500,000 Lebanese flee the carnage: Israelis killed in first firefight on the ground

[anastrophe]

Bryn Mawr wrote: Slow down and re-read your original statement. Then apply basic semantics to what is being said - no reference to anything outside the statement itself.



It directly excludes the Jews from the set of people classed as native peoples.



It says nothing about the Christians - all it says is that the set consisting native peoples were forced to convert to Islam and that the set consisting Jews did not, therefore the sets are distinct.



That I'm picky and pedantic I'll accept but that I'm anti-semitic and abusive I will not!


sorry, no. this isn't semantics at all. i just reposted what i said. i am not responsible for your misreading of it.

[Bryn Mawr]

anastrophe wrote: sorry, no. this isn't semantics at all. i just reposted what i said. i am not responsible for your misreading of it.


Then we will have to agree to disagree - as I said, "nothing divides us but a common language", to me the statement it quite specific.

I am, however, still awaiting evidence the I am both anti-semitic and personally offensive or an apology.

[Bill Sikes]

koan wrote: (anastrophe in a minority of 1) I noticed that too. Should we now call a non-partisan point counter to review the thread?


There would be no point. I wonder whether he's constantly spouting weasel

words is an attempt at "logic", or what? He certainly seems unable to accept

what everyone else does - in denial, if you like. Never mind.

[anastrophe]

Bryn Mawr wrote: Then we will have to agree to disagree - as I said, "nothing divides us but a common language", to me the statement it quite specific.



I am, however, still awaiting evidence the I am both anti-semitic and personally offensive or an apology.


Bryn Mawr wrote: That's the whole point - you are in denial!


personally offensive. no apology.

[anastrophe]

Bill Sikes wrote: There would be no point. I wonder whether he's constantly spouting weasel

words is an attempt at "logic", or what? He certainly seems unable to accept

what everyone else does - in denial, if you like. Never mind.


i've wondered why bill sikes came back to forumgarden. such a long absence, then he comes back. i wonder if his marriage fell apart, so now he's sad, bored, and alone?



speaking of weasel words, this third-person **** falls right into that bracket.

[anastrophe]

koan wrote:

that quote came from the nysun and claims to have been said in 1992. That's a little broad, isn't it? I thought you were supposed to cite public statement issued by the organization. I didn't miss it, it just didn't fulfill the requirements.


oh, and furthermore, nasrallah is the public face of hizbollah right now. he's 'the man'. his statement is from 2002. the first statement is from 1992. don't you think suggesting that nasrallah isn't making public statements for hizbollah, and distorting how long ago they were said, is a little narrow?

[Bryn Mawr]

anastrophe wrote: i've wondered why bill sikes came back to forumgarden. such a long absence, then he comes back. i wonder if his marriage fell apart, so now he's sad, bored, and alone?



speaking of weasel words, this third-person **** falls right into that bracket.


And you talk about being personally offensive?

[anastrophe]

Bryn Mawr wrote: And you talk about being personally offensive?




you just don't get it. okay. sorry i can't help you out with the concepts here.

[koan]

anastrophe wrote: oh, and furthermore, nasrallah is the public face of hizbollah right now. he's 'the man'. his statement is from 2002. the first statement is from 1992. don't you think suggesting that nasrallah isn't making public statements for hizbollah, and distorting how long ago they were said, is a little narrow?


ok. so any quotes from the leader of a political party represent the entire political party. Note: Hizbollah is not the governing party of Lebanon.

The following quotes referenced at end of quote are all from the elected Prime Ministers of Israel.

"We must expel Arabs and take their places." -- David Ben Gurion, future Prime Minister of Israel, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

"If I was an Arab leader I would never make [peace] with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." -- David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

"We must do everything to ensure they never do return" -- David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.

"The boundaries of Zionist aspiration include Southern Lebanon, Southern Syria, today's Jordan, all of Cis-Jordan (The West Bank) and the Sinai." -- Yeshuv head David Ben-Gurion, 1938, in a speech to the World Council of Poale Zion in Tel Aviv. Cited by Israel Shahak in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1981.

"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moselem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." -- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.



"There was no such thing as Palestinians...It was not as though there was a Palestinian People in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people, and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." -- Golda Meir, London Sunday Times, 15 June 1969.

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to." -- Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.



" beasts walking on two legs." --Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the "Beasts"', New Statesman, 25 June 1982



"Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories." -- Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, tells students at Bar Ilan University, From the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.



"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." --Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

[anastrophe]

once again, you walk right into the trap.



koan wrote:

that quote came from the nysun and claims to have been said in 1992. That's a little broad, isn't it? I thought you were supposed to cite public statement issued by the organization. I didn't miss it, it just didn't fulfill the requirements.


so apparently what i posted did fulfill the requirements, as you've just now corroborated by your posting of statements even further in the past, up to and including diary entries - not quite up to the standard of "public statements issued by the organization", now are they.



it's worth noting, not a single one of your quotes is from this century. unlike nasrallah's.



"That's a little broad, isn't it"?

