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Israel regularly negotiated with kidnappers...? Now when three soldiers go missing, two countries are invaded and scores of civillians are killed? Are you really suggesting that a vicious unprovoked attack on children playing on the beach isn't an 'terrorist' attack? What about three teenagers playing soccer and killed by a gunship? This is a valid response?
The fact of the matter is, that IF Israel acts no better than the 'terrorists', then why should it be supported by anyone except out of fanaticism.
I can't help but notice that when it comes to Israel, even a change of government, does actually change the opinion of it's supporters. There is NEVER an action that Israel can take, in which the same rationales are not thrown out, regardless of what has taken place.
It's strange because in virtually any other western country, the various supporters and detractors tend to line up ideological behind whatever party that is in power.
Israel is a special case.
The government, whoever it is and what ever it does, commands the same loyalities.
If Israel reports widespread abuse and corruption by Arafat and his kin (quite rightly), you find the supporters of Israel more than happy to artciulate how this is ultiamtely bad for the Palestinian people. However when you point out similar if not worst abuse and corruption regarding Sharon, or dozens of others, you are told that 'one doesn't know anything' or your 'anti-semitic' and simply feeding PLO propaganda. It's never symmetrical analysis. Israel needs nuclear weapons to protect itself, but they don't see this as a legitimate route of protection for anyone else. Again their 'hidden motives' are suspected. Israel of course has no hidden motives and to suggest as such is simply 'anti-semitic' and tacit support for terrorism.
One of the disturbing 'memes' you used:
I'm often flabberghasted (sp?) at the left's attitude towards Israel. After all, Israel the most progressive state in the entire Middle East.
Firstly do you honestly believe that peace activists and 'liberals' are the enemies of Israel? Funny currently in the US, that places you right next to the most extreme elements of the GOP? So the 'left' is an enemy of Israel and America in this narrative ultimately?
Secondly, if you know anything about the left or progressive, then you wouldn't be shocked at people drawing a line at their support for a rightwing led militarist government in a coalition with religious extremists headed by a leader wanted for war crimes questioning...the left usually doesn't support governments like that on principle -- not racism.
Why would you miss this and not think that say evangelicals who stand at pulpits praying for the world jewry to be destroyed by their God isn't more of a threat, who knows? Far from it, these two groups form a healthy alliance vis a vis the Israel file at the highest levels of government.
Usually Supporters will write:
Well of course if both sides ceased ALL hostilities there'd be peace!
WELL of course this gives the patina of a principled position, but it is meaningless...peace by definition means 'absence of hostilities', but the poster makes sure emphasis is on the 'ALL' which really means that the Palestinians must quit their strategies, while Israel can go back to 'business as usual' which to many of the Supporters© means annexation, not a 'two-state solution' or peace or anything else...or at least anything every offered by Supporters©
That's why most of what you write can only be considered propaganda and not really an exchange of opinion...it follows the same script,
but the script doesn't have any ideological component;
the script is never prescriptive;
the script avoids all regional agents as active participants in any peace but criticizes their role in the war;
the script emphasizes victimhood and paranoia, but the threat is never anything more than what occurred last year or even last decade;
all Palestinians overtures in the past towards peace or recognition are removed from the narrative and each Arab actor is presented without history memory or even historical sympathy (strange since they were all oppressed by Europeans).
the script avoids all Israeli domestic political ambitions and anaylsis never stays focused on the motives of Israeli political actors and all their actions are never seen as internal party politics, but as tacitly sanctioned as a wise military response.(all other countries in discussion usually yield intra-conflicts via their respective political systems -- in fact this forum is the result of that healthy dissection of different POLITICAL points of view in the United States)
(NOTE: Olmert is never seen as an untested new leader with a very weak coalition who might be taking the actions he is for purely political reasons of strengthening his own grip on power. Although a very plainly valid observation, this never enters into the various supporters critiques.
It's the same all the time regardless of the events on the ground. Why would people not think this is not propaganda since it hasn't evolved to reflect the history of the conflict. All intractible wars and conflict tend to produce different reactions over time...but for Israel and it's supporters, it's always the same...no matter what happens?
Why precisely would you think that people should just support a highly unstable often violent regime with an undeclared number of nuclear weapons? There ARE issues that some people see that go a little beyond the narrow worldview of the Israel's security, you know...
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