I was glad about all the statements released yesterday, Jets, ADL, various other players on the periphery of the issue. The only way to deal with extremists is to make it clear that their opinions represent a small minority with whom most people disagree. The statements yesterday moved us along that path. The irony is that the people trying to paint Oday Aboushi as a bigoted extremist instead outed themselves in the role of small-minded paranoid haters.
The 2000 Camp David talks gave the Palestinians 95% of a balanced deal without a counter offer. Arafat walked away and started the 2nd Intifada. That gave the right in Israel the upper hand in annexing more territory. Arafat essentially blew the deal because he was a very rich coward. Clinton's President a failure and the right wing in Israel was greatly empowered. There is no question Arafat sold out to the hard line Palestinians and ultimately empowered the hard right in Israel. Peace was at hand Israel negotiated in good faith, Arafat walked and tried to pressure Israel to negotiate with itself through terror. It backfired. It was a royal fuckup by the Palestinian authority. Israel was willing to resettle and have land swaps. Highly unlikely they will every do that again.
Absolutely, the kid grew up in Brooklyn and went to a Catholic High School. Doesn't anybody think about that? It's nothing but hate and fear that drive these people and I'm proud of the way he and the Jets have handled it.
The US has a policy of unconditional support for Israel. That would also mean that,since otherwise it would be fairly obvious that it is not support for any moral reasoning,they need to stretch the truth about Israel,and discredit any opposition. That would be media,school history teaching etc etc. So any info that you will find will tell you everything happened one way,meanwhile the rest of the planet is calling BS. That is what I mean by brainwashed. A 2 state solution is the only way. There is no other way. BUT,the solution would always lean heavily favorable to US and Israel. So even with a solution of anykind,there will always be resentment. There will never be peace. And seeing how industrialized nations are business war machines,im not so sure actual peace is really any desired outcome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahr_El-Baqar_primary_school_bombing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Fakhura_school_incident http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...40-die-Israel-bombs-safe-haven-UN-school.html *WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT* And these incidents just a few of the many school related killings. Can you please cite me a hezbola attack that even came close to that? 40+ children is unacceptable, no matter what the excuse is. If the US government discovered a group of terrorists operating on US soil and they were forced to flee into a school, I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb here and say that they wouldn't just blindly fire into the school killing everyone inside. Sure, they'll claim like it's a complete accident. "durrrrr, we didn't realize that there were actually kids in the school when we shot it up blindly!" To deny that Israel used the killing of civilians to spread fear to discourage rocket attacks is beyond silly. They have publicly stated it numerous times after incidents like this. That's how terrorism functions, it relies on keeping people afraid. Both sides are in the wrong. To attempt to rationalize or justify the killing of school children in response to rocket attacks, shows a lot more than personal bias. Funny, when a rocket kills an innocent Israeli you don't hear anybody refer to it as collateral damage in a war. But Israel can over react and slaughter near 50 kids in retaliation while killing 7 militants total, and nobody says a word over here. It's not collateral damage when the vast majority of the casualties are innocent. I'm just saying the American media coverage of the Israel situation is absurdly biased, and it leads to the majority of the public blindly supporting Israel. This is why when people like me dare question their methods, people get so defensive as if it's outrageous to question them. This leads to ridiculous neo-nazi / KKK comparisons. I feel that both sides are scumbags, so I'm technically neutral in the whole conflict. I wish one side or the other would set an example of peace instead of continuously blowing each other up but I'm not expecting it.
One would hope not however you seem to forget what happened with the Branch Dividians. Quite a few innocent women and children suffered horrible deaths at the hands of the US Government. They were guilty of no crimes regardless of what Koresh had done.
Waco was an example of a controlled situation gone wrong. The government may or may not have been concerned about the potential for a mass suicide in the Branch Davidian compound. Whatever the motivations for the assault that ended the siege the mechanics of the assault were flawed. Using vehicles capable of sparking a fire in a situation in which the Branch Davidians were known to have a large stockpile of flammable materials was just a bad call. Whether you believe the vehicles used sparked the fire or the cultists inside set the fire it is clear that the government was going to be blamed for the ensuing carnage after the fire started. In situations in which the government has control of a relatively stable situation the primary motivation for government forces on the scene must be to maintain that controlled stable situation. Anything that the government does that upsets the situation creates an enormous overhanging responsibility to ensure that the situation is resolved in a stable manner by the time events are concluded. Ruby Ridge is an even more egregious example of the government misfiring (literally) in a situation in which they had absolute control of everything except what was going on in the house. Randy Weaver's wife was killed by a government sniper because somebody up in the chain of command got impatient and gave the field operatives the go-ahead to take the shot whenever they saw it. This despite the fact that Weaver and his family were up on the ridge and going nowhere and that nobody but them was at risk at any point during the confrontation and siege. The government may have thought the Branch Davidians were going to commit suicide and murder many innocents in the process. That is the ONLY justification for the actions they took to end the stalemate. Actions which resulted in the deaths of many people including innocents. The government may have thought that Randy Weaver was going to kill his wife and kids and commit suicide after that. That's the ONLY justification for giving the snipers the go-ahead to take a shot if they saw it. Vicki Weaver was holding a 10 month old child in her arms at the moment that the bullet passed through her head killing her. If the child had been killed I truly believe that the US government would have teetered on the brink that day. The head of the FBI certainly would have been fired.