[koan]

anastrophe wrote: once again, you walk right into the trap.




ya know, you're just freaky. I'm going to use this in my sig. you've said it often enough. you should hunt rabbit or something. what are you? Elmer Fudd?



so apparently what i posted did fulfill the requirements, as you've just now corroborated by your posting of statements even further in the past, up to and including diary entries - not quite up to the standard of "public statements issued by the organization", now are they.


no they didn't fulfill the requirement. I gave up on waiting for anything better.



it's worth noting, not a single one of your quotes is from this century. unlike nasrallah's.



"That's a little broad, isn't it"?


so if it's the year 2000, nothing from 1999 and before is relevant to you anymore? I gave a year and a source for every quote. That is not broad as I used the word.

admittedly it is now 2006 and you are willing to admit history starts before the kidnapping of the 2 israeli soldiers but not before the year 2000.

[anastrophe]

also worth noting again:

A Hezbollah statement in 1992 vowed, "It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth." In 2002, Sheik Nasrallah was quoted by the Lebanon Daily Star as encouraging Jews to move to Israel. "If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," he was quoted as saying.



contrast this with even the most aggressive of the comments by ben gurion, which was during israel's most aggressive interval of expansionism - immediately after the creation of the state (and which never came to pass). most of the comments are "push them out", "never return", etc.. Perhaps the explanation will be that the israeli's have a better grasp of rhetoric than to come right out and say we want to exterminate all of them.



perhaps.

[anastrophe]

koan wrote:



so if it's the year 2000, nothing from 1999 and before is relevant to you anymore? I gave a year and a source for every quote. That is not broad as I used the word.


my quotes also included source and year. sorry you overlooked that.





admittedly it is now 2006 and you are willing to admit history starts before the kidnapping of the 2 israeli soldiers but not before the year 2000.


no, i was merely applying the criterion you claimed defined legitimacy. sorry your examples fell outside those boundaries.

[koan]

Sufficient evidence is their tolerance for many years of US-backed Israeli crimes in Lebanon, including four invasions before this one, occupation in violation of Security Council orders for 22 years, and regular killings and abductions. To mention just one question that every journal should be answering: When did Nasrallah assume a leadership role? Answer: When the Rabin government escalated its crimes in Lebanon, murdering Sheikh Abbas Mussawi and his wife and child with missiles fired from a US helicopter. Nasrallah was chosen as his successor. Only one of innumerable cases. There is, after all, a good reason why last February, 70% of Lebanese called for the capture of Israeli soldiers for prisoner exchange.

The conclusion is underscored, dramatically, by the current upsurge of violence, which began after the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit on June 25. Every published Western "timeline" takes that as the opening event. Yet the day before, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, a doctor and his brother, and sent them to the Israeli prison system where they can join innumerable other Palestinians, many held without charges -- hence kidnapped. Kidnapping of civilians is a far worse crime than capture of soldiers. The Western response was quite revealing: a few casual comments, otherwise silence. The major media did not even bother reporting it. That fact alone demonstrates, with brutal clarity, that there is no moral justification for the sharp escalation of attacks in Gaza or the destruction of Lebanon, and that the Western show of outrage about kidnapping is cynical fraud.

Noam Chomsky, interviewed by Kaveh Afrasiabi

Middle East Online, August 7, 2006

[koan]

anastrophe wrote: my quotes also included source and year. sorry you overlooked that.





no, i was merely applying the criterion you claimed defined legitimacy. sorry your examples fell outside those boundaries.


I'll not get into a battle of whose sources are better. The New York Sun is a good one in your mind.

are you denying that more than one elected Prime Minister of Israel has connections to terrorist organizations?

btw I found more than one extremely damaging quote that I didn't post because the source was not good enough by my standards. The source was something along the lines of the nysun.

[koan]

ok. I give. my expectation for a good source is to say when (exactly if possible because a year is a big time span) and where. It is not often a newspaper is quoting something said directly to the reporter. I want to know where it came from.

of my 10 quotations above, one came from a diary so it wasn't meant to be public but it was a direct quote, one came from a Jewish newspaper about their own leader, one from a book that likely has a reference to the exact date and place in its footnotes, the rest state when, where and to whom except for the 2 Golda Mier quotes.

you compare the nysun dot whatever where the quote is combined between statements made in two different years, no specific dates, places or audience. Are you really comparing your methodology to mine in this scenario? seriously?

I contend that you are trying to build an argument based on the leader of a minority political party leader's statement by trying to whitewash statements made by Prime Ministers on the other side of the battle.

[Bill Sikes]

Originally Posted by anastrophe

i've wondered why bill sikes came back to forumgarden. such a long absence, then he comes back. i wonder if his marriage fell apart, so now he's sad, bored, and alone?

Bryn Mawr wrote: And you talk about being personally offensive?


Interesting, isn't it! A lovely monument in the garden to anastrophe.

I was away for a while - the reasons are in the last few posts prior to my

absence. The events referred to happened in 2003, before I joined FG, so

yet again he's talking out of his arse. Still, it's great that he cares enough

to look up my posts.

