The Arab and Iranian leaders talk a lot of talk about "destroying the Zionist regime", which American propaganda sheets (so-called "newspapers", though they print propaganda, not news, so I don't know why they're called that) of course translate as "destroy Israel" and which right-wing pro-Israeli types translate as "exterminate all the Jews in Israel."
Question is, how accurate is that translation? Because the Arabs will win, in the long run. Simple math says this -- as Arab states modernize and become more powerful, Israel can only exist with massive U.S. support, but the U.S. is itself swiftly losing the ability to give such support. So the answer to that translation question is important. To test the waters, I did some Google searches and found some anti-Israeli sites run by Arabs, and asked the question there: If Israel is destroyed, what happens to the Jews in Israel?
The answer I got back was simple. They view the problem of Israel as being an illegal immigration problem. They deport the Russian Jews back to Russia, they deport the European Jews back to Europe, they deport the Ethiopian Jews back to Ethiopia, and as for the Arab and other Middle Eastern Jews, well, they're Arabs, so they belong there and they have no problem with the Arab Jews staying there and living in peace as they did for over a thousand years before the founding of the modern state of Israel. Then they ideally would want to see a democracy in the new democratic state of Palestine -- a democracy which would of course be majority-Arab and majority-Muslim due to simple demographics (once the Palestinians are allowed to go home), but a democracy nonetheless.
I must say that this does not jibe at all with the "they want to exterminate all the Jews!" rhetoric coming out of the right wing. I don't get that answer from actual Middle Eastern Arabs, although granted, these are educated Arabs who are politically more pro-democracy and liberal than probably the majority of Arabs. I wonder, has anybody else here asked actual Middle Eastern Arabs what they want to do about the Jews in Israel once the Arabs defeat the Israeli military and let the Palestinians go home? And what answers did you get? Did you hear anything FROM ACTUAL ARABS THAT YOU PERSONALLY INTERACTED WITH that would suggest that Arabs want to commit genocide against Israel's Jews, or are the only such assertions only heard in "translations" published in propaganda journals ("newspapers") or bald assertions by propagandists ("newsmen" and "talk show hosts")?
-- Badtux the Curious Penguin
I sure am glad that you are working this all out and will be able to fix it, cuz I haven't got the time too. God delegates ya know.
ReplyDeleteSuch nonsense. In other words if people don't agree with you they must be reading propaganda. Sheesh.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that when I read the same article in overseas newspapers, they printed it as "destroy the Zionist regime" rather than "destroy Israel". "Zionist regime" is a government, "Israel" is a nation. The former implies they want to overthrow the government of Israel, the latter implies they want to kill all the people of Israel. Hmm, interesting. So who translated it accurately? I then asked an Arabic speaking professor to translate the same article from the original Arabic. He also translated it as "destroy the Zionist regime." I.e., destroy the Israeli government.
ReplyDeleteDo our newspapers deliberately print propaganda as fact? Hmm... I'm sure (Judith Miller) that they would never (Weapons of Mass Destruction) print anything (Saddam-Al Qaeda Connection) that was ever just government propaganda (Mission Accomplished) or do print anything (Plame CIA) just as a favor for politicians, now would they?!
- Badtux the "Hmmm..." Penguin
We want what happened in South Africa to happen in Israel. Israel is simply a racist state as it is.
ReplyDeleteWe are fully aware that we will win in the long run, and that justice is on our side.
Look at what they do: Sudan.
ReplyDeleteAnd what do they propose to do with the two generations who have been born and bred in Israel, send them to Russia???
I Often wonder - if the Romans knew they were setting this region up for a couple thousand years of bloody war, would they have done what they did, or would they have found another solution?
And, do our idiots in charge know what they are doing there(no) and what they are loosing on the world...
The funny thing, or sad thing, perhaps ironic thing, is that when ever the western nations ness with the middle east the area becomes a war zone.
ReplyDeleteYet, it was peaceful for many years. The myth that they have been fighting for thousands of years is just that, a myth.
Indeed, the Arabs have been a relatively peaceful bunch of merchants and farmers since around 700AD. The only time there's been fighting is when otusiders came in -- when the Crusaders invaded Palestine, for example, and slaughtered all the Jews and Muslims of Jeruselem to the last man, woman, and infant child.
