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Since you insist that I expose your poor literacy once again, I will oblige. Some of your creative writing from the post you claim is spotless: “neccessary”, “artififial”, “inadvertantly”.
Some from your later post:
“lawn-mower”, “tube-worm”, “the Arabs wanted none of that- all or nothing”, “correct version-no apostrophe”, “Uh-uh, honey-you don't” (more indiscriminate use of hyphens), “Different ethnicity and languages.” (sentence fragment – your specialty), “shrivelingly” (another “neologism”?), “BTW, the word is ‘your’, as in ‘your insistance’..” (It should be “insistence” and the convention is to use three periods. BTW, I already spotted the misspelling of “your” – see post titled “Why post?”, can’t follow a thread can we?), “I say ‘produce some evidence, then’.” (improper use of quotation marks), “…of mosques built to, among other reasons, mock the sacredness of the site to Jews.” (clumsy sentence construction)…
You claim I used “declaimed” improperly in the following sentence:
"And your euphemism describing the Israeli's excessive use of force (even the UN has declaimed it) as ‘trying to keep order’ is sick-making at best, if not criminally stupid."
OED definition: to protest forcefully.
You also commented stupidly on my following statement (proper style requires the use of single quotes inside double quotes – I‘ve corrected this for you):
"First, any dictionary definition will tell you that a Palestinian Arab is one especially now living in Israel or Israeli-occupied territory. This is not an ‘artificial construct’, it is a distinct peoples with a distinct identity."
You said:
“Really? I find no entries for "Palestinian Arab". Under "Palestinian", I find THIS…”
The statement does not refer to an entry for “Palestinian Arab”, merely that a definition refers to this, as it does in the OED if you look up “Palestinian”, which you have ignored. Instead, you chose to cite a definition for “Palestine”, which does not appear in my statement.
"It would be hard to find a sentence with more than four mistakes in it anyway; I think you beat your record with that one."
To which you responded:
“Non sequitur.”
Are you, then, saying then that it WOULD be easy to find a sentence in your posts with more than five mistakes in it? Have it your way.
“Everyone has a heart-except for plants, viruses, bacilli and Spawn of Yog-Sothoth...which of those are you? I'm holding out for a semi-sentient strain of slithering, tentacled Ebola, myself...”
Wrong again. Fungus (to which genus I suspect you most closely resemble) is recognised by biologists as a class of organisms distinct from plants and animals, and fungus also does not have a heart. By the way, something is either sentient, or it is not; “semi-sentient” is nonsense.
“Iranians aren't Arabs in any sense of the term.”
According to my figures, some 3% of them are.
See The World Fact Book:
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html#P
eople
“They're Persians. Different ethnicity… A common mistake for the uneducated to make.”
You would have been more correct to have said that Iranians had different ethnicity. Actually, Persian barely make up the majority of some 51%. The rest of the demographic figures are as follows:
Ethnic groups: Azerbaijani 24%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 8%, Kurd 7%, Lur 2%, Baloch 2%, Turkmen 2%, other 1%
“There's an assumption on the part of many that all followers of Islam are Arabs.”
You, surely, “pulled that out of your ‘ass’”. Only your identical twin would confuse, say, a Malaysian, or say, an Indonesian with an Arab. It is uncommon even for the poorly educated to make the mistake of identifying Arabs as being the only “followers of Islam”. In fact, worldwide, they account for a minority of Muslims.
“You have addressed nothing; you make cries of "Up the revolt!" (along, nonsensically, with claims of being a "Zionist"-how odd...), while conveniently ignoring the historical record. The fact is, the Brits fucked up, when they promised "Palestine" to both the Jews and their Arab allies.”
One CAN support both an Israeli state and the Palestinian’s right to their own.
Furthermore, while I do not ignore the historical record, you do invent one. If anyone “fucked up”, it was the United States and the United Nations (I would be interested to learn what your solution would have been, even given 20-20 hindsight. Feel free to enlighten us all Mr. Secretary of State).