[gmc]

Bill Sikes wrote: There would be no point. I wonder whether he's constantly spouting weasel

words is an attempt at "logic", or what? He certainly seems unable to accept

what everyone else does - in denial, if you like. Never mind.


That's a bit uncharitable I think. I don't agree with anastrophe most of the time but he's one of the more thought provoking people on the forum. Occasionally he's offensive perhaps deliberately, perhaps inadvertantly as telling people they are talking a load of bollocks is sometimes taken personally by some rather than the gentle I disagree with your point of view it really is. Of course he talks a load of bollocks himself sometimes as do we all or even quality bullshit on occasion. :yh_rotfl

Arguing about who are the native people in palestine is a bit spurious since throughout the world no people is truly where they were thousands of years ago or even the same tribal make up.

posted by bryn mawr

Simple English - the native peoples were forced to become Muslims but the Jews remained as Jews, therefore the Jews were not native peoples.

Basic logic, yes?


Actually no. EG under henry the eigth the english were forced to become protestant and accept his being head of the church but the catholics remained. By your logic catholics have no claim to be native to england.

People all around the world look at the same facts and events and the reasons for them and come to different concluscions as to what is really going on depending on their preconceived world view, background, religon whatever. Inyelligent people avoid going to war if they can avoid it and occasionaly intelligent people get talked in to warfare despite their better judgemment.

This situation in lebanon did not start with hezbollah lobbing rockets and kidnapping soldiers they are not the main instigators of this and quite clearly Israel has a lot to answer for. Blindlly supporting them no matter what as america seems to is not a common sense approach. Until Isreael makes peace and redresses grievances going back to the 1940's they will not be able to start living in peace and security.

posted by anastrophe

also worth noting again:

A Hezbollah statement in 1992 vowed, "It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth." In 2002, Sheik Nasrallah was quoted by the Lebanon Daily Star as encouraging Jews to move to Israel. "If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," he was quoted as saying.



contrast this with even the most aggressive of the comments by ben gurion, which was during israel's most aggressive interval of expansionism - immediately after the creation of the state (and which never came to pass). most of the comments are "push them out", "never return", etc.. Perhaps the explanation will be that the israeli's have a better grasp of rhetoric than to come right out and say we want to exterminate all of them.

perhaps.




Perhaps? I would say definitely. There are extremists on both sides who want to destroy the other and don't care about the fate of those who don't share their view of the world. The problem is to curnb their infkuence on events.

The worst atrocities against jews throughout history has been committed not by moslems but in the name of christianity. At least hezbollah haven't suggested stuffing them all in closed rooms and turning on the gas.

I have no time for moslem extremists but christian extremists are just as bad as our own (european) history clearly demonstrates. It's an age old conflict. if you want to see democracy in the middle east the only way to do it is let people sort things out for themselves.

True democracy in europe and america in the sense of i.e. one person one vote with freedom and liberty taken for granted is less than a hundred years old in both parts of the world and still very delicate.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: it means that islam was imposed on the inhabitants. that the jews didn't turn to islam is why they remained jewish. perhaps they hid their religious affiliation to avoid being slaughtered by the turks. that islam was imposed on the native peoples, and the jews remained, seems to indicate that apparently the imposition wasn't 100% effective, no? you're trying to paint an absolutist take on it. sorry. won't wash.Have you ever looked at any history of the period?

We have two problems, one is this curious distinction of yours between both "inhabitant" and "native peoples" on the one hand and "Jew" on the other, in relation to the Holy Land. If Jews were indigenous - if they lived there - they were also inhabitants and native peoples. To say "islam was imposed on the inhabitants" is to include the Jews. If you want to exclude the Jews - because, as you say, their religion remained Jewish and not Muslim - you need a different word to inhabitant.

What you actually need is "people of the Book" - a Muslim term referring to both Christians and Jews, in contrast to anyone else - and "dhimmi", people living in Muslim lands who are not Muslim. There's an assortment of rules on how each group is treated, which may or may not date from the Muslim expansion into the Holy Land in the 7th century.

All I can do with regard to "perhaps they hid their religious affiliation to avoid being slaughtered by the turks" is to point you to the Jewish Virtual Library at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... html#Islam :

In 638, the Jews in Palestine assisted the Muslim forces in defeating the Persians who had reneged on an agreement to protect them and allow them to resettle in Jerusalem. As a reward for their assistance, the Muslims permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and to guard the Temple Mount.

The Muslims fended off their rivals until the end of the 11th century. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for Crusades to regain Palestine from the infidels. They succeeded in 1099 and celebrated by herding all the Jews into a synagogue and burning them alive. Non-Christians were subsequently barred from the city.Your notion that "when the ottomans overran palestine and imposed islam on the inhabitants, it wasn't a violation of their rights at all" lacks the one essential element of all pertinent comment, accuracy. The Jews were, we have agreed, inhabitants. The Jews did not have Islam imposed on them - they were "people of the book", they were protected. The wider category of "dhimmi" were also protected by law, though the state of that law in 638 is impossible to determine. The entire notion that the inhabitants of the Holy Land had Islam imposed on them is inaccurate. You have a picture in your head which you believe to be true but which is merely uninformed and appallingly bigoted. You're an extreme partisan and it shows in spades in this thread. Oh - and the difference between the German passage and the Arabic one is that I bothered to read the one you posted, only to discover your subsequent announcement that you'd no idea what it even said - no doubt you feel really clever about that too.

