks' were not promising. Sharon could not find any solutions because THERE ARE NONE. At least, at a minimum, none that israel can implement unilaterally (separation is not a resolution but a management strategy). His policies were not worse than Baraks. You can dispute this, but no fuzzy statistics please. I don't need to know that X died under Barak and X+Y died under Sharon, this kind of argument is stupid.that's right, of course, and a consequence of both palestinian and barak mismanagement of the popular uprising. But sharon couldn't find any solutions, could he? His policy prooved to be even worse than barak's, and the encouraging peacetalks during the last weeks of barak's government have been cancelled.
what matters and what's legal are two different things. Israel's conquest of land was legal. It should give it to the Plaestinians (not back as the Jordanians and Egyptians don't want it back), but this is not a requirement of law. It is a moral imperitive. the Palestinians have a right to self determination in the places where they are a majority of the population. this does not necessarily include Israeli settlements and certainly does not include Jerusalem, but it is a general moral imperitive nonetheless. However, moral imperitives can be vitiated by subsequent moral conduct, and the palestinian's (and Arab before it was fashionable for Arabs to call themselves "palestinian') CONTINUOUS resort to terrorist attacks PURPOSELY TARGETING civilians since the 1920s has gone some way to vitiate their moral entitlement to anything.that's right, but this won't be taken into account and was an illegal action, all that matters are the 1949-borders for the international community.
The international community can, with respect, go f- itself. It has no credibility on this.
this is not terrorism. It may be an illegal use of military force, it may be a an act of war, but it is not terrorism. targeting hostile countries is not terrorism. To call it terroism is to remove all content from the term, and do a disservice to everyone who tries to use language for a better, more precise undertsanding of events.it depends what kind of terrorism, if it's targetting hostile countries but no civilians it can be legitimate. the us by the way is specialising in this kind of terrorist activities for many decades. (afghanistan, Cuba, chile, nicaragua, the list goes on...)
Again, Terrorism is the PURPOSEFUL targeting and attacking (or attempting the attacking) of Civilians for political purposes. It is not a guy who kills a bunch of people at his office, it is not a person who launches a missle into a military vehicle and it is NOT NOT NOT the bombing of an enemy's military infrastructure. It is PURPOSELY targeting civilian busses. It is PURPOSELY targeting children in their homes. (for a more exhaustive list, please see the list of targets the palestinians have selected in their current terrorist war. Most should provide perfect examples.
again, not much of a legal analysis.yes, but the result is the same "territories occupied during the recent conflict" is as clear as it can get...
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