AGW Supporters always ignore this question

[KitemanSA]

Every Palestinian I have ever known has been a charming, friendly person. Hamas is NOT representative.

To assume it is is like assuming that Obama is representative of MSimon.

[MSimon]

Perhaps, but if Americans had paid more attention to it at the Treaty of Versailles the last century might have turned out rather differently.

I am not sure what you want to say with this.
Can you please specify. I mean I generally agree, but I am not sure that I like the context with dignity and all that.

nothing will ever be gained by stripping the vanquished of all dignity.

http://www.helium.com/items/450906-euro ... versailles

First they have to be vanquished. Left without hope that further military adventures will avail.

Then you deal with their dignity.

The Palestinians feel they have only lost another battle.

The war will continue.

[MSimon]

And it is not as if the Israelis don't have a plan. But it is long term.

Build up the Fatah area economically:

http://www.israel21c.org/technology/isr ... oexistence

And in effect show what is possible if the warfare stops.

In fact BB has said the the he wants to work towards the economic viability of the Fatah area. The second part being left unstated.

As long as the world keeps throwing the Palestinians a life line and gives them moral support there will be no end to war. The fighting doesn't stop until one side or the other loses hope.

====

BTW the Egyptians treat the Palis worse than the Israelis do. And they drain the Palis of cash by allowing the smuggling of arms to continue.

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ifice.html

Even the young fighters of the Abu Rish brigade have tried to leave. Muhammad and Saado, both 27, sold their weapons, took bank loans and paid $2,000 for visas and tickets from Cairo to Beijing on Austrian Airlines. They made it out of Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but the Egyptians put them on a bus, locked the door and drove straight to the airport. For the four days before their departure, they said, the Egyptians then locked them into a crammed airport waiting room.

“A dog wouldn’t use the toilet,” Muhammad said. “They charged us 150 Egyptian pounds a day ($26.30) to use a seat, even the little kids. One Egyptian said, ‘Even a dead body has to pay.’ ” They bribed guards to bring them food and water.

The day of their flight, a Friday, they were brought to the departure hall. But an airlines security guard examined their documents and turned them away. Presumably, the visas were fake. “He looked at us as if we were evil,” Saado said. “There was no respect for us. I hate the Israelis, but I hate the Egyptians more.”

They were returned to the fetid waiting room, and a day later, when there was a busload, they were shipped back, first to El Arish. There they waited for days in an even more disgusting detention area, they said, until the Rafah crossing opened.

“When we finally got back to Gaza, I kissed the soil,” Muhammad said, laughing at his humiliation. “We said, ‘Gaza is paradise!’ ”

[alexjrgreen]

First they have to be vanquished. Left without hope that further military adventures will avail.

Then you deal with their dignity.

The Palestinians feel they have only lost another battle.

The war will continue.

That's just how the Brits felt about the IRA. It never worked.

[MSimon]

Every Palestinian I have ever known has been a charming, friendly person. Hamas is NOT representative.

To assume it is is like assuming that Obama is representative of MSimon.

But that is the paradox. Arabs in general are charming friendly people. They have a tradition of hospitality.

And right alongside that you have the culture of jihad.

[Skipjack]

Alex, in the quoted context I agree with you. The treaty of versailles was directly responsible for Hitler.

[MSimon]

First they have to be vanquished. Left without hope that further military adventures will avail.

Then you deal with their dignity.

The Palestinians feel they have only lost another battle.

The war will continue.

That's just how the Brits felt about the IRA. It never worked.

The IRA was in the main defeated because they had devolved into a criminal gang. They lost the support of the people. The same has happened to Hamas leadership. The leadership gains more from war than from peace.

Read the above link (from 2007).

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ifice.html

The leadership of Gaza has lost the support of the people in the same way the Soviets lost support in the '70s. Everyone still mouthed the platitudes. But it was just going through the motions. Collapse will come eventually.

Netanyahu has a different plan. Enable and encourage economic development in the Palestinian areas Israel controls.