You don't post here to discuss matters, you're self-evidently here to enjoy the fighting you engender and inflame. I have no interest in that sort of engagement. Here's my evidence, and a filthy puddle of vomit it is too:

i posted that for spot's benefit, anyway. i didn't even bother looking up the translation. spot - grand boy that he is - had posted some document in german a short time back. i was returning the favor.

you just don't get it. okay. sorry i can't help you out with the concepts here.

i've wondered why bill sikes came back to forumgarden. such a long absence, then he comes back. i wonder if his marriage fell apart, so now he's sad, bored, and alone?

personally offensive. no apology.

once again, you walk right into the trap.

sorry you overlooked that.

sorry your examples fell outside those boundaries.

anyone who reads that as suggesting that the jews were not native is, in a word, daft.

do you have anything of value to contribute? anything at all?

here: you're an anti-semite. that's just as offensive and personal as what you're flinging at me. so don't pretend to get your knickers in a knot at that.

nothing gets past you, it's amazing! stop acting like i'm in some sort of denial that i take cheap shots, and use rhetoric to punish people. i've stated quite clearly that i know of my own less than noble tendencies. if only you could see the same in yourself. i've already shown that you engage in the same, though certainly without my joie de vive for it. "ana-straw-man" indeed.

sorry. won't wash.

i don't take direction as to how to comport myself from you; as likewise you don't take direction from me.

[spot]

koan wrote: btw I found more than one extremely damaging quote that I didn't post because the source was not good enough by my standards. The source was something along the lines of the nysun.The statement "It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth" used by the New York Sun on March 11, 2005 as "A Hezbollah statement in 1992" was in fact taken from a statement allegedly by Islamic Jihad claiming responsibility for the bomb attack that destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Conflating small patches of hysterical text written by minor players and putting them into the mouths of the leaders of other organizations is typical tar-brush journalism. The claim of responsibility, and the text, was later denied by Islamic Jihad who never operated in South America before or since, and was never ascribed to Hezbollah in 1992 anyway. The bombing and the statement were taken then, and taken now, to have been the work of local non-Arab Argentinian anti-Zionists. I haven't followed up on the trial of the bomber's associates to check that, but it's how I remember the reports.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: In 2002, Sheik Nasrallah was quoted by the Lebanon Daily Star as encouraging Jews to move to Israel. "If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," he was quoted as saying.You do so weasel with your consciously misconstrued words, don't you. The first English-speaking reference to that speech was in The Jerusalem Post of October 24, 2002 which made it clear he was talking about Christian Zionists coming to Israel and their encouraging of Jews to do likewise with a view to rebuilding the Temple and triggering the Apocalypse:Nasrallah blasts US Christian Zionists

Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has accused US Christian supporters of Israel of hatching a "plot" to liquidate the Arabs and driving them into exile, the Beirut Daily Star reported Wednesday.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony, Nasrallah said that "Christian Zionists" are gaining strength in the US and that they have a powerful impact its US foreign policy.

Christian groups in America, he said, are financed by oil companies and weapons firms, and seek to encourage Jews to move to Israel and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. However, he said, "if they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."The idea that you can go fishing around for a subsequent article which inaccurately misplaces the context of the comment to Sheikh Nasrallah encouraging Jews to come to Israel, rather than commenting on Christians encouraging Jews to go to Israel, amazes me as both underhand and deliberately duplicitous.

The "all", by the way, seems in the context to refer to the collective group of both Christian Zionists and Jews moving to Israel to rebuild the temple, not to the "all Jews" implied by the erroneous context you discovered. Given that the speech was in Arabic to start with, and that Sheikh Nasrallah was lightening the mood of his doubtless enthusiastic and friendly audience by attempting humor, I fear it would be fruitless speculation.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: i see a difference between killing innocent civilians specifically for the purpose of killing innocent civilians, and civilians killed in the pursuit of the cowards who 'shield' themselves with those civilians.It has bothered me for some decades that a different morality is applied to acts authorized on behalf of nation states than obtains for the private citizen.

What I may or may not do as a person differs, depending on whether I do it on my own behalf or under national authority.

You regard the killing of civilians "in the pursuit of the cowards who 'shield' themselves with those civilians" as legitimate killing. There are circumstances in the UK in which I, as a private individual, may legitimately take life, but never in any circumstances may I put bystanders at risk in the process even if they are wholeheartedly sympathetic to those I am trying to kill.

I would happily constrain all people to a single legal code. The idea that someone acting on behalf of a nation has different moral obligations to what is considered normal for the citizen in his own right has been successfully challenged in recognised legal settings. "I was only following orders" has been dismissed as an excuse for murder, for example. The old idea that bribing Johnny Foreigner to cheat his employer or his government is legitimate business practice has been shown to be false in the modern world.

