yboxman
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Right, so not that I see the automated moderating algorithm has finally accepted me, here goes. Sorry to start off my first post on this forum with such a massive wall of text- but….
So I've just finished watching the 2004 documentary. If you boil away the anecdotes, pathos, etc you get a fairly straightforward argument:
a. Terrorism is the result of harm and humiliation inflicted on people under the occupation.
b. Suicide bombings in particular are indicative of this- people would not want to kill themselves unless they were desperate and suffering under a particularly inhumane opression.
c. any group under occupation is bound to respond with terror and suicide bombings. It's "natural" and "unavoidable".
d. Therefore, the best way to end terror attacks is for the occupation to end.
e. No military means will work to end terror attacks- they will only serve to provide greater motivation for future terror.
f. When American news reporters report upon terror attacks without putting it in "proper" context they are unprofessional. When Euro and Arab reporters educate the viewers they are doing their job.
There are a number of other claims the documentary makes though it is very careful to make them implicit rather than explicit:
1. There is no qualitative difference between police and military actions taken by the occupation such as roadblocks, arrests, targeted killings and military actions inflicting collateral damage on Palestinian civilians and the deliberate killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinians.
2. Since there is no moral difference between the two the moral opprobium should rest on those who:
2.a. are stronger.
2.b. inflict more casulties.
I guess that the Israelis fit the bill.
The thing is, the discussion to date has focused on the second set of arguments: implicit moral or anti-moral arguments. And I think the reason for that is obvious. It's because, on the face of it, the first set of arguments (let's call them the "factual" arguments) appears so intuitive and the second set of arguments seems so infuriating to conventional morality that those opposed to the documentary are drawn to them like moths.
But I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy. If, regardless of morality, there is no way to end terror attacks besides ending the occupation then, regardless of morality and a wish not to surrender to terror isn’t that the right thing to do? Aren't any military actions against terror useless, counterproductive, and simply end up causing more blood and tears?
Well, here's the thing. This documentary was screened in 2004 when Israel was dealing with exactly (or not exactly. I'll deal with the whole false causation theory later) this question. For several years, international pressure and internal divisions prevented Israel from retaking security control of the PA. Then, starting at about the same time the film was being Made Ariel Sharon had gained sufficient strength against both domestic and foreign opposition and launched defensive shield and it's followup reoccupation of the PA. This was the result (2002 before, 2003 after):
2000 43
2001 207
2002 457
2003 213
2004 124
2005 53
2006 29
2007 13
2008 36
2009 6
2010 10
2011 21
2012 9
2013 1
Today? Israelis have much better security than they had at any time since 1993 when security control was handed over to the PLO over parts of the West Bank. Hell, fewer Israelis are being slain by terror than almost any time since 1948 (Any time if you judge in proportion to the population)- and those who are being killed are not being attacked from the WB!
What it boils down to is that the Military solution to terror from the West bank…. Worked. If it had been fully applied in 2000, rather than 2003 it would have worked sooner, vastly reducing the number of both Israeli and Palestinian dead. If the military solution had not been applied then more Israelis would have died.
This isn't an opinion. It isn't even really a conjucture. It's as close to a solid fact as you can get to in this world. And the thing is… it was apparent even in 2004 to those not blinded by ideology. Look at the numbers. So the BBC lady who so earnestly educated her viewers about how Ariel Sharon's "brutal" retaliation to the suicide bombing she was covering would only "deepen the cycle of violence"? Well, the bottom line is that she was being unprofessional. Or rather, she was speaking outside the scope of her profession. The thing is, this was 2004. Taking a look at the bigger picture, getting some perspective… this was hard. So the mistake of all those earnest activists in 2004 is understandable and forgivable- even if their advocacy ended up costing the lives of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians.
But what is the excuse of people making this claim today?
OK, so the third link of the whole "occupation is the root cause of terror and therefore the solution is an end to the occupation- you can't end terror by military means alone" logic chain is false.
Does that mean that the causative portion of that sentence " occupation is the root cause of terror" is wrong? Or that the proposed solution "Hey ya! Hey Ho! The occupation has to go!" does not have better and less bloody prospects of success?
Not necessarily. It is possible for terrorism to have BOTH a political and a military solution. It is possible that terrorism is an outgrowth of a wrong military-political policy rather than it's cause. But is that really the case? Fortunately, the entire world, rather than only Israel/Palestine, is our lab. We can, and should look at the wider region to see whether it is possible for terrorism in general, and suicide bombings in particular, to arise in the absence of an Israeli (Or U.S, or whatever occupation).
Since we're discussing a 2004 documentary, let's take a quick flashback further back in time.
September 9th, 2001. Sheikh Masoud, the leader of the Tajik dominated Northern alliance in Afghanistan is giving an interview. The people performing the interview are, in fact, Taliban agents. When the cameras warm up they blow both Masoud and themselves up. Why?
The Taliban is already winning the civil war and has dominated Afghanistan for a long time- so there is no desperate need for this tactic. The Suicide bombers themselves are Tunisian Arabs, good, well educated middle class kids from what may be the most Europe like state in the Arab world. The conflict itself is a low-grade civil war between rival Muslims- not a struggle of "national liberation" against foreign occupants. So what personal and group motive is enough to overcome the human desire to live and the bounds of common decency?
Those are question Western reporters SHOULD have been asking. But two days later… well, you know what happened. nobody ever asked the right questions. They should have.
Because over the past decade the world has witnessed a bllody tide of terror directed… at Muslims. By Muslims.
Iraq. Most of the terror attacks during the U.S occupation were never directed at Americans- most casualties of the Iraq war were Shiites murdered by Sunnis and Sunnis murdered by Shiites. Both employed suicide bombers. Note that the Yezidis and Christians who are not part of this civil war have been disproportionate victims of it. Why?
Pakistan. No foreign occupation. 35,000 killed by terror attacks. Note that most were killed AFTER the "oppressive military regime" was replaced by democracy. A disproportionate number of the victims are Shiites, Ahmadis, Ismailis, Christians and Hindus.
Anyway, the point is that "occupation" does not seem to be the only thing capable of causing people to either kill innocents or do so by blowing themselves up. So what is going on? Let's leave that aside for now and go back to Israel/Palestine.
It seems that occupation is not the sole POSSIBLE explanation as to why Palestinians are prepared to kill Israeli civilians. But, nonetheless, is it possible that Palestinians only started doing this after the occupation started? Could the occupation>terrorism explanation be true for this particular part of the world even if it is false elsewhere.
Well… no. the PLO was founded before 1967 (1964 to be precise. Fatah and most of the other groups making it up in the mid 1950s). OK, but then they were angry at the result of the 1948 war, right?
Well, the only problem is that incidents like this: 1929 Hebron massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia occured frequently throughout the 1920-1948 period. And Jews only started retaliating, with a great deal of opposition from the mainstream leadership, after 1936. Well, could it be a response to the Idea of Zionism? Nope. Jews living in Southern Syria/ future Israel-Palestine were facing these kinds of attacks even in the 1820s, long before Herzel was born.
OK, enough dredging through history. Let's suppose that the third link of the "occupation is the root cause of terror and therefore the solution is an end to the occupation- you can't end terror by military means alone" is wrong and so is the first. Regardless of the cause or possibility of military solution to terrorism is it possible that the best solution to it is an unconditional end to the occupation and humiliation suffered by Palestinians, freeing them of all obligations and demands those pesky Israelis keep on insisting on prior to withdrawing?
Well, we have a test case for that as well. Three of them actually. Gaza. Lebanon. And the Sinai. Oddly enough, Israel has come under attack from all three. Regardless of whether the legal entity on the other side was a state or non-state actor, regardless of the formal agreements signed. One good soul here has insisted that the Palsetinians only fire rockets on Israeli civilians when Israel "kills Palestinians". Not exactly.
The latest incident, as usual unreported on most world news, had Islamic Jihad fire half a dozen rockets at Israeli civilians after two of their men were killed, apparently by accident, by… Hamas. The first died during the equivalent of a bar-room fight. His clan, divided between Hamas and IJ supporters angrily demanded compensation in the form of Hamas permitting them to fire at Israel (Iran pays them for each rocket fired). Hamas refused but the next day, during the funeral, one of the mourners was run over, apparently by accident, by Hamas security men. This time the Islamic Jihad insisted on firing the rockets.
Nowhere was Israeli action or counter reaction in the loop. Needless to say, no Palestinian journalists or politicians criticized the morality of the unprovoked rockets, fired during a ceasefire at strictly civilian targets.
And that, in a nutshell, is the real reason for why suicide bombings occur in the Muslim world more than anywhere else (The Tamil Tigers may have started using the techinque first- but never on anything approaching this scale!). It's because no one says they shouldn't. It's because even those Palestinians who did not personally support the massacre of innocents were more concerned with offering justifications for the attacks then in stopping them.
