It’s not personal
If Monday's Op-Ed column "Hamas Comes Out of Hiding" is any indication, the editors over at the New York Times still must be recovering from eight cups of wine at two seders last week.
Copy editors missed the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu has been Israel's prime minister for about two weeks -- author Paul McGeough describes him as "set to begin his second term as prime minister" -- but two far more egregious errors fundamentally misstate or musunderstand the nature of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
McGeough writes:
Over the long term, Hamas accepts the concept of two states in the Levant, which arguably puts Mr. Mishal’s terrorist movement closer to Washington than Netanyahu is — he now proposes only “economic peace” between Jews and Palestinians.
I'm mystified as to what led McGeough to conclude that Hamas accepts the two-state solution over the long term, or what led the Times' editors to let this factually incorrect line run. I was on vacation all of last week, but if Hamas came around to endorsing a two-state solution I would have heard. Hamas has indicated support for a long-term cease-fire with Israel but at every turn has made clear that its ultimate goal is conquest of all of historic Palestine, even if it takes 100 years.
The editors also gave McGeough a pass by running a column that posits that the conflict between Netanyahu and Meshaal is somehow about these two personalities. It's not, and even Meshaal tells McGeough so:
As for finding himself at center stage with the man who ordered him killed, Mr. Mishal insisted that in the broad scheme of things, Mr. Netanyahu is just one more in a succession of prime ministers. “It’s fate, God’s destiny, but we can’t set policy on the basis of personal grudges,” he told me.
Perhaps. But not since the personal bitterness between Mr. Arafat and the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have Palestinians and Israelis faced such a leadership dynamic. Once again, personal enmity could swamp the more pressing complexities of the Middle East crisis.
Netanyahu didn't try to kill Meshaal in the 1990s because he didn't like Meshaal; he did so because Meshaal was the leader of a terrorist group carrying out suicide bombings in Israeli malls, buses and hotels. Meshaal's main objection to Netanyahu isn't personal; it's because he's the leader of an entity, Israel, he's sworn to destroy.
Even if Netanyahu and Meshaal were both long gone, Hamas and Israel would be at odds. What Israeli prime minister and Hamas leader would get along?
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Khaled Meshaal,
New York Times
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Marilyn, your sympathy is understandable, but as with the NYT article, your facts are a bit confused. The Arabs have been killing Jews in Palestine - GREATER Palestine - since the late 1880’s. HOW they kill them is irrelevant, as is the regrettable Goldstein slaughter, which came as a result of his psychotic break afrter he, a phsician, treated many, many Jewish victims of Arab terror. I can’t imagine how you missed that.
Further, Israel did NOT “destroy” Palestine. Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and others destroyed Palestine during her establishment, overrunning her territory, abusing her populace, running off their Jewish populations, and destroying the evidence of thousands of years of Jewish residence.
So there is no “right” being abused here. Only facts, and you are the abuser of those facts.
Marilyn
God not only gave them the right but the command to possess the land. God brought the nation from one man, Abraham, to many millions and they exist “for His good pleasure”.
God will not be mocked, neither is he a man that can lie. Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil.
Israel has always been a blessing to this world, and “God’s destiny” is that they continue to be so, even if that means, because of terrorist threats and activities, they must play the part of God’s war-club, as so many of the prophets wrote!
John Fisher, excuse me while I gag on that mindless drivel. “God” was invented by men as various excuses to steal, oppress or murder anyone or anything they didn’t like.
God was not a real estate agent, and fullname that is laughable.
irgun and Stern terrorists drove 800,000 Palestinians from their land, bulldozed their villages, destroyed their olive groves and pushed them into the sea.
In 1967 they were so blatant about destroying all the neighbours they forgot to lie consistently to Johnson and even sent buses to the West Bank to “transfer” Palestinians to Jordan.
You really ought to get out more boys.
“Marilyn Shepard”; You should get your head out of your ass and finish middle school. You need to leave your basement and get a dose of reality because it’s obvious you’re delusional. You’re are about as ignorant as they come. By your spelling and grammar it’s obvious that you’re either mentally challenged or an Islamicfacist foreigner.