Too much of what is actually performed by armed forces is in the real domain of law enforcement. A politician ordering the use of overwhelming armed force in that context should be subject to the discipline of a court system. For a member of the armed forces to take life in that context should also be subject to the discipline of a court system. At the moment, it seems impossible for anyone to be sentenced to any meaningful penalty for presiding over such behavior. If a court becomes involved, it's only ever with the part-trained uninformed pizza-house assistant manager level of raw recruit who's been given a uniform just so that excesses can be perpetrated, it's only ever with the guy who actually puts the general into the sleeping bag and sits on his chest until he dies, it's never with the system designers who deliberately construct the settings in which these crimes occur. That is a shameful fact. It demeans the nation which operates such rules of immunity for managers and instigators.

[anastrophe]

spot wrote:

All I can do with regard to "perhaps they hid their religious affiliation to avoid being slaughtered by the turks" is to point you to the Jewish Virtual Library at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jso ... html#Islam :

In 638, the Jews in Palestine assisted the Muslim forces in defeating the Persians who had reneged on an agreement to protect them and allow them to resettle in Jerusalem. As a reward for their assistance, the Muslims permitted the Jews to return to Jerusalem and to guard the Temple Mount.



The Muslims fended off their rivals until the end of the 11th century. In 1095, Pope Urban II called for Crusades to regain Palestine from the infidels. They succeeded in 1099 and celebrated by herding all the Jews into a synagogue and burning them alive. Non-Christians were subsequently barred from the city.

Your notion that "when the ottomans overran palestine and imposed islam on the inhabitants, it wasn't a violation of their rights at all" lacks the one essential element of all pertinent comment, accuracy.


wait, you're lecturing me on accuracy, while citing as evidence events that all preceded the establishment of the ottoman empire by 200 years? holy crap.







The Jews were, we have agreed, inhabitants. The Jews did not have Islam imposed on them - they were "people of the book", they were protected. The wider category of "dhimmi" were also protected by law, though the state of that law in 638 is impossible to determine. The entire notion that the inhabitants of the Holy Land had Islam imposed on them is inaccurate.
wait, you're lecturing me on accuracy, while citing as evidence events that all preceded the establishment of the ottoman empire by 200 years? holy crap.



of note is that within the ottoman empire, a slave would be released from his bondage if he converted to islam. so, perhaps spot thinks that being coerced into taking on islam in order to secure one's freedom isn't "having islam imposed upon them". fair enough.



the turks were generally tolerant of jews and christians. generally. not always.

Expeditions were regularly organized to collect a tribute of Christian boys from the Balkan provinces. Those taken became Muslims and underwent training that instilled in them a corporate identity. These "slaves of the state" were committed to celibacy and to a lifetime of service. The most promising recruits were selected and prepared for admission to the Ottoman ruling class at special schools in Constantinople and Bursa, where they engaged in Islamic studies, learned Persian and Arabic, and received advanced military training. The rest were sent to work on the land and to do service in the regular army, through which some eventually rose to prominence.

http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Turkey2.html



animist nomadic peoples of the region, who were very much a large presence in the region, fared considerably less well.





You have a picture in your head which you believe to be true but which is merely uninformed and appallingly bigoted. You're an extreme partisan and it shows in spades in this thread.


the difference between you and i in this thread and many others is that you have a far superior ability to obscure your partisanship under layers of more banal rhetoric than i'm capable of. i'm not very good at hiding what partisanship i hold. honest expression of my feelings and all that senseless rot. i prefer to express my feelings honestly, rather than feigning impartiality. you choose a different method.



Oh - and the difference between the German passage and the Arabic one is that I bothered to read the one you posted, only to discover your subsequent announcement that you'd no idea what it even said - no doubt you feel really clever about that too.



You don't post here to discuss matters, you're self-evidently here to enjoy the fighting you engender and inflame. I have no interest in that sort of engagement. Here's my evidence, and a filthy puddle of vomit it is too:


the honour is to serve.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: i see a difference between killing innocent civilians specifically for the purpose of killing innocent civilians, and civilians killed in the pursuit of the cowards who 'shield' themselves with those civilians.I wonder whether we could address this issue of cowardice which you periodically raise, in that it relates to the question of disproportionality.

We could start by asking how many Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft are available for day to day operations by Hisbollah, from how many airfields. The answer, oddly, is zero, some 362 lower than the Israeli total. Much the same proportion exists when discussing vintage aircraft, attack helicopters, Bristol Beaufighters or Sopwith Camels. The opportunity to fly is not available to Hisbollah personnel.

Perhaps, rather than standing unprotected next to salvoes of rockets which are fairly easy to pinpoint, within 1.4 seconds of firing, by radar at a range of 200 miles, the Hisbollah fighters sit in Merkava Mk 3 Baz main battle tanks? Wrong again, I hear you cry. Hizbollah zero, Israeli Defense Force 1,200. Has Hizbollah selected the Chieftain Mk 2 with the reactive armor? A justifiable alternative, admittedly, but no, not even that. Not even an Armored Personnel Carrier between the lot of them. Maybe a dozen beat-up Mercedes (with, one hopes, air conditioning).

