NOT about Increased Islamic Influence in European Nations

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

So where is the responsibility of the palestinians in this? You may be COMPLETELY unaware - but whenever Israel makes a move to pull out - there are suicide bombings.

I have not seen a direct parallel between reconciliatory gestures on the part of Israel and an increase in terrorism. I have seen that terrorism has continued in spite of Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza. I might add that many (probably most) Palestinians don't believe at all that this pull-out will occur.

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

I do 100% agree with the term homicide bombing. The palestinians stated goal for a long time has been the utter destruction of israel - not peace side by side as you seem to think.

The original Partition Plan was quite unfair to the Arabs. It makes sense to me that they rejected it. If you look at the population figures for the proposed Palestinian and the Jewish states, you'll see how unfair they were. That the Palestinians should initially have rejected the existence of a Jewish State, while this state was an idea rather then a fact, makes sense to me. The UN proposal was unfair.

Now I know that many religious leaders among the Arabs have called for the utter destruction of the Israeli state, and I also know that the Arab nations surrounding Israel did aggressively attack Israel with the intent of annihilating it. I also heard that this was in part done because of what happened to the Palestinians, because of the Palestinian expulsions the Jews were committing. The Palestinians were angry at the Arabs for not coming to their rescue sooner.

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

It was NOT israel which started the war - but the arab countries. if it was not for Israel being attacked - and the constant goal of Israel's destruction - you would not see the palestinians suffering like they are. You seem to want to completely just ignore the role the palestinians and the arab countries have played in this situation.

What you say here is true. Of course, it is a fact that Israel launched a preemptive strike against those Arab countries (Egypt, Syria, etc.), but I won't deny that they were planning to hit Israel first. Because of that, the attack does seem justified. The Arab countries were not acting entirely out of religious conviction though, but were also acting to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people. There was more then one reason for their making the choices they did.

I have some difficulty with your reasoning though. You are pointing the finger back at the Arab countries, using Palestininan support, as the aggressors. However, you seem to be justifying Israel's retaliation based upon the argument "they started it." Though in fact their having really started it is questionable- I don't look on America with an attitude of "they started it" because we destroyed the depraved regime that ruled Iraq. In the same way I don't look on the Arab nations as having been utterly horrible because of invading Israel, when in part they were doing so because of the suffering of their fellow Arab and Muslim kin (the Israelis did deport people before the major war with the Arab nations). But even if the Arab nations and Palestinians did "start it" that wouldn't be justification for the Israelis behaving with cruelty to the Palestinians. When Germany was split by the Berlin Wall, the Americans took care of their side of the place and poured money into it. We helped the German people, while Russia abused and took advantage of them. The Russians had justification, because Germany had certainly invaded Russia in the past. Yet did that give them the right to go through Berlin raping the women, taking what they wanted, and reducing their side of the country to poverty? In the same way Israel has stifled the Palestinian people and continues to keep them in a state of poverty and despair, packed into refugee camps in a state of squalor. Did Russia and does Israel have the right to be inhumane, because someone else was inhumane first?