Blah Blah Blah Blah
Posted on 2009.01.05 at 02:17Current Mood:
aggravated
The last time I got totally involved in an online debate justifying Israel's actions was back in the wild days of the alt.callahans news-groups. I literally spent hours everyday, for a week, researching and debating a single thread. I wish I could find it on Google! I don't have that type of energy any more. So ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
odanu, I'll maybe pull off one final response, tomorrow morning, to your questions (y'all can go read it here, if you promise to play politely). Despite my respect for odanu, I think I've moved past the stage of trying to actually explain these issues to ANY-body on the net, at least during the fighting. It's just too draining and annoying, and with extremely few exceptions, I've never gotten the pig to sing.
Just two final points:
1) Watch this very short film aptly titled 15 Seconds:
Requires Flash. A direct link, if the embedded one doesn't work: 15 Seconds.
This has been going on almost daily, for the past seven years. Where the fuck was the "international community" then? I have a cousin, Noam Bedin, who lives in this town of Sderot. His job is to try and mitigate media bias, and make sure the cry of Sderot is heard. I have another much younger cousin, who is receiving treatment for being "shell-shocked". Don't tell me these are improvised home-made weapons. These are government massed-produced death. The only real explanation why despite thousands of such rocket attacks, so few Israelis have died, is because G-d watches over his chosen. But that's not an argument that will get you many "points" in a debate...
2) A simple visual reminder of what the term Genocide actually means:
This is the family tree of the immediate family of my great-grandparents Moshe and Gittle Pollak of Sighet, Romania. I could just as easily expanded this tree in both directions by adding their siblings, but that would be very incomplete, because even the information itself is mostly lost. Of the twenty-two people represented here, being the parents, eleven siblings, their wives and children, FOUR survived (my grandmother, Cecillia Etkin, who lived through Auschwitz and three sisters, hidden as non-Jews). That is Genocide. When we have a hundred thousand dead in Gaza, then you could think of using that word. The term "cultural genocide" is utter bullshit. The only way to "kill" a culture, is to kill it's members. Just ask the English, they tried destroying the Irish culture. Just ask the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Communists. They ALL tried it with those ever so "problematic" Jews. Fat lot of good it did them.
But frankly, and I'm sure this will annoy a hell of a lot of you open-minded liberals, the so-called Religion Of Peace, was NEVER anything of the sort (except perhaps very briefly under the influence of the Spanish Moors, back in the 12th century). Even more so than the blood-thirsty European Christians. This is a "culture" in which it is normative for a father/brother to gladly slaughter his daughter/sister if he disapproves of how she dresses, all in the name of "family honor". This is a "culture" in which mothers pray that their adolescent son be worthy of them and blow himself up before breakfast, just as long as he kills some infidels too. Need I say more?
So yes indeed I DO believe that as a group/culture the Arabs are incapable of being reasoned with, or even know how to act in their own interest. You show me another culture that so thoroughly overruns the most basic biological imperatives... Even the best of negotiators would have a impossible task in dealing with damn Nihilists, who's only wish is to sow Death and Destruction, regardless of who they kill, including their own people. This is a "culture" the world is best without, yes. And yes, NOT all Muslims are raving lunatics, frothing at the mouth, but then neither are all Christians equally "devout".
There will NEVER be peace in the Middle-East, until the Arabs BEG us to stop killing them. Sadly, Israel yet lacks the fibre/desperation to actually retaliate properly, so that won't happen either. Certainly not in THIS round of fighting. Now, of course, we are all waiting to see how soon our northern friendly neighbor Nassralla will follow through on his since retracted promise to attack Israel in response to Gaza. My step-brother has been emergency reserve-activated to watch the Lebanese border, and my brother in-law is very likely to go into Gaza. Personally, the only change for me, is that my college is closed for the duration, being within the area targeted by the missiles.
* Exhaustion *
odanu, I'll maybe pull off one final response, tomorrow morning, to your questions (y'all can go read it here, if you promise to play politely). Despite my respect for odanu, I think I've moved past the stage of trying to actually explain these issues to ANY-body on the net, at least during the fighting. It's just too draining and annoying, and with extremely few exceptions, I've never gotten the pig to sing.Just two final points:
1) Watch this very short film aptly titled 15 Seconds:
Requires Flash. A direct link, if the embedded one doesn't work: 15 Seconds.
This has been going on almost daily, for the past seven years. Where the fuck was the "international community" then? I have a cousin, Noam Bedin, who lives in this town of Sderot. His job is to try and mitigate media bias, and make sure the cry of Sderot is heard. I have another much younger cousin, who is receiving treatment for being "shell-shocked". Don't tell me these are improvised home-made weapons. These are government massed-produced death. The only real explanation why despite thousands of such rocket attacks, so few Israelis have died, is because G-d watches over his chosen. But that's not an argument that will get you many "points" in a debate...
2) A simple visual reminder of what the term Genocide actually means:
This is the family tree of the immediate family of my great-grandparents Moshe and Gittle Pollak of Sighet, Romania. I could just as easily expanded this tree in both directions by adding their siblings, but that would be very incomplete, because even the information itself is mostly lost. Of the twenty-two people represented here, being the parents, eleven siblings, their wives and children, FOUR survived (my grandmother, Cecillia Etkin, who lived through Auschwitz and three sisters, hidden as non-Jews). That is Genocide. When we have a hundred thousand dead in Gaza, then you could think of using that word. The term "cultural genocide" is utter bullshit. The only way to "kill" a culture, is to kill it's members. Just ask the English, they tried destroying the Irish culture. Just ask the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans and Communists. They ALL tried it with those ever so "problematic" Jews. Fat lot of good it did them.
But frankly, and I'm sure this will annoy a hell of a lot of you open-minded liberals, the so-called Religion Of Peace, was NEVER anything of the sort (except perhaps very briefly under the influence of the Spanish Moors, back in the 12th century). Even more so than the blood-thirsty European Christians. This is a "culture" in which it is normative for a father/brother to gladly slaughter his daughter/sister if he disapproves of how she dresses, all in the name of "family honor". This is a "culture" in which mothers pray that their adolescent son be worthy of them and blow himself up before breakfast, just as long as he kills some infidels too. Need I say more?
So yes indeed I DO believe that as a group/culture the Arabs are incapable of being reasoned with, or even know how to act in their own interest. You show me another culture that so thoroughly overruns the most basic biological imperatives... Even the best of negotiators would have a impossible task in dealing with damn Nihilists, who's only wish is to sow Death and Destruction, regardless of who they kill, including their own people. This is a "culture" the world is best without, yes. And yes, NOT all Muslims are raving lunatics, frothing at the mouth, but then neither are all Christians equally "devout".
There will NEVER be peace in the Middle-East, until the Arabs BEG us to stop killing them. Sadly, Israel yet lacks the fibre/desperation to actually retaliate properly, so that won't happen either. Certainly not in THIS round of fighting. Now, of course, we are all waiting to see how soon our northern friendly neighbor Nassralla will follow through on his since retracted promise to attack Israel in response to Gaza. My step-brother has been emergency reserve-activated to watch the Lebanese border, and my brother in-law is very likely to go into Gaza. Personally, the only change for me, is that my college is closed for the duration, being within the area targeted by the missiles.
* Exhaustion *
