Yossi Sarid / If you (or I) were Palestinian

[IndianaGreen]

Yossi Sarid / If you (or I) were Palestinian

This week I spoke with my students about the Gaza war, in the context of a class on national security. One student, who had expressed rather conservative, accepted opinions - that is opinions tending slightly to the right - succeeded in surprising me. Without any provocation on my part, he opened his heart and confessed: "If I were a young Palestinian," he said, "I'd fight the Jews fiercely, even by means of terror. Anyone who says anything different is telling you lies."

His remarks sounded familiar - I had already heard them before. Suddenly I remembered: About 10 years ago they were uttered by our defense minister, Ehud Barak. Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy had asked him then, as a candidate for prime minister, what he would do had he been born Palestinian and Barak replied frankly: "I would join a terror organization."

This is not my own answer; terrorism by individuals or organizations or states is always aimed at exacting casualties in a civilian population that has not drawn any blood. Not only is terror blind - consuming both the saint and the sinner - it also expands the circle of the hot-headed, whose blood rises to their brains: Our blood is on their heads, their blood is on our heads. And when an account of the blood of the innocent is opened, who can pay it in full, and when?

I hate all the terrorists in the world, whatever the purpose of their struggle. However, I support every active civil revolt against any occupation, and Israel too is among the despicable occupiers. Such revolt is both more just and more effective, and it does not extinguish one's spark of humanity. And perhaps I'm just too much of an old codger to be a terrorist.

But, and pay attention to this but, if a normative young person has a spontaneous answer that is different from mine, and that answer also escaped the mouth of an Israeli lieutenant general, then every individual must see himself as though his son is running with the wrong crowd. If things were the other way around, our son-whom-we-loved would be a damned terrorist, almost certainly, because he is of the third and fourth generation of refugeehood and oppression, and whence cometh salvation? He has nothing to lose but his chains.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052057.html

[bemildred]

1. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

Carrots work way the heck better than sticks, but people are to cheap to pay for carrots.

[The Magistrate]

3. People Really Under-Rate Money As A Weapon Of War, Sir

It is a mistake the ancients did not make.

[Lithos]

4. Money does help a lot

When Shrub got bored with his gun-toting swagger and let his generals try and do something with Iraq, what they did was bring money into the equation through old fashioned bribes and artificial job creation.

[The Magistrate]

5. The Surest Way To Make People Peaceable, Sir, Is To Make Them Prosperous

Once the Sage wrote: "Not having enough to live on, people know not to value life too much."

[azurnoir]

6. Unfortunately money was not under rated as a weapon

simply misused by the total with holding of it, the more isolated and desperate Gaza became the more radicalized Hamas has become, would an influx of money aimed at constructing jobs instead of bleeding the economy of Gaza dry have worked? Maybe so maybe no and we'll never know for sure but there is another saying that one can not become a "conservative" till one has something to conserve

[billyoc]

2. Quite a quandary, what to do?

DFLP? PFLP? PFLP-GC? I don't know which one I'd join, probably the PFLP-GC, I think the food's better.