If anything, it could be argued that much of the problem of Palestine rested with the United States Government of the time. The primary goal of British policy following World War II was to secure British strategic interests in the Middle East and Asia. Because the cooperation of the Arab states was considered essential to this goal, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin opposed Jewish immigration and the foundation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine. The U.S. State Department basically supported the British position, but Truman was determined to ensure that Jews displaced by the war, perhaps understandably (the U.S., itself, refused to take them), were permitted to enter Palestine, hence sowing the seeds of Jewish-Arab conflict. The issue was resolved in 1948 when the British mandate collapsed under the pressure of force and diplomacy.
The British came to realise the folly of trying to keep the peace between the Arabs and Jews, and policing the illegal immigration of the latter. Finding themselves the target of terrorist bombings by Jews (many of them illegal immigrants), and with domestic pressure to withdraw their boys home after the war, the British Government referred the Palestine question to the U.N. On August 31 a majority report of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended the partition of the country into an Arab and a Jewish state, which, however, should retain an economic union.
“Oh, you mean when Sharon went to visit The Temple Mount, ONE OF THE SINGLE MOST HOLY SITES IN THE JEWISH FAITH?!? You mean to say that Jews should not be allowed access to their Holy Places, just because someone else has built a mosque or two there?”
You once again, ignore my point that Sharon – identified by the Palestinians as a butcher – chose to make his visit, along with his small army of security personnel, at the most delicate of times.
“The Israelis have never, to my knowledge, denied the Islamic residents of Israel access to their own holy places, and I challenge you to produce credible evidence otherwise.”
Of course you would have no knowledge of this, you obviously don’t follow the news – the Israelis are doing so now. (Try the following site, also the source of the letter from my previous post: South China Morning Post (SCM Post) Web site: www.scmp.com)
“When people are "demonstrating" with signs and slogans, perhaps; when they are attacking you with intent to harm or kill, that's another matter entirely. Let's leave out that rocks can and do kill, that there are fire-bombs and AK-47 rounds being lobbed [“lobbed’ rounds do not kill] at Israeli police and soldiers; unlike UN troops, the Israelis SHOOT BACK. Boo-hoo-hoo.”
You have an oddly unusual notion of what constitutes “excessive force”. While the rest of the world, including the U.N., has declaimed (correct use) Israel’s heavy-handed response, you find it justifiable.
So, as far as you’re concerned, an Israeli tank firing a shell through a child’s bedroom (fortunately they had just been evacuated) in an attempt to hit back at a gunman is “okee-dokey”. And to you, Israeli snipers and other regular soldiers firing live ammunition at rock-throwers with what seems, at least in many cases, a shoot-to-kill policy (i.e. head shots – snipers are trained not to miss) is a measured response. These and other egregious incidents have all been captured by foreign news cameramen.
Some Palestinians are armed with automatic weapons, but if all the Palestinians being fired upon were as well armed, as you would suggest, the ratio of casualties would not be nearly so as disproportionate.
I wonder what would be your response if the British had used rocket gunships and other such means to fight the IRA in their built-up towns? You would be baying for their blood, along with your fellow bog-trotting cousins, most likely.
Not only is it morally reprehensible to try to justify such tactics, it is also shortsighted. These actions have only enraged the Palestinians further; the “riots” continue, more frenzied than ever, while world opinion has turned against Israel.
“Again, if they [Israelis] so desired, they could execute every "Palestinian" in Israel. However, they do not do that. They attempt to find other resolutions.”
The only possible resolution to this mess – executing the Palestinians would only start another war, Bigot-Boy – would be for the Israelis to grant the Palestinians their own state. The problem is, they don’t want to give up any land. They can’t even agree to return all of the land that was taken during the last Arab-Israeli war, and have, in a breach of agreement, spent millions of dollars of US aid to resettle East European immigrants in the occupied territories as a means of further staking their claim.
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