911

Politics International Politics
81

Coldfront:

Gotcha.

Tigerman: The Israeli government did back off the sale when the US refused permission given that some of the technology involved is US right? That said, the sale of the Phalcons was permitted in the case of India no?

Also, my understanding is that Egypt and Israel get similar amounts of aid (around US$3 billion per year). And while I personally do not believe in aid at all, if it goes, so should the money to egypt.

Actually, Israel is quite a success when you look at all indicators from technological development to quality of life to legal protection for Arabs and Muslims!!! to human rights to standard of living. I’d say that the nation has stood up pretty well (all while having major demographic, terrorist and military guns pointed at its head.) Why can’t the Muslims be more like the Jews? The only Jew (apostate I believe) that I can think of who whacked his girlfriend is Ira Einhorn and he went to jail (after fleeing where else but France?) I even heard that he has attained the status among concerned civil rights groups as Mumia in France. Go figure?

But I guess I should note in all fairness that the liberal groups who espouse such causes did take him up as an example of America’s horrible human rights record. Yawn. I believe that he will be eligible for the death penalty though not sure. Case will be tried in Pennsylvania right?

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Coldfront:

What do you think of these two links regarding Jonathan Pollard’s case?

Just curious. I am undecided.

freddy

frontpagemag.com/Articles/Re … sp?ID=1187

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Israel gets significantly more aid from the U.S. than Egypt and it is also a much wealthier nation. Egypt is the number two recipient of foreign aid from the U.S., but it’s at least three-quarters of a billion dollars below Israel.

I don’t like the idea of foreign aid in general (I prefer trade as the best way to help less developed countries to help themselves), but if aid is to be given, I would rather it be given to countries that actually need it.

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I know that Israel finally backed-off the sale… but I don’t recall the reason for doeing so. I thought the Israelis contended that the technology was developed independently by Israel… and that it was the US leaning heavily on Israel that ended the sale. I remember the Chinses being rather pissed.

Yes, my understanding is that Israel and Egypt receive the largest amounts of US aid presently.

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[quote=“fred smith”]Coldfront:

What do you think of these two links regarding Jonathan Pollard’s case?[/quote]

I only saw one article by David Horowitz and it was mainly about Wen Ho Lee. It barely mentions Pollard.

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I’m off. If I don’t see a couple more calls for a Founding Father thread by later tonight, I’ll consider the matter over. I’m into some heavy reading on evolution and natural science right now so dropping everything to review material on early American history and the Founding Fathers would be a bit of a detour, but one I would willingly take if there was interest in the topic.

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The numbers I’ve seen are more like US$10B to Israel annually.

Yahoo had an article a few weeks ago (expired, sadly) regarding an Israeli study that admitted they had a systematic bias against Arabs – whether “Israeli Arabs” or “Palestinians” – throughout their society. Much like American blacks in the 1950’s – “separate but equal”, where “equal” is defined rather, ahem, loosely.

Oh, puh-leeze, Fred. Jews are just like any other people; 99% are fine, 1% are criminals. I can think of at least two other international cases involving flight-to-Israel; one was a Jewish boy from Maryland who murdered some Hispanic kid just to see what it felt like, then fled to Israel and demanded his “right of return”. Last time I heard anything, Israel was still protecting him, since he could face the death penalty for the murder in the U.S. So he gets to live free because the Israelis don’t give a shit about some poor Mexican kid being dead.

Whoops, I misread your post. So your class is broader than what I was thinking of anyway, no worries. There was a rabbi convicted a year or two ago for murdering his wife, IIRC in New York.

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The numbers I’ve seen are more like US$10B to Israel annually.[/quote]

I’d like to see those numbers. I think Fred is right that the actual figure is closer to three billion U.S. dollars, split about evenly between economic and military aid. In addition, there are some favorable loan packages, but those generally don’t count as foreign aid.

Here’s AIPAC’s spin (PDF) on U.S. aid packages. AIPAC is the American-Israel Political Action Committee so its probably fair to say that their spin is Israel’s spin. AIPAC claims that economic aid packages have been steadily shrinking during the past few years and now represent a small amount of the total aid package to Israel. The aid is now mostly comprised of military assistance structured in such a way to give jobs to American workers. I don’t buy it, but there you have it.