And you will note that the Lebanon border is quiet. The war set back the Palestinians living in Lebanon by a decade. Or three. The leadership had to calm the war because the Lebanese Palestinians could vote with their feet. Too bad no one will take (other than in ones or twos) the Gaza Palestinians.

The best thing that has happened to the Israeli Palestinians is that the world no longer cares the way it once did. And terrorism is no longer as popular as it once was. In addition the Peace movement in Israel is nearly extinct. After the Intifada II (blowing up kids in pizza parlors) and the rockets from Gaza and Lebanon the peace movement has declined from near 50% of the population to around 4%.

A lot of it has to do with the Internet. The refugee "camps" in Gaza were seen to be real cities not tent cities.

The war will come to an end when the Palestinians are prouder of their engineers than of their warriors.

===

Abba Eban once said of the Arabs:

The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

On the United Nations:

If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.

On nations:

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

An echo of Churchill who said of America.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.

[alexjrgreen]

The IRA was in the main defeated because they had devolved into a criminal gang. They lost the support of the people.

This was certainly true of the splinter groups like the INLA, but hardly ever true of the IRA itself, and then not for long. Their enforcement of discipline was brutally effective. Once the IRA saw that the British Government was genuinely committed to justice they gradually stood down and let Sinn Féin take up the struggle politically.

The same has happened to Hamas leadership. The leadership gains more from war than from peace.

I have more respect for the political skills of Hamas than you appear to. They're having to learn diplomacy the hard way, though.

[MSimon]

The IRA was in the main defeated because they had devolved into a criminal gang. They lost the support of the people.

This was certainly true of the splinter groups like the INLA, but hardly ever true of the IRA itself, and then not for long. Their enforcement of discipline was brutally effective. Once the IRA saw that the British Government was genuinely committed to justice they gradually stood down and let Sinn Féin take up the struggle politically.

The same has happened to Hamas leadership. The leadership gains more from war than from peace.

I have more respect for the political skills of Hamas than you appear to. They're having to learn diplomacy the hard way, though.

Reducing support for "Peace" in Israel from 50% to 4% is no doubt a sign of Palestinian political skill.

I'd say your respect for their political skills is totally warranted.

===

BTW Black September in Jordan and the "Peace Process" with Israel shows the Palestinian word is worth nothing. In diplomacy you have to keep your word for at least a couple of years in order to have any credence.

That was the Austrian Corporal's undoing - no one trusted his word.

Yeah. They have quite a ways to go to get up the learning curve.

[CaptainBeowulf]

In a narrow context the Treaty of Versailles could be said to be responsible for Hitler.

However, things have to be looked at in overall historical context. What the Allies lost in 1918 was an opportunity to change the cycle of nationalistic violence that had been emerging in Europe for over a century through a benevolent peace. However, there was little precedent for that.

In 1871, with the Franco-Prussian war, Prussia/Germany had annexed Alsace-Lorraine from France and imposed war reparations on France which were designed to cripple the French economy and keep France weak. The French paid off the reparations more quickly than the Germans expected and got stronger again.

In 1917 the Germans dictated a humiliating peace to Russia at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. They basically annexed most of Russia's western imperial territory (Baltic states, Belorussia, Ukraine). Whether or not you like the Soviets (I think most of us here don't), that was immaterial at the time: the Germans were grabbing for war spoils.

Germany also invaded neutral countries (Belgium and Luxembourg) as part of its war plan in 1914. Some sources suggest that France and Britain were actually considering invading those countries to get to Germany - but the point that most people were aware of at the time was that it was the Germans who had actually done it.

There's the old maxim: live by the gun and die by the gun you must. Germany basically got treated the way it had been treating others. Alright, other countries had been playing the same sort of game for centuries. But I can't blame Wilson for not overcoming decades, if not centuries of this type of thing. A few people, like the economist John Maynard Keynes, saw that the scale of reparations could unbalance the international economic system and cause resentment in Germany.

Basically, German nationalists couldn't accept that others could do to them what they had done to others. They created the "stab in the back" myth that the politicians had betrayed the German army. This, combined with the poor economic conditions, which were then amplified by the depression, created the conditions for Hitler. That, and the anti-Semitism present in certain parts of German society (although plenty of Germans were not anti-Semites, and plenty of German Jews fought in the German army in WWI).