Have we also taken on board that it's impossible to fire these salvoes from within buildings? Out in the open, that's where rocket salvoes are fired from.

Cowardly is a good description of delivering bombs and missiles from F16s or from turrets carrying 120mm barrels. Cowardly is not a rational word to employ of people armed at best with a machine gun and anti-tank grenades effective out to 100 yards when they face a fully-equipped national armed force. To say that Hisbollah fighters "'shield' themselves" with civilians is to accept the propaganda of those dropping the heavy ordnance on residential districts. You fail to ask why the people making the large very accurately targetted bangs across the Lebanon might say that. Is it not possible that they can scarcely say anything else? Does anyone still believe that rocket salvoes can be sited within buildings, or that Lebanese buildings are not being blown up with monotonous regularity - something approaching ten thousand of them, and counting?

Cowardice is not an appropriate word to apply to the fighters of Hisbollah, much though they obviously anger you. It fits the IAF pilots to perfection, though - when's the last time a pilot in those parts was late home for tea? But to use "cowardly" of poorly armed poorly trained enthusiasts who would rather face down overwhelming odds than leave their detained countrymen to fester in foreign jails without trial is an abuse in any language.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: wait, you're lecturing me on accuracy, while citing as evidence events that all preceded the establishment of the ottoman empire by 200 years? holy crap.
One of the few clues to your timeframe was "it means that islam was imposed on the inhabitants". Before, during and after the crusades the preponderance of the Holy Land inhabitants were Muslim, of course. The only time a significant proportion of non-Muslim inhabitants were to be found in the Holy Land was before 638. I took your reference to "ottoman" and "turk" to be ignorant anachronism on your part, given that basic dating.

So you're suggesting that the Muslim re-taking of the Holy Land from the Christian King of Jerusalem involved mass conversion of the inhabitants to Islam? Go read a book.

Alternatively, name a date when you feel that Ottoman Turks performed a mass conversion of the inhabitants of the Holy Land to Islam - a time when the preponderance of the Holy Land inhabitants weren't Muslim - and we can go and read up about it together.

[anastrophe]

peculiar comments about cowardice spot. i was always under the impression that as a Pacifist, you felt *all* people who engaged in war were cowards.



another thing i was wrong on again, darnit!

[anastrophe]

oh, just to double check, you did see the citations i provided in response to your demands for same regarding the israeli settlers forcibly removed from the west bank?



the flow of the topic has been so furious, i can certainly understand if you "overlooked" it.

[spot]

I speak more in defense of my dictionary than anything else.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: oh, just to double check, you did see the citations i provided in response to your demands for same regarding the israeli settlers forcibly removed from the west bank?



the flow of the topic has been so furious, i can certainly understand if you "overlooked" it.And, actually, no - not even a hint of it. Perhaps it was posted in a different thread?

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: One of the few clues to your timeframe was "it means that islam was imposed on the inhabitants". Before, during and after the crusades the preponderance of the Holy Land inhabitants were Muslim, of course. The only time a significant proportion of non-Muslim inhabitants were to be found in the Holy Land was before 638. I took your reference to "ottoman" and "turk" to be ignorant anachronism on your part, given that basic dating.
yes, well, it is convenient to assume ignorance on my part when that's the only post in this topic where i ever referred specifically to the ottomans.



very convenient indeed. but you're not being purposefully obscurant in service to your partisanship. heaven's no. that just not possible!

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: And, actually, no - not even a hint of it. Perhaps it was posted in a different thread?


so now i need to provide citations directing you to my own posts within this thread. curious how that particular part of the thread - where you repeatedly insisted on sources - that you'd overlook it when i supplied them. darnit all.

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: I speak more in defense of my dictionary than anything else.


i think it's a very different matter when the combatants believe that 93 virgins await them in paradise if they die. as opposed to the conscript who'd rather be boffing his girlfriend right now.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: yes, well, it is convenient to assume ignorance on my part when that's the only post in this topic where i ever referred specifically to the ottomans.



very convenient indeed. but you're not being purposefully obscurant in service to your partisanship. heaven's no. that just not possible!Come out with it then - what date were you referring to? I'll happily go and read a book about whetever period you had in mind, but so far I've not managed to get you to tell me when.

As for "i was always under the impression that as a Pacifist, you felt *all* people who engaged in war were cowards" - do you think "coward" simply means "wrong"? Of course people can be cowardly or brave in war, from a pacifist perspective. What have cowardice or bravery to do with pacifism?

[koan]

Nobody in the new empire was forced to accept the Islamic faith; indeed, for a century after Muhammad's death, conversion was not encouraged and, in about 700, was actually forbidden by law: Muslims believed that Islam was for the Arabs as Judaism was for the sons of Jacob. As the "people of the book" (ahl al-kitab), Jews and Christians were granted religious liberty as dhimmis, protected minority groups.

