In Remembrance of this day 9-11-01

I think if you read the works of anyone in the scholarly, foreign policy, or intelligence fields, such as the books by CIA bin-Ladin Task Force Chief Michael Scheurer or anything in peer-reviewed pubications such as MIT's International Security
you will find that everyone knowledgable in the topic agrees that al-Queda's specific grievances have to do with the presence of American troops in Arabia, and the regimes in Egypt, et. al. which have forsaken the Arab-Israeli conflict under American pressure.

If you refer to scholarly histories of the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict, such as Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete
you will gain a very different history of Israel than that provided elsewhere on this thread.

On a more superficial level though the illegitimate expansion of Israel can be summed up like this:

1.The UN under US pressure had no more right to carve out a Jewish state in the middle of Palestine anymore than the UN would have a right to carve one out of central Texas. Palestine was already a nation predominated by Arabs living under various occupations for a long time, and they had been struggling to throw off their various occupiers, most recently in the Arab uprising against the British in the 1930s.

Additionally the United States State Department, and every US military intelligence service stridently counseled President Truman against supporting a new Jewish state in Palestine. It only came about because of domestic political factors. No one except in the US government except for Truman's domestic staff favored the creation of Israel.

2.In the Israeli war of independence in 1948 they immediately expanded their borders beyond the UN Partition area.

3.In 1956 Israel conspired with France and England to attack and occupy the Sinai. This war was only ended when President Eisenhower objected to the on-going Israeli aggression.

4.In 1967 Israel attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan to occupy the Sinai, Gaza, West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Golan Heights. Thereafter Israeli intelligence issued several studies indicating that there was no Arab attack planned on Israel [the pretext for the war]. These Israeli intel reports actually led to a more lax readiness in Israel which contributed to their being suprised by the Arab attack in 1973 to try to re-gain their lands.

5.Beginning in the 1970s with the installation of the first Likud government, Israel has continued to establish rather permenant Jewish settlements [paid for mostly with US aid] on the West Bank. These settlements are always considered non-negotiable in all negotitations.

6.Beginning in 1982 Israel has attacked Lebabon many times, most recently in 2006, and targeted and killed UN observers every time this has occured. Each time Isreal has done this they have been defeated by various Lebanese militias.

7.With the de-classification in Israel in the 1990s of the bulk of Israel's intra-governmental documents Israeli scholars themselves were shocked that the founders of the state, such as David Ben-Gureon, admitted plainly among themselves what they were doing. They often referred to the Arabs as being like native Americans, and themselves as being like the expanding Americans conquering native peoples across north America in the 1800s.

After the publication of these documents on one but the most ignorant people in Israel have any more illusions about how their state came about. In fact there is much more propaganda and distortion here in the US about these matters than in Israel itself. For example, I've been to Israel many times, and no one there ever claims that I'm an anti-semite when I express my anti-Israeli views. Everyone in Israeli is used to harsh criticism of the Israeli state and they know the reasons for it. Even the most conservative Jews in Palestine [the ultra-orthodox community of Jerusalem] are opposed to the Israeli state on religious grounds, and they even refuse to use Israeli currency. No one would accuse them of being anti-semetic.

The Israeli/Jewish state was a horrible mistake for which everyone, including the Israelis themselves, find themselves trapped. A two state solution will not solve anything either, and everyone knows this. Tensions between Jews and non-Jews in Israel in the last ten years have accually gotten much worse, though this has been papered over by a booming economy there which has distracted them. In the end what will happen is that the non-Jewish population of Israel will outnumber the Jews, and then the compostion of the Kinessit will be such that there will be no more Jewish state anymore. With time the problem will be determined by demographics, but until then the grievance of all muslims there, not just the Muslim Brotherhood, etc., will be a problem for us all.

