Who is at fault for the trouble in Gaza

[Rearden]

Originally posted by fastpat
[B]The well documented Harvard retrospective study on the Israel Lobby's outrageous influence on US government foreign policy is beyond reproach. The Israel Lobby's influence is the largest, all other countries influence pales in comparison.

It's not a "Harvard retrospective". That thoroughly criticized piece was published in the London Review of Books. That's like calling Ward Churchill's 'Little Eichmanns' essay a "University of Colorado retrospective".

Were you trying to pull a fast one, or do you really not know the difference?

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Rearden
It's not a "Harvard retrospective". That thoroughly criticized piece was published in the London Review of Books. That's like calling Ward Churchill's 'Little Eichmanns' essay a "University of Colorado retrospective".

Were you trying to pull a fast one, or do you really not know the difference?

It's been published on a great many more "outlets" now, and I do mean respected ones. Further, they've had numerous talks and discussion forums, and other venues. It was published at Harvard, but from pressure groups, i.e. the usual suspects, it was removed. It may have been returned to being available from Harvard's Kennedy School these days because of their embarassment from being intimidated in the first place.

Criticized? Yeah, criticized by such heroic entities and people as AIPAC, The Antidefamation League, NY Congressman Jerrold Nadler, and that paragon of virtue, Alan Dershowitz.

If neither strategic nor moral considerations can account for America's support for Israel, Mearsheimer and Walt ask, what does? Their answer: the "unmatched power of the Israel Lobby." At its core is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is ranked second after the National Rifle Association (along with the AARP) in the National Journal's 2005 listing of Washington's most powerful lobbies. AIPAC, they write, serves as "a de facto agent for a foreign government." The lobby, they say, is also associated with Christian evangelicals such as Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson; neoconservatives both Jewish (Paul Wolfowitz, Bernard Lewis, and William Kristol) and gentile (John Bolton, William Bennett, and George Will); think tanks (the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute); and critics of the press such as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

While other special-interest groups influence US foreign policy, Mearsheimer and Walt say, no lobby has managed to divert it "as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical." The result has turned the US into an "enabler" of Israeli expansion in the occupied territories, "making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians." Pressure from AIPAC and Israel was also a "critical element" in the US decision to invade Iraq, they write, arguing that the war "was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure."

Finally, the professors maintain, the lobby has created a climate in which anyone who calls attention to its power is deemed anti-Semitic, a device designed to stifle discussion "by intimidation." They end with a call for a "more open debate" about the lobby's influence and the consequences it has had for America's place in the world.

Such points have been made before, but rarely by such hardheaded members of the academic establishment. And the response has been furious. Leading the way has been The New York Sun, whose lead story of March 20 was headed "David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated by a Harvard Dean." Duke, the white supremacist, was quoted as calling the paper "excellent" and a "great step forward." "It is quite satisfying," Duke said, "to see a body in the premier American University essentially come out and validate every major point I have been making since even before the [Iraq] war even started." "Harvard's Paper on Israel Called 'Trash' by Solon," went another headline two days later, the Solon in this case being New York congressman Eliot Engel, who said, "Given what happened in the Holocaust, it's shameful that people would write reports like this." Congressman Jerrold Nadler called the paper "a meretricious, dishonest piece of crap," while Marvin Kalb, who teaches at the Kennedy School, expressed disappointment "that a paper of this quality appeared under the Kennedy School label."
The Storm Over the Israel Lobby

The Israel Lobby at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

[thrown_hammer]

Originally posted by fastpat
Using that rationale, I and 100,000 others of documented Scottish decent, should smuggle guns and ourselves into Scotland, get backing of some large and powerful country in the UN, and take back all the lands taken from us by the English 500 years ago.

I think that is the best idea EVER! You should do it.
Now if we could just invent technology to cut and paste humans I think you could pull it off.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by thrown_hammer
I think that is the best idea EVER! You should do it.
Now if we could just invent technology to cut and paste humans I think you could pull it off.

Listen, Frenchy...

[thrown_hammer]

Seriously.

[Jim Richards]

Reardon, you obvious are deeply in love with Israel, the country, and Israelis, the people. I'm happy for you. I have been to Israel a lot, and know a lot of regular (i.e., outside of politics) Israelis. They are nice people, like nice people I know in other countries. Nothing spectacular or above average. Just pretty average, as far as people go. It's clear you are hellbent on carrying their water in these discussions of Israel and the middle east. OK, fine, but people that don't have your same level of devotion are not necessarily anti-semites. And my interpretation of anti-semitism doesn't mean an indifference to Israel (once again, the country) equates to hating Jews (the people, not necessarily hailing from Israel). I respectfully suggest that you holster the slightly veiled anti-semitism insinuations that you've thrown around here.

[Jim Richards]

Shawn, fuel air bombs are the hot set-up.

[thrown_hammer]

Originally posted by Jim Richards
Shawn, fuel air bombs are the hot set-up.

Was that a pun?

[Jim Richards]

Oh, yeah. I guess it was.

[Rearden]

Originally posted by Jim Richards
Reardon, you obvious are deeply in love with Israel, the country, and Israelis, the people. I'm happy for you. I have been to Israel a lot, and know a lot of regular (i.e., outside of politics) Israelis. They are nice people, like nice people I know in other countries. Nothing spectacular or above average. Just pretty average, as far as people go. It's clear you are hellbent on carrying their water in these discussions of Israel and the middle east. OK, fine, but people that don't have your same level of devotion are not necessarily anti-semites. And my interpretation of anti-semitism doesn't mean an indifference to Israel (once again, the country) equates to hating Jews (the people, not necessarily hailing from Israel). I respectfully suggest that you holster the slightly veiled anti-semitism insinuations that you've thrown around here.

I don't have any particular longing for Israel. All I say is that they are the best country in the Middle East (not real tough competition, mind you) and should be admired for what they have accomplished -- especially given their neighborhood. Singling out real and imagined problems with Israel, hourly, every day, while ignoring bigger problems with governments and citizenry in the region, is a bizarre obsession. Call it what you will.

[Jim Richards]

I hold out hope that they can come to a mutually acceptable peace with the Palestineans. It takes two to tango and the US can help with the music.

[Rearden]

Originally posted by Jim Richards
I hold out hope that they can come to a mutually acceptable peace with the Palestineans. It takes two to tango and the US can help with the music.

That, Jim, we can agree on.

[Jim Richards]

Actually, I think that should be US foreign policy goal #1 or #1a.

[klaucke]

Originally posted by Rearden
The Israeli people are the most admirable group in the Middle East. Israel is one of the better countries on this planet, in every respect.

You gave yourself away in this thread by "The Israeli's are no better than the Palestinians in the conflict." Your bigotry has blinded you.

This thread is asking why the Palestinians aren't able get it together and run Gaza. Israel pulled out (that's what you are asking for, right?) and let them govern themselves.

I think your bigotry has blinded you. It seems like you've never gotten any of your news from any real, unbiased source. I have posted enough on this topic in the past couple years, and don't want spend my time trying to sway overzealous Zionists. There is probably a reason that UN peace resolutions for that area are only targeted for veto by a handful of countries: the US, Britain, and Israel. The rest of the world seems to have a much different opinion on this topic than the US populace, government, and general media.

Israel is one of the better countries? It sounds like some twisted, satirical joke. Persecution of hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians, that's great. You can look at this documentary:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/democracyondeadline/film.html# to see some Israeli journalists who would whole-heartedly disagree w/ you.

I can't believe you would attempt to infer that one group of peoples (the Israelis) are better than another (the Palestinians). Excluding the terrorists of each group, what exactly makes one set of persons better than the other? I can't believe an adult (I assume you are) even posted that.

Perhaps some of the reasons why the Palestinians are having trouble getting their government running efficiently has to do with:
-Israel routinely shutting off power, water to Palestinian areas
-Israel stealing tax dollars originally meant for Palestinian government budget
-Israel arresting elected officials of the democratic parliament
-Israel making travel extremely difficult and arduous for ordinary Palestinians

Well, at least I can be glad there's so many people in the US who know more than Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter on this topic... what could he possibly know about the issues.

Here's what former Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon has said in the past (after reading these statements, this must be the greatest country in the middle east!):

Everyone there should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that's grabbed, will be in our hands. Everything we don't grab will be in their hands." — Ariel Sharon, as Israeli Foreign Minister, in comments broadcast on Israeli radio, November 15, 1998.

"I am for lasting peace... United, I believe, we can win the battle for peace. But it must be a different peace, one with full recognition of the rights of the Jews in their one and only land: peace with security for generations and peace with a united Jerusalem as the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish people in the state of Israel forever."

And Ariel Sharon in an interview published in the Israeli daily Davar:
"Even if you'll prove to me... that the present war in Lebanon is a dirty immoral war, I don't care.
"we are Judeo-Nazis, and why not? Listen, a people that gave itself up to be slaughtered, a people that let soap to be made of its children and lamp shades from the skin of its women is a worse criminal than its murderers. Worse than the Nazis...If your nice civilised parents had come here in time instead of writing books about the love for humanity and singing Hear O Israel on the way to the gas chambers, now don't be shocked, if they instead had killed six million Arabs here or even one million, what would have happened? Sure, two or three nasty pages would have been written in the history books, we would have been called all sorts of names, but we could be here today as a people of 25 million!
"Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don't care. And I don't mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal.

Many Israelis are not about peace.

[Rearden]

Originally posted by klaucke
I can't believe you would attempt to infer that one group of peoples (the Israelis) are better than another (the Palestinians). Excluding the terrorists of each group, what exactly makes one set of persons better than the other? I can't believe an adult (I assume you are) even posted that.

Yes, I do think Israelis have a superior culture to the "Palestinians".

And I do appreciate your reply to my initial question. Food for thought.

[klaucke]

In many respects, the Palestinians are the "Jews" of the Arab world-- well educated and with deep cultural roots, leading other neighboring peoples to be scornful of them.