A History of God, Karen Armstrong, p. 159

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: i think it's a very different matter when the combatants believe that 93 virgins await them in paradise if they die. as opposed to the conscript who'd rather be boffing his girlfriend right now.Ah, of course, your barely-disguised racism peeks shyly out at us and flutters its eyelashes alluringly. One of us is worth more than one of them. Because we value life so much we refuse to do body-counts.

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: Come out with it then - what date were you referring to? I'll happily go and read a book about whetever period you had in mind, but so far I've not managed to get you to tell me when.



As for "i was always under the impression that as a Pacifist, you felt *all* people who engaged in war were cowards" - do you think "coward" simply means "wrong"? Of course people can be cowardly or brave in war, from a pacifist perspective. What have cowardice or bravery to do with pacifism?


that's odd spot. you seem to completely dodge the question of why you've purposefully neglected the citations i provided regarding the forced removal of settlers from the west bank. it's even more "curious" considering you quoted from and responded to a portion of that selfsame post.



cut out the obscurant crap.

[anastrophe]

spot wrote: Ah, of course, your barely-disguised racism peeks shyly out at us and flutters its eyelashes alluringly. One of us is worth more than one of them. Because we value life so much we refuse to do body-counts.


another dodge. pretend the ideology professed by the very "non-cowards" engaged doesn't exist.



i was unaware further that islam was a race. a very curious contention. perhaps you meant bigoted? it's so hard to keep the terms straight, when your only desire is to impugn someone's character, in an undisguised display of same.

[koan]

anastrophe wrote: another dodge. pretend the ideology professed by the very "non-cowards" engaged doesn't exist.



i was unaware further that islam was a race. a very curious contention. perhaps you meant bigoted? it's so hard to keep the terms straight, when your only desire is to impugn someone's character, in an undisguised display of same.


I have no problem with your prefering to be called a bigot.

[anastrophe]

koan wrote: I have no problem with your prefering to be called a bigot.


just so. in the same spirit, i have no problem suggesting you're anti-jew. what's sauce for the goose....

[koan]

A religious history lesson:

In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Catholic monarchs, conquered Granada. The crusades against Islam in the Middle East had failed, but at least the Muslims had been flushed out of Europe. Europe became Muslim-free in 1499. Ferdinand and Isabella then signed the Edict of Expulsion, designed to rid Spain of its Jews. Many Jews were so attached to "al-Andalus" (as the old Muslim kingdom had been called) that they converted to Christianity, but about 80,000 Jews crossed the border into Portugal, while 50, 000 fled to the new Muslim Ottoman empire, where they were given a warm welcome.

precis

A Battle for God, The History of Fundamentalism, Karen Armstrong, p. 3

[koan]

anastrophe wrote: just so. in the same spirit, i have no problem suggesting you're anti-jew. what's sauce for the goose....


just pointing out how you called yourself a bigot, not I.

[spot]

What date were you referring to? I'll happily go and read a book about whetever period you had in mind, but so far I've not managed to get you to tell me when.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: i was unaware further that islam was a race. a very curious contention. perhaps you meant bigoted? it's so hard to keep the terms straight, when your only desire is to impugn someone's character, in an undisguised display of same.Racism as in WASP-America First, of course.

[koan]

Here's a review of The Cult of the Suicide Bomber, a documentary for those who really seek to understand.



Robert Baer, the ex-CIA operative upon whom George Clooney's "Syriana" character was fashioned, is the narrator and central figure in "The Cult of the Suicide Bomber," a docudocu that aims to explain the tactic, as practiced in the Middle East.

...

Baer travels to Lebanon, where suicide bombing was practiced by members of Hezbollah on invading Israeli troops. The case is made that the huge disparity of firepower between the invading Israelis and the Lebanese army, and the large number of casualties among Lebanese civilians made suicide bombing one of the few effective logistical weapons available.

Baer argues that these were not terrorists, but ordinary soldiers, and wonders whether we would judge them differently if they had dropped bombs on the Israelis from the sky rather than blowing them up on the ground.

He observes that the event that launched suicide bombings inside Israel was perpetrated not by a Palestinian but by an Israeli settler who in 1994 opened fire in a Hebron mosque, killing 29 worshippers and injuring more than 100.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: that's odd spot. you seem to completely dodge the question of why you've purposefully neglected the citations i provided regarding the forced removal of settlers from the west bank. it's even more "curious" considering you quoted from and responded to a portion of that selfsame post.Because, honestly, I haven't seen them yet. If you won't show me, I'll go and search back, since at least you've now told me some text I can search on.