Please explain how the Palestinians have any more birthright to this land than the Israelis? You have not addressed the fact that most recognized historians date Israel's use of this land back to the Israelite monarchy period of 1000-539 BCE. Quite a few believe based on cultural artifacts uncovered that it goes back even hundreds of years before this time. So please explain how the Palestinians then have any more of a claim to the land than the Jewish people have?
I'm also curious for you to respond to this; Nearly 6 Million Jews were exterminated. I sincerely hope you don't fall in the camp of the current Iranian President by trying to deny that the Holocaust took place. Obviously the Jewish people felt strongly that the only way to prevent another Holocaust from occurring was to create a country/state of their own. I don't recall 6 million Palestinians being exterminated this century.
I'm not sure who you had dealings with in Israel but I have numerous Jewish friends and your view points to them do come across as anti-Jewish.
You also have not addressed my point in the previous post. The fact that Bin Laden fell under the spell of the Muslim Brotherhood and followed much of their ideology long before we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.
Here's where you and I fundamentally disagree AustinEscorts. You contend that if we disavowed ourselves from Israel and pulled all our troops out of the Middle East, these animals...sorry, these terrorists, would cease their attacks on western countries. I disagree. I base this on my experiences of having grown up in Europe during the 1970's. I saw and experienced the height of the RAF, Baader-Meinhof and other terrorist forces throughout Europe, carrying out attacks in the name of their ideology.
And wouldn't you know it? Much of the training they received took place in middle eastern countries by?....you guessed it.....Islamic extremists. The bottom line is there will always be people who feel they have the right to terrorize in the name of their "cause". If that cause is not Israel, then it's the rich German bankers, if it's not them, then it's the U.S. environmental policies or our policies towards the poor animals in our country or abortion or a hundred other reasons why they feel justified in killing innocent men, women and children in the name of their cause.
You choose to try to explain why this particular group in the middle east is currently intent on killing. I look at them as no different than any of the other whack jobs that are running around this world and in our very own country killing innocents in the name of their "cause". I don't look to make excuses for them, I just try to do my little part in stopping them.
Let's also be honest about something. You mentioned the booming economy in Israel. What you left out was what that land was like before Israel turned into what it is today. Mark Twain, many British and others who traveled there a hundred years ago made very clear who lived there and what the state of the land was.
I've been to many Arab countries, and Israel is a beam of shining light compared to those countries. Whether you want to look at education, agriculture, standard of living etc etc.
The ignorance I have found in so many of these other countries is quite simply astounding. Some of that can be directly attributed to the wave of fundamentalism that has taken hold in many of their countries. When you want to discriminate against and hold back half of your population simply based on their gender (female), your country will never prosper. Let's stop this notion that Al-Queda and Bin Laden are our only threat. The Taliban that was in place in Afghanistan prior to 9/11 were doing everything in their power to take this once beautiful country and turn it back into the middle ages. That's documented fact. There is no place in the world for backward thinking like that anymore. That type of ignorance will always breed hate, suspicion, jealousy etc. When the only form of education that you allow is the reading of the Qu'ran, and then only select passages....what kind of people do you think you create?
When the only people that are allowed to teach are fanatical religious zealots, what do you think is going to happen?
That in the long run would have presented just as many problems as Al-Queda.
That is why when people today try to say...."oh, there's only a few hundred Al-Queda left, we're fighting the wrong people".....I disagree. It's the same ideology, it bubbles up from the same fountain and it has to be stopped in its tracks.

You are correct in that Osama bin-Ladin was heavily influenced by Egyptians who were thrown out of Egypt after Sadat was assassinated and landed in Pakistan. The funny thing about Al-Queda is that it is really an Egyptian organization which gained the support of bin-Ladin, and then began recruiting other Saudis during the 1980s Jihad in Afghanistan and thereafter.

However bin-Ladin and his gang never viewed the US as a target until the US was permitted to stay in Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. Bin-Ladin first tried to influence the Saudi government to ask the US to leave, and when that backfired he began his crusade against the Saudi government and the US. Michael Scheuer and many others have chronicled this, and have explained his list of grievances, etc.

As for the Israelites having dominion over Palestine a thousand years ago and more, that's rather like saying that the Mayans should re-establish their kingdom in modern day Mexico. A lot happened in Palestine since the ancient Hebrew kingdoms, most recently the wholesale abandonment of the region by most Jews for hundreds of years, only to start trickling back in zionist groups after the First World War and Russian Revolution. It might surprise many to hear this but many if not most zionists didn't favor the creation of a Jewish state, just as many Jews in Palestine today do not recognize Israel. Noam Chomsky for one, who was one of my teachers at MIT in the 1980s, was an American Zionist Youth Leader who belonged to a group opposed to statehood, and he remains opposed to statehood.

The politics that led to statehood was a radicalization of the Hagana, who played a good cop/bad cop routine with the Irgun and Stern terrorist groups to mislead world opinion. While the Hagana was making public pronouncements of pleuralism and tolerance for the benefit of world opinion, their secret partners in the Irgun were slaughtering Arabs in their neighborhoods to induce them to flee in terror out of the Jewish zones. This is why practically all the real estate in Haifa is still under Arab title, but the Arabs who actually own the buildings and land are too afraid to make any claim to them.

Mokoa is correct, lets get this thread back on track.....

sixx

Roger that Sixx!
Remember 9/11, those we lost that day, their families and loved ones who suffered and for those we've lost since.
God bless America!

...especially those like Pat Tillman, who realized too late that what was going on in Afghanistan had nothing to do with the 9-11 attack, and that he'd been dupped.

Or as his mother recently said in a film about his killing,

"...the truth about what happened to Pat -- and to every other soldier who has died -- is so important. The truth shines a light on systemmatic corruption, incompetence, and lack of accountablity in the military and government."

-- Mary Tillman

www.aolnews.com/nation/article/pat-tillman-documentary-already-stirring-controversy/19592650