PALESTINE DOES NOT EXIST! THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A PALESTINIAN COUNTRY, PEOPLE, LANGUAGE, OR CULTURE! Ancient Israel was re-named Palestine thousands of years ago by the Romans and has no Arab connection. Jews were the first to be called Palestinians because they have always lived in Israel/Palestine. Jews pre-date Arabs by thousands of years. The Arabs are from Arabia and are the invadors and occupiers.
Arab invadors took the name “Palestinians” in the 1960’s for propaganda purposes and to steal the the Jewish homeland. The Arab invadors terrorists have been killing and attacking the Jewish natives in Israel since the time they arrived and illegally occupied Jewish land.
The Arab Fakestinians have been using homocide bombers since the early 1980’s. The Goldenstein attack hapenned a decade later precisely because of the result of the Fakestinian terrorism. Mishal is a piece of subhuman grabage who has murdered thousands of Jewish women and children. Israel has every right to defend themselves from savages like this.
When Israel was re-born the Jews wanted to make peace with the Arab occupiers but were attacked at every opportunity. It was the Arab terrorists who stole the land and destroyed Jewish towns. The Arab Fakestinians, less than 50,000, invadors left their temporary tent cities in Israel because the Arab leaders of the Arab countries ordered them to. The Arabs thought they were going to destroy Israel but of course they didn’t.
Millions of Arabs are occupying Jewish land. Jordan was illegally carved out of ancient Israel and several other Arab countries were “created” on Jewish land. This is Jewish land that the Arabs from Arabia are occupying. The Arabs are the occupiers and don’t have any right to Jewish land especially when they’re terrorists.
STOP THE ARAB TERRORISM AND SAVAGERY AGAINST THE JEWS!
ARABS BACK TO ARABIA!
END THE ARAB OCCUPATION OF ISRAEL!
ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE JEWS!
The Palestinian Arabs are the occupiers of Jewish land
Tell the World the are delusional in thinking that Arabs belong in Israel - There will never be a an Arab/Palestinian State together or adjacent to Eretz Israel.
There has never such a nation as the Palestinian/Arab People.
The Arab/Moslem Koran specifically states in
The Qur’an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people
If the historic documents, comments written by eyewitnesses and declarations by the most authoritative Arab scholars are still not enough, let us quote the most important source for Muslim Arabs:
“And thereafter we [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd’.”.
Any sincere Muslim must recognize the Land they call “Palestine” as the Jewish Homeland, according to the book considered by Muslims to be the most sacred word and Allah’s ultimate revelation.
Any building of housing in The Greater Israel is the right and duty of the Israeli government. There is no such a thing as occupied territory. It is the land of Israel for over 4,000 years.
Sequence of historical events, agreements and a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel.
Let the Arab nation take the Palestinian Arabs and settle the in the Million plus Jewish home that they evicted from their countries and allow the Jewish nation to live in peace.
A true peace in the Middle East will be an economic phenomenon that the world has never seen. But this can only be accomplished when there is a real peace. The Arabs must stop preaching and teaching hate.
Any liberal Israeli that is delusional about Arab intention and wants to give any land in Israel to the Arabs should live Israel, he does not belong in Israel.
YJ Draiman, Northridge, CA
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Marilyn Shepherd
04/13/09 02:42 PM
Wow and Israel has been so kind and gentle to Mishal and all the Palestinians. Mishal was driven off the family home in the West Bank in 1967, forced into exile, became a teacher and was again exiled from Kuwait, only to have Bibi try to have him murdered and create a political storm across three continents.
You need to get some perspective and walk in the mans shoes for a minute. There was not one Palestinian suicide bomb until after the Goldstein massacre in the mosque but the Jewish papers never bother to mention Israeli’s many, many crimes.
They just whine about Israel’s non-existent “right” to exist. Israel does exist but to have their existence they have destroyed Palestine.
Who gave them the right?