Both Mycroft and webfusion commented on my quote of the headstone of Baruch Goldstein. I think they feel that I meant to imply that there is widespread support for Goldstein or people like him in Israel.
What it seemed like you were doing is trying to create an artificial symmetry in the conflict where anything said about the Palestinians can also be said about the Israelis. This is a phenomenon seen often in these discussions, where some people seem to do it through malice, deliberately obfuscating the facts on the issues, and others do it motivated by a benign sort of ignorance where they just assume that everyone shares an equal share of the blame and their great insightful contribution is to declare that everyone just needs to learn to get along and everything will be okay.
But the symmetry is artificial. Sure, there are fanatics on both sides, they’re just not comparable, at least not in any rational sense. Comparing what’s written on Baruch Goldstein’s tombstone to the kind hero worship that’s engineered for Palestinian suicide-bombers is like comparing someone who double-parks his car to a serial killer. Sure, technically they’re both
criminals, but comparable?! No, not in the slightest.
Israel does have its crazies and fanatics. Baruch Goldstein was a real person, nobody denies that. There are even some that honor him, but in Israel they are marginalized and ineffectual.
By contrast, the Palestinians are ruled by the fanatics. Fatah and Hamas are comparable to the Kahanists, but Israel has
outlawed the Kahane party. Baruch Goldstein was very comparable to suicide terrorists, but he was just one man. By contrast, the Palestinians have been waging a decades long propaganda campaign to make that kind of fanaticism seem acceptable, and have been actively recruiting and indoctrinating as many such fanatics as they can.
Am I claiming Israel is perfect? No. Does Israel sometimes to things to exacerbate the situation? Sure. But really, truth be told, they’re also the side that’s shown a willingness to make peace. Honestly, the Palestinian side hasn’t.
There is no symmetry there. Those that try to create it are ignorant and shallow, at best. At worst? Possibly revisionist. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to understand that point of view, but I try.
I didn't mean to imply that and I don't believe that. I have tried to get a feel for what the average Israeli feels about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict by reading various polls and my sense of it is that something close to a majority of Israelis would be pro-Palestinian by US standards.
I think you mean pro-peace, don’t you? I think we’re all for that, we just disagree on how to get there.
But acceptance of terrorism is not limited to a few Jewish kooks in Israel. The Israelis selected Begun as their prime minister and by just about anybody's measure he was a terrorist.
Menachem Begin came to the Palestine Mandate territories after having been liberated from Stalin’s Siberian labor camps. The Irgun carried out its operations against the British because at that time when Jews were being slaughtered by the millions in Europe, the British were placing restrictions on Jewish immigration to the territories, and people were dying as a result.
Now the difference between Begin and Arafat is that while Begin was running with the Irgun, he was never offered what he wanted at the negotiating table. Then when he did get what he wanted, he stopped being a terrorist.
No symmetry there.
But, webfusion will say Begin was a terrorist during a time of war and that is different than what the Palestinians do who are terrorists during a time of peace. And I would buy that argument completely if everyday the Israelis didn't expand their hold on land the Palestinians see as theirs, and there is no more significant act of war than the taking of land.
Except that the Israelis are withdrawing from land. Still.
None of this is to say that I think that the percentage of Palestinians who participate in or advocate terrorism isn't much greater than the percentage of Israelis who do. Obviously support for terrorism is much stronger in the Palestinian community. But I think webfusion and perhaps mycroft see this as proof of the moral superiority of the Jewish culture or Jews or the Israeli government. I don't think it is. Under similar pressures, Israel's founders engaged in widespread terrorism also. Israel today has no need to engage in terrorism to achieve its goals. It has a strong organized military to enforce its will.
It’s not about superiority of culture, where do you get this nonsense?
There isn’t anything wrong with Palestinian culture that wasn’t caused by a decades long propaganda campaign pounding violence and death into their skulls. It’s kinda like being raised as a Jesus freak, only with explosives.
