[Nettime-bold] Re: Arafat Accountability Act

[Chaim <cog@slackworks.com>]

If, as you propose, the terrorist infrastructure is the entire Palestinian 
Arab population, then coexistence will never be possible, and I refuse to 
believe this.

Angry people don't just exploded in crowded markets -- an infrastructure 
is necessary for this to happen: incitement, encouragement, bomb making 
shops, money, materials, planners, etc..

In the past several weeks the IDF has dismantled many bomb factories,
confiscated dozens of suicide belts, guns, and rockets, and arrested
and/or killed numerous organizers of suicide murder bombings. All of these
arms had an address -- Israeli civilians -- and their confiscation
prevented their being used to that end. This has had a material effect, as
a week or two before Passover the Israelis were treated to two suicide
murder bombing attempts daily. This reduction in violence, I might add,
didn't require wiping out an entire population. While you are correct that
anger is necessary for terrorism, it isn't a sufficient condition.

Suggesting that Hamas and Islamic Jihad (quick historical info: both
groups whose stated tactics and intent is targetting unarmed Jews for
murder in order to kill or expel all Jews from the region) is equivalent
to the entire Palestinian Arab population is profoundly untrue, and while
you may not care to make this distinction, Israelis, to their credit, do.
Rather than flatten Jenin from the relative safety of their F-16s, the IDF
sent in soldiers to effect this distinction as best they could -- a
non-academic differentiation that cost the lives of 23 soldiers.

This type of conflation is disturbing, to say the least, as the logical
result is killing Jewish children in Tel-Aviv because they are somehow
responsible for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs.

> From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
> Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 12:40:30 -0400
> Subject: Re: Arafat Accountability Act
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1927000/1927974.stm
>
> So, US Congress passes the bill holding Arafat accountable for not 
> dismantling the Palestinian terrorist infrastructure. But, what do 
> you do when the "terrorist infrastructure" is the entire population? 
> Just wipe them all out? Ottoman Turks tried to deal with Serbian 
> terrorism (what else were organizations like Black Hand?) like that 
> for centuries, and they eventually lost the battle, so Israelis should 
> be taking hints from history.
> ivo

_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold