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Date Posted: 18:28:50 05/12/04 Wed
Author: OOPS!! MG
Subject: Re: Damn a sorry assed "cut n' paste" job
In reply to: Marv 's message, "Damn a sorry assed "cut n' paste" job" on 18:25:56 05/12/04 Wed

>> > But, on the average, I like Fred's column....>>>
>Crimes
>
>They're What Somebody Else Does
>Monday, May 10th, 2004
>
>I keep getting mail saying I should write about the
>crimes of Israel, so Mossad will assassinate me and I
>can be a footnote in history books. OK. Here goes.
>
>Crimes, as best I can understand them: I’m not too
>good at understanding things, I know, but I’ll try.
>
>Israel took the land of the Palestinians by force of
>arms and proceeded to occupy it. True enough. To do
>this they had to pry out the British, who also had
>taken Palestine by force of arms and occupied it,
>along with, at various times, the United States,
>Canada, Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa,
>Egypt, and Ireland. (Generic Christians took Palestine
>starting in 1099, and it worked about as well for
>them. If I were wiser I might see a lesson here. But
>I’m not.)
>
>We have all seen pictures of Israel bombing cities
>full of Moslems, as for example Beirut. This is
>clearly a bad thing to do. The United States of course
>would never bomb cities full of Moslems. Or
>Vietnamese. Rumors to the contrary are preposterous
>and need not be considered. It just isn’t the
>American way, some years.
>
>But if the US did bomb Moslems it would be a good
>thing to do, because it would be to bring democracy,
>peace, and love to the benighted ragheads. (Personally
>I’ve always wanted to be bombed into a higher moral
>state.) The Israelis have no ennobling excuse of
>bringing betterment. They are just defending
>themselves. Or think they are. It sure doesn’t seem
>to work very well.
>
>Nor would the United States torture prisoners as the
>Israelis do. In the unlikely event that Americans did
>engage in torture, it would be the work of a few rogue
>soldiers, specifically the entire military
>intelligence apparatus using techniques taught to them
>by the CIA, the whole business being condoned up to
>the level of the Secretary of Defense.
>
>So, you see, the Israelis belong to a small sordid
>group of torturers consisting only of themselves and
>every other country on earth. Except maybe Andorra.
>(Is Sark a country?)
>
>Everybody gets mad when some Israeli helicopter blows
>up a Palestinian leader with a missile, like when the
>US bombed Ghadaffi’s palace but missed, because
>it’s murder and you aren’t supposed to do that. By
>contrast the American CIA doesn’t assassinate
>people, which is why an executive order was needed to
>make them stop it, if they did. Actually the CIA is a
>humanitarian group and for years carried stretchers
>around foreign cities to give aid to people shot by
>Mossad. Sometimes they were mistaken for Mormon
>missionaries.
>
>But it’s just a few rogues. The United States would
>never, ever have a systematic campaign of
>assassination, as the Phoenix Program wasn’t. Never.
>
>Now, if I were a Palestinian, I believe I’d do just
>what the Palestinians are doing. Thing is, if I were
>an Israeli, I believe I’d do just what they are
>doing. (You don’t suppose that’s the problem, do
>you?) It reminds me of Northern Ireland. I like Irish
>Catholics just fine. I like Irish Protestants just
>fine. I can’t tell’em apart. But they’re always
>blowing each other up. Or were.
>
>Whenever I say the following, everybody gets riled and
>sends threatening email. Still, I’ll say it: Hideous
>barbarism is what we do. Just about all of us. The
>elegant Belgians, Inspector Poirot and all that? Read
>about the Congo. The gentle Dutch? Check Indonesia.
>After WWII, I don’t quite see how the British,
>Germans, or Americans can be too huffy because someone
>else bombs cities.
>
>Anyway, I’m willing to grant that Israelis are
>uniquely terrible folk, ‘bout like everybody else,
>and no end monstrous, and eat babies. Being as I am a
>simple-minded country boy, though, I keep thinking of
>simple-minded questions. Like, what exactly do we
>expect the Israelis to do? I mean, I know they’re
>terrible and all, but they’re there. Maybe a better
>question is what would you do if you were where they
>are. It’s easy to solve problems you don’t have
>from Cleveland.
>
>Now, any discussion of what the Israelis ought to do
>bogs down in about three seconds into arguments about
>whether Israel should ever have been allowed to exist.
>That’s easy. No. Things would have been lots easier
>for almost everybody. But then, maybe the Apaches
>don’t think the United States should exist. Maybe
>the Dravidians think the Aryans should high-tail it
>back to Iran. The Mexicans want California back, which
>they stole by force of arms from the Indians, who
>probably want it back too.
>
>Thing is, Israel does exist. Should and ought to have
>don’t matter. It’s like saying Aunt Penelope
>shouldn’t have married a drunk and had seven
>feeble-minded kids. But she did. You gotta deal with
>it.
>
>Best I can tell, the Israelis have these choices:
>
>1 March into the sea and drown. It would be a solution
>of sorts, but the smart money doesn’t like it.
>
>2 Emigrate to Brighton Beach. If they had wanted to,
>they would have already, so they probably won’t.
>Leaving isn’t really a choice. Who would take more
>than some of them?
>
>3 Give the land back and retreat to the borders of
>1967. This sounds like a nice idea, from Cleveland.
>You know, like Mikey grabbed Billy’s ball on the
>playground, and he should give it back and learn to
>share and be all friends with Billy.
>
>Maybe it would have worked, once. This isn’t once.
>There is too much bad blood. It doesn’t follow that
>because the Israelis do bad things, the Palestinians
>don’t. They blow up shopping malls.
>
>Leaving aside territorial ambitions, which exist,
>returning the land would be dangerous on military
>grounds. For example, look at where the West Bank fits
>into what is today Israel, note the shape of what
>remains when they are removed, and reflect on the
>range of a .105 howitzer. If returning the land would
>guarantee that the Palestinians would live peacefully
>with the Israelis, and grow olives, and invite them to
>drumming circles, OK. But it ain’t likely. Everybody
>hates everybody else too much. If I were an Israeli, I
>wouldn’t risk it.
>
>4 Kill all the Palestinians or, in the less brutal
>school of ethnic cleansing of, say, 1493, shove them
>into Jordan. I’ll get email disagreeing, but I
>don’t think, despite Sharon and Kahane and such,
>that the Israelis would go for the former, even if
>they could get away with it, which they in all
>likelihood couldn’t. Expulsion would be a lesser but
>a huge gamble. I wouldn’t do it.
>
>5 Build that fool wall. I guess that’s what I would
>do. It’s a bad idea and probably won’t work, which
>distinguishes it slightly from bad ideas that
>certainly won’t work.>>>>>-------->>>> Credit to http://www.fredoneverything.net/

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