So I've just finished watching the 2004 documentary. If you boil away the anecdotes, pathos, etc you get a fairly straightforward argument:
a. Terrorism is the result of harm and humiliation inflicted on people under the occupation.
b. Suicide bombings in particular are indicative of this- people would not want to kill themselves unless they were desperate and suffering under a particularly inhumane opression.
c. any group under occupation is bound to respond with terror and suicide bombings. It's "natural" and "unavoidable".
d. Therefore, the best way to end terror attacks is for the occupation to end.
e. No military means will work to end terror attacks- they will only serve to provide greater motivation for future terror.
f. When American news reporters report upon terror attacks without putting it in "proper" context they are unprofessional. When Euro and Arab reporters educate the viewers they are doing their job.
There are a number of other claims the documentary makes though it is very careful to make them implicit rather than explicit:
1. There is no qualitative difference between police and military actions taken by the occupation such as roadblocks, arrests, targeted killings and military actions inflicting collateral damage on Palestinian civilians and the deliberate killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinians.
2. Since there is no moral difference between the two the moral opprobium should rest on those who:
2.a. are stronger.
2.b. inflict more casulties.
I guess that the Israelis fit the bill.
The thing is, the discussion to date has focused on the second set of arguments: implicit moral or anti-moral arguments. And I think the reason for that is obvious. It's because, on the face of it, the first set of arguments (let's call them the "factual" arguments) appears so intuitive and the second set of arguments seems so infuriating to conventional morality that those opposed to the documentary are drawn to them like moths.
But I'm a nuts and bolts kind of guy. If, regardless of morality, there is no way to end terror attacks besides ending the occupation then, regardless of morality and a wish not to surrender to terror isn’t that the right thing to do? Aren't any military actions against terror useless, counterproductive, and simply end up causing more blood and tears?
Well, here's the thing. This documentary was screened in 2004 when Israel was dealing with exactly (or not exactly. I'll deal with the whole false causation theory later) this question. For several years, international pressure and internal divisions prevented Israel from retaking security control of the PA. Then, starting at about the same time the film was being Made Ariel Sharon had gained sufficient strength against both domestic and foreign opposition and launched defensive shield and it's followup reoccupation of the PA. This was the result (2002 before, 2003 after):
2000 43
2001 207
2002 457
2003 213
2004 124
2005 53
2006 29
2007 13
2008 36
2009 6
2010 10
2011 21
2012 9
2013 1
Today? Israelis have much better security than they had at any time since 1993 when security control was handed over to the PLO over parts of the West Bank. Hell, fewer Israelis are being slain by terror than almost any time since 1948 (Any time if you judge in proportion to the population)- and those who are being killed are not being attacked from the WB!
What it boils down to is that the Military solution to terror from the West bank…. Worked. If it had been fully applied in 2000, rather than 2003 it would have worked sooner, vastly reducing the number of both Israeli and Palestinian dead. If the military solution had not been applied then more Israelis would have died.
This isn't an opinion. It isn't even really a conjucture. It's as close to a solid fact as you can get to in this world. And the thing is… it was apparent even in 2004 to those not blinded by ideology. Look at the numbers. So the BBC lady who so earnestly educated her viewers about how Ariel Sharon's "brutal" retaliation to the suicide bombing she was covering would only "deepen the cycle of violence"? Well, the bottom line is that she was being unprofessional. Or rather, she was speaking outside the scope of her profession. The thing is, this was 2004. Taking a look at the bigger picture, getting some perspective… this was hard. So the mistake of all those earnest activists in 2004 is understandable and forgivable- even if their advocacy ended up costing the lives of hundreds of Israelis and thousands of Palestinians.
But what is the excuse of people making this claim today?
OK, so the third link of the whole "occupation is the root cause of terror and therefore the solution is an end to the occupation- you can't end terror by military means alone" logic chain is false.
Does that mean that the causative portion of that sentence " occupation is the root cause of terror" is wrong? Or that the proposed solution "Hey ya! Hey Ho! The occupation has to go!" does not have better and less bloody prospects of success?
Not necessarily. It is possible for terrorism to have BOTH a political and a military solution. It is possible that terrorism is an outgrowth of a wrong military-political policy rather than it's cause. But is that really the case? Fortunately, the entire world, rather than only Israel/Palestine, is our lab. We can, and should look at the wider region to see whether it is possible for terrorism in general, and suicide bombings in particular, to arise in the absence of an Israeli (Or U.S, or whatever occupation).