[spot]

anastrophe wrote: that's odd spot. you seem to completely dodge the question of why you've purposefully neglected the citations i provided regarding the forced removal of settlers from the west bank. it's even more "curious" considering you quoted from and responded to a portion of that selfsame post.



cut out the obscurant crap.Except, of course, you did nothing so useful as providing me with a clue of the message in question after all. It's http://www.forumgarden.com/forums/showp ... tcount=374

I have (unlike you, I presume) read both articles in full. Neither gives a figure for the number of Israeli settlers removed from the West Bank by the State. I'm not impressed by your ability to cite. For one thing, banging up a URL without saying what's relevant about it, or summarizing its content, it moderately stupid. For another, neither article answered the posed question. How many did they remove, vis a vis those they left in situ? The answer ideally needs to carry two numbers, one for the first piece of information requested and one for the second. You do this to me so often, remember? Personally I'm sick of it.

I what way does "crap" differ, in terms of filtering obscenities, from other euphemisms for the excretory process? It's not a savory word. I would, myself, avoid using it in the context in which you have employed it.

[koan]

Meanwhile, continuing in the history of fundamentalism...Karen Armstrong's first chapter is titled "Jews: The Precursors (1492-1700)"

In this Chapter she tells the story of the first clash, notably between Jews.

What Prado wanted to be was a "secular Jew," but in the seventeenth century that category did not exist, and neither Prado nor the rabbis would have been able to formulate it clearly. It was the first of a series of clashes between a modern, wholly rational worldview on the one hand, and the religious mind-set, on the other.

As so often in these principled collisions, neither side behaved very well. Prado was an arrogant man, and he roundly abused the rabbis, threatening at one point to attack them in the synagogue with a drawn sword. The rabbis also acted less than honorably: they set a spy on Prado, who reported that his views had become still more radical. (p. 21)

Poland had recently annexed much of what is now Ukraine, where peasants formed cavalry squads to organize their own defense. These "cossacks" hated both Poles and Jews...In 1648 the cossack leader, Boris Chmielnicki, led an uprising against the Poles which attacked Polish and Jewish communities alike. When the war finally came to an end in 1667, the chronicles tell us, 100, 000 Jews had been killed and 300 Jewish communities destroyed. Even though these numbers were probably exaggerated, the letters and stories of the refugees filled Jews in other parts of the world with terror...Many believed that these events must be the long-awaited "birth pangs of the Messiah," (p. 25-26)





wow. "birth pangs" who would have thought that it was a Jewish phrase?

[koan]

Let's look a little closer at what birth pangs mean, since Condi tells us that is what is happening.

source

Jews

According to the Tenach (Old Testament) and the Talmud (Sanhedrin 97b), there will be 10 signs heralding the coming of the Redemption. They are known as the birth pangs of the Messiah.

The world will either be in a state of complete righteousness or comlete degradation.

Truth will decrease and lies prevail.

Inflation will be out of control.

The Jews will return to their Biblical homeland and the desert will bloom.

There will be fewer and fewer wise and righteous people.

Many Jews will give up the hope for redemption.

The young will treat the old with disrespect.

Learning will be rejected because people will desire a life of ease.

The whole world will turn against Israel.

The Jews will fight each other (secular against religious).

In the war of Gog and Magog, God will defeat Israel’s enemies and confirm that the nation of Israel is His chosen people. Earthly redemption will last 6,000 years. Afterwards, eternity will come.

Christians

In Jesus’ end-time teachings (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; Revelation), He speaks of the following signs:

The Beginning of Birth Pangs

Wars and rumors of wars among the nations

Famine and plagues (epidemics)

False messiahs

The return of the Jews to the Land of Israel

The restoration of Israel

The Birth Pangs

The Gospel spreads to all the nations of the earth

Many false prophets arise

The Jerusalem Temple will be reestablished

The abomination of desolation

Hatred of the nations toward Israel

Uncontrollable anarchy

Signs in the heavens and natural disasters

Tribulation

People’s indifference to the signs of the times

After the battle of Armageddon, the Messiah will appear in the clouds and the thousand-year reign will begin. Satan will be bound in chains. When the millennium ends, God creates a new heaven and earth and the New Jerusalem descends from heaven “made ready as a bride adorned for her husband (Rev. 21:2). “The tabernacle of God is among men¦and God Himself shall be among them (Rev. 21:3).

Moslems

Major and minor signs will precede the arrival of the Last Days. (Koran Sura 21:96, 27:82, 43:61).

Minor Signs

Bloodshed among Moslem groups

Increasing war in the world

Time contracts, with days becoming shorter

Religious awareness decreases

Atheists become very common

Moslems infiltrate all nations on earth

Major Signs

Gross materialism

Women outnumber men

The Moslems defeat the Jews in a holy war

Initially, Moslems and Christians fight together against the unbelievers

Afterwards, the Moslems defeat the Christians in another holy war: “On Saturday we kill the Jews and on Sunday the Christians! Gog and Magog triumph. At the end of time, the world is destroyed, and only true Moslems are saved, with the most honorable places of heaven filled by martyrs who gave their lives for Allah in holy war. After the earth is destroyed, it is recreated and prevails 50,000 years.

[koan]

Thinking about suicide bombers, what about those suicide prisoners?

"Certainly taking their own lives was not necessary. But it certainly is a good PR move to draw attention."

Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, speaking about the suicides of three Guantanamo Bay detainees