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Mapodofu:

I see your point I really do but I think that we can do some generalizing once in a while or what would be the point of having insurance rates, etc.

Someone once sent me the list of Jewish Nobel Laureats compared with the Arab ones. Look at the per capita income in Israel compare it with the other non-oil producing states in the region or even some of the oil producing ones like Saudi Arabia. My point was that Jewish women and girls are not routinely disfigured or killed in honor killings.

Finally, Jews may not treat Arabs with the “rights” that you think that they should have but to my knowledge they are mostly protected. Compare that with the Jews who live in Arab countries… Oh that’s right there aren’t any. You see my point and I do not want to make it too strongly again, but why the difference?

Also, one last thing. Did you read the latest survey in the Economist on Islam and Muslims. Very “enlightening.”

freddy

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[quote=“fred smith”]Mapodofu:
I see your point I really do but I think that we can do some generalizing once in a while or what would be the point of having insurance rates, etc.[/quote]
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. :mrgreen:

Generalize this: who derailed the peace process in Israel? Personally, I would say it was the guy who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. – a hard-liner Israeli Jew, not a Palestinian, not an Israeli Arab, not a Hamas member. Things were going smoothly up until then, and both sides were coming to agreement for the most part. Then, bang bang, Rabin’s dead, and Netanyahu stalls on the whole deal and starts trying to renegotiate – deliberately doing it to provoke the Palestinians and demonstrate to them that the whole peace process was a sham.

And Arab children don’t routinely form street gangs and run around carjacking suburbanites who take wrong turns. . . .

Hmm. I suspect you are simply generalizing from “common knowledge”. In college, I knew a guy who was an Iranian Jew. A contradiction in terms, you say? Hardly. His family – and I mean this in the sense of “damn near as far as they can trace everyone down to the last umpteenth cousin” – was so wealthy – especially compared to run-of-the-mill Iranians – that it put mere Bill Gates-level wealth into perspective.

If these folks were oppressed, then please oppress me some too.

There are some areas (two cities, Mecca and Medina) in Saudi Arabia where nobody but Muslims are allowed. The WSJ’s Taranto likes to make a big deal about this in his columns from time to time – ooooh, a whole city is off-limits to tourists from Dubuque, aren’t Arabs evil? But IMHO it’s no different from me being denied entrance into a Mormon temple; it’s their property, and their beliefs, and hence their right. It’s not like I had a 10% ownership in the franchise and am being screwed out of it. So I don’t get to see the Kaaba with my own eyes; well, I also don’t get to go listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearse, and I don’t get to take communion in St. Peter’s.

Sorry, didn’t see it. Do you have a URL?

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Mapodofu:

Go to www.economist.co.uk

It is the main feature in this week’s edition.

Also, your Iranian Jewish friends no longer live in Iran do they? I was just in Iran last year for three weeks and if there are any Jews left, they are in hiding or out of the country. Can’t be more than a few thousand left at best I should think. Compare this with the nearly 1 million Arabs that live in Israel and 3 million that are under Israeli control. Who is worse off?

Arabs may not carjack and form street gangs (see Baghdad for a different view) but they are no where near the level of culture, education as the Jews. And to my knowledge the Jews have been at the cutting edge of most social movements and respect for human rights etc. no matter how misguided some of them may have been (communists etc.). What have the Arabs contributed to women’s, human, children’s, gay, minority rights?

And it is strange isn’t it that given the number of African slaves purchased by Arab countries throughout the centuries that there should be so few blacks in the Middle East today. Wonder how they got rid of unwanted slaves and inconvenient children? Or perhaps the whitening agents that Michael Jackson uses were in use back then? Think about it.

In addition, we can look at how Islam which strangely is considered by many Blacks in the US as nonracist and accepting of all groups has done in Mauritania and Sudan and in general how Arab nations have “tolerated” their black brethren. While I believe in giving credit where credit is due and blame where blame is due, you would be hard pressed unless you were totally in thrall to historical revisionism to come up with many cultural successes of the Arab World in the last 1,000 years. Spare me the efforts to extol Muslim Spain or the glorious Caliphate, etc. That said, while Istanbul, Cairo and Damascus remained important and wealthy cities, I would hardly call them developers of cutting edge technology or feverish centers of debate and learning. The glorious age of the Arabs and Muslims was 700 to 900 more or less.

I would disagree also about the blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. I personally believe that the Palestinians thought they were finally wearing the Israelis down and could get right of return for three million “Palestinians” in addition to 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They gambled … and Lost.

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From today’s Fox News (conservative):

Two years after the Sept. 11 attacks, no memorial service, cable-news talkfest or university seminar seemed to have been complete without someone emerging from the woodwork to wonder darkly why the CIA ever financed Usama bin Laden “in the first place.”

Everyone from Washington Post reporters to Michael Moore (search) seems to buy some version of this.

It is time to lay to rest the nagging doubt held by many Americans that our government was somehow responsible for fostering bin Laden. It’s not true and it leaves the false impression that we brought the Sept. 11 attacks down on ourselves. While it is impossible to prove a negative, all available evidence suggests that bin Laden (search) was never funded, trained or armed by the CIA.

Bin Laden himself has repeatedly denied that he received any American support.

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Fred Smith wrote:
Arabs may not carjack and form street gangs (see Baghdad for a different view) but they are no where near the level of culture, education as the Jews. And to my knowledge the Jews have been at the cutting edge of most social movements and respect for human rights etc. no matter how misguided some of them may have been (communists etc.). What have the Arabs contributed to women’s, human, children’s, gay, minority rights?

Agreed. It irked me the other night when some Arab historian on CNN said something like “During the Middle Ages education flourished in the Islamic lands, and literature, philosophy, medicine, mathematics, and science were particularly developed by the Arabs.”

Sure during the Umayyad period literature flourished – Most of it was thanks to a strong Greek and Persian influences.

Sure during the Abbasids period, great poety was written. However, most Arabs don’t mention that one of their best poets - Uthman Umar bin Bahral Jahiz was in fact the grandson of a black slave.

Chemistry - Al-Razi deserves credit but much of their inventions or new developments were in fact borrowed from ancient Greek texts.

Mathematics - Where did Muhammed Ibn-Musa al Khawarazm learn most of his math? India.

I don’t deny that they made some significant contributions at this time. But where were most of these contributions made…Sicily, Spain, Iraq… . It was because these countries at the time were a melting pot of nationalities (Christian…Persian, African etc) Tolerance and respect for education were adhered to.

Arabs definitely haven’t made a contribution to global society like the Jews have. One could argue that three most important people in the last 150 years were:

  1. Freud
  2. Einstein
  3. Marx
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I was going to call shenanigans on that until I realized that number one on your list wasn’t “Fred.”

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They are three of the most influential people of the last one hundred fifty years, but Charles Darwin (born an English Protestant) probably beats them all. And the influence of two of those three you name – Marx and Freud – were based on ideas that had no merit whatsoever.

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By the way, I’ve heard it said that most of the Muslims who made scientific contributions in Middle Ages were not Arabs. It was Kurds, Persians, and other Muslims who made the most significant contributions, not Arabs.

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[quote=“Chewycorns”]

  1. Freud
  2. Einstein
  3. Marx[/quote]

All Jews? And all Germans. And all men. And all breathing. And all good at lawn darts. Yawn.

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I just checked on both men Chewycorns mentions. Both of them were Persians, not Arabs.

The Arabs founded an empire and that empire had enormous numbers of non-Arabs and non-Muslims. One has to be careful who you give credit to. Calling Al-Razi an Arab, for example, would be like me calling Einstein an American because he happened to emigrate to the United States and helped the U.S. with the atomic bomb.

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What about John Stuart Mill? Or Frederico Nietzche? Or Woody Allen?

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Mill was influential, but is he as influential as Darwin? No. Nietzche? Not a chance. Even in Germany prior to WW2, Nietzche’s influence was exaggerated.

Are you even familiar with these thinkers or are you just shooting your mouth off because you’re bored?