Since we're discussing a 2004 documentary, let's take a quick flashback further back in time.
September 9th, 2001. Sheikh Masoud, the leader of the Tajik dominated Northern alliance in Afghanistan is giving an interview. The people performing the interview are, in fact, Taliban agents. When the cameras warm up they blow both Masoud and themselves up. Why?
The Taliban is already winning the civil war and has dominated Afghanistan for a long time- so there is no desperate need for this tactic. The Suicide bombers themselves are Tunisian Arabs, good, well educated middle class kids from what may be the most Europe like state in the Arab world. The conflict itself is a low-grade civil war between rival Muslims- not a struggle of "national liberation" against foreign occupants. So what personal and group motive is enough to overcome the human desire to live and the bounds of common decency?
Those are question Western reporters SHOULD have been asking. But two days later… well, you know what happened. nobody ever asked the right questions. They should have.
Because over the past decade the world has witnessed a bllody tide of terror directed… at Muslims. By Muslims.
Iraq. Most of the terror attacks during the U.S occupation were never directed at Americans- most casualties of the Iraq war were Shiites murdered by Sunnis and Sunnis murdered by Shiites. Both employed suicide bombers. Note that the Yezidis and Christians who are not part of this civil war have been disproportionate victims of it. Why?
Pakistan. No foreign occupation. 35,000 killed by terror attacks. Note that most were killed AFTER the "oppressive military regime" was replaced by democracy. A disproportionate number of the victims are Shiites, Ahmadis, Ismailis, Christians and Hindus.
Anyway, the point is that "occupation" does not seem to be the only thing capable of causing people to either kill innocents or do so by blowing themselves up. So what is going on? Let's leave that aside for now and go back to Israel/Palestine.
It seems that occupation is not the sole POSSIBLE explanation as to why Palestinians are prepared to kill Israeli civilians. But, nonetheless, is it possible that Palestinians only started doing this after the occupation started? Could the occupation>terrorism explanation be true for this particular part of the world even if it is false elsewhere.
Well… no. the PLO was founded before 1967 (1964 to be precise. Fatah and most of the other groups making it up in the mid 1950s). OK, but then they were angry at the result of the 1948 war, right?
Well, the only problem is that incidents like this: 1929 Hebron massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia occured frequently throughout the 1920-1948 period. And Jews only started retaliating, with a great deal of opposition from the mainstream leadership, after 1936. Well, could it be a response to the Idea of Zionism? Nope. Jews living in Southern Syria/ future Israel-Palestine were facing these kinds of attacks even in the 1820s, long before Herzel was born.
OK, enough dredging through history. Let's suppose that the third link of the "occupation is the root cause of terror and therefore the solution is an end to the occupation- you can't end terror by military means alone" is wrong and so is the first. Regardless of the cause or possibility of military solution to terrorism is it possible that the best solution to it is an unconditional end to the occupation and humiliation suffered by Palestinians, freeing them of all obligations and demands those pesky Israelis keep on insisting on prior to withdrawing?
Well, we have a test case for that as well. Three of them actually. Gaza. Lebanon. And the Sinai. Oddly enough, Israel has come under attack from all three. Regardless of whether the legal entity on the other side was a state or non-state actor, regardless of the formal agreements signed. One good soul here has insisted that the Palsetinians only fire rockets on Israeli civilians when Israel "kills Palestinians". Not exactly.
The latest incident, as usual unreported on most world news, had Islamic Jihad fire half a dozen rockets at Israeli civilians after two of their men were killed, apparently by accident, by… Hamas. The first died during the equivalent of a bar-room fight. His clan, divided between Hamas and IJ supporters angrily demanded compensation in the form of Hamas permitting them to fire at Israel (Iran pays them for each rocket fired). Hamas refused but the next day, during the funeral, one of the mourners was run over, apparently by accident, by Hamas security men. This time the Islamic Jihad insisted on firing the rockets.
Nowhere was Israeli action or counter reaction in the loop. Needless to say, no Palestinian journalists or politicians criticized the morality of the unprovoked rockets, fired during a ceasefire at strictly civilian targets.
And that, in a nutshell, is the real reason for why suicide bombings occur in the Muslim world more than anywhere else (The Tamil Tigers may have started using the techinque first- but never on anything approaching this scale!). It's because no one says they shouldn't. It's because even those Palestinians who did not personally support the massacre of innocents were more concerned with offering justifications for the attacks then in stopping them.
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