Even in this context, Hitler never received the vote of the majority of the German population. Some members of the old elites of German society thought that they could work with him, and helped give him power. They were scared of Communism, not driven by hatred of the Allies.

Furthermore, I would blame Anglo-French appeasement more than anything for the rise of Hitler. The Germans themselves later admitted that if the French had intervened during their reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, they would have lost - the German army was still very weak then. That would have been the end of Hitler's political career right there.

In WW II the Western Allies used MSimon's approach that the enemy must be vanquished first. But then in Japan and West Germany they learned from history and invested a great deal to rebuild those countries as allies, rather than demanding reparations etc. This course of action was also necessitated by the developing Cold War. This wasn't preordained during WWII - some people wanted to dismember and completely de-industrialize Germany: see, for instance, the Morgenthau Plan. It's only in retrospect that we can see how well benevolence worked.

[alexjrgreen]

The same has happened to Hamas leadership. The leadership gains more from war than from peace.

I have more respect for the political skills of Hamas than you appear to. They're having to learn diplomacy the hard way, though.

Reducing support for "Peace" in Israel from 50% to 4% is no doubt a sign of Palestinian political skill.

I'd say your respect for their political skills is totally warranted.

It wasn't the Israelis who elected Hamas...

[MSimon]

I have more respect for the political skills of Hamas than you appear to. They're having to learn diplomacy the hard way, though.

Reducing support for "Peace" in Israel from 50% to 4% is no doubt a sign of Palestinian political skill.

I'd say your respect for their political skills is totally warranted. :shock:

It wasn't the Israelis who elected Hamas...

So true: the brilliance of the Palestinian people should never be underestimated.

[KitemanSA]

But that is the paradox. Arabs in general are charming friendly people. They have a tradition of hospitality.

And right alongside that you have the culture of jihad.

If the Palestinians had "a culture of jihad" would there have been so many refugees? It seems said culture was thrust upon them, not endemic to them.

Perhaps alexjrgreen has a point when he compares them to the Northern Irish.

[MSimon]

But that is the paradox. Arabs in general are charming friendly people. They have a tradition of hospitality.

And right alongside that you have the culture of jihad.

If the Palestinians had "a culture of jihad" would there have been so many refugees? It seems said culture was thrust upon them, not endemic to them.

Perhaps alexjrgreen has a point when he compares them to the Northern Irish.

So true. Islam was spread by the sword. When the Moguls ruled India there was a period of nearly a century when they killed 100,000 Hindus a year as tribute to Islam.

But I digress. It all began (more or less) with the Brits who needed the Arabs more than they needed the Jews. Which was after they needed the Jews more than the Arabs. They installed Haj Amin to placate the Arabs instead of some of the folks who wanted to get along with the Jews. That led to the Massacre of Hebron in 1929.

Read Mark Twain's account of Israel in his travels. A desolate place devoid of inhabitants. Jews from Europe started coming. They bought land and started developing it. Then Arabs from Syria and Egypt started moving to the area to gain from that development.

And then the Turks sided with the German's in WW1 and the Brits took the Turkish Empire.

And well you can read your history. Feisal originally welcomed the Jews. I think it was around the early 20s he had nice things to say about them.

Then in WW2 a lot of Arabs backed the Germans and the Germans did their own bit to stir the pot. Islamic supremacism got a big boost from that. Saddam was a Baathist - and the Baath politics were fascist politics. Still are (Syria).

Every bad idea in politics has been tried by the Arabs. And they stayed with them longer than the Euros.

[KitemanSA]

So true. Islam was spread by the sword. When the Moguls ruled India there was a period of nearly a century when they killed 100,000 Hindus a year as tribute to Islam.

Yes, like many cultures, the Isrealites among them (Joshua taking Canaan is replete with atricities), cultures move by force of arms. But the Mughal Empire's culture was more remeniscent of its Mongol core than its Islamic cover.