ReplyDeleteAs I point out elsewhere, 30% of Israel's Jewish population is Middle Eastern in origin. If Muslims hate Jews and want to exterminate them, they sure did a lousy job of it, considering that they had over a thousand years to do it...
-BT
Indeed, the Arabs have been a relatively peaceful bunch of merchants and farmers since around 700AD.
ReplyDeleteCan it be called meaningful peace when half the population has been enslaved, and are horribly mutilated as a matter of course? That the women have submitted to slavery as an alternative to war(as in afghanistan) is a tribute to the women and a condemnation of the system.
SB Gypsy, I'm not quite understanding you. The moderates that I talk to are the ones opposing the U.S.-backed regimes that impose restrictions upon women. They want moderate democratic regimes in the Middle East. They're not the ones fostering violence. The only people who like violence are nasty types on the far right or far left. Unfortunately, when you shut up the moderates via imposing repressive Western-backed police states, the nasty types are the only ones you can hear.
ReplyDeleteAs for getting on your high horse, you live in a country where 20% of the female population has already lost the right to an abortion thanks to violence and regulation, where until the 1970's in most states a married woman could not divorce unless she could prove in a court of law that her husband was cheating on her and could not own property (it was all "community property" that her husband could sell as he pleased -- with or without her permission, even if she was the main bread winner of the family), and until the 1920's where women did not even have the right to vote. The majority of current regimes in the Middle East were imposed by outside powers in the 1920's and reflect the Western values of the 1920's in many ways. This has little to do with how they'd govern themselves in the absence of outside interference. Over time, they would follow the same route that the United States followed. But by bombing any moderate Arab nations (e.g. Lebanon), and suppressing via political repression the moderates in other countries, you make sure that only the violent minority gets heard by the majority as the valid opposition to the vile regimes placed over them by the West.
In Iran, over half of the university population is women, women have the right to vote, there are women in the Parliament, and women are close to 30% of the country's professionals. They still must wear hijab, but sooner or later the last of the old-line ayatollahs is going to stroke out and that's going to fall away. If not for U.S. interference Iran would have a moderate regime right now, they have made great strides in the past 30 years after freeing themselves of the U.S.-backed Shah's rule in modernizing their nation, despite a bloody U.S.-backed invasion in the 1980's that killed a generation of young men in Iran. But when the U.S. is threatening to bomb the place back to the stone age, well, naturally people turn to the only people who are good at violence -- right-wing nutcases, basically the Iranian equivalent of the Bush junta.
By eliminating moderates in the Middle East via the use of violence against the population of the Middle East, you insure that the female population of the Middle East is oppressed. Just look at Iraq, where until we toppled their native government, women could walk the streets by themselves, drive, work as web designers while wearing western-style dress (e.g. Baghdad Burning)... but violence destroys all of that.
Which is why Israel's refusal to bring its Arab majority into a moderate multi-cultural government is going to, in the end, result in a lot of bloodshed and slaughter that would be avoided if they weren't such racists. When you strip half your population of their citizenship and property after driving them off their land at gunpoint, you're basically telling the moderates, "you're not wanted here", and telling the right-wing violent radicals, "game's on." That's just how it works -- violence begets violence.
-BT
Exactly, and the middle class of Iraq is melting away, moving to Jordan, moving to Europe. And that is not a good thing for the stability of that country.
ReplyDelete*
Why do I question the statement that the muslims lived in peace for 700 years before the western nations found the oil under their lands? Because I used to be a Sikh, and I know that they were running all over India during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, converting by the sword, feeding Hindus and Sikhs to the palace hounds, boiling people alive, scalping them to death(sikhs never cut their hair)for bounty, and all other manner of tortures. Yes, India was miles from Arabia, but where did the Molsems come from before they invaded India?
Do I want to continue punishing their decendents for what happened in a far away country hundreds of years ago? absolutely NOT!
What we need is to stop stirring up a hornet's nest over there. We need desperately to become energy independent. We need totally to stop sticking our noses into the political situations in other countries; because every time we do, we in our lust for power, end up on the wrong side supporting the wrong politican.
It's almost as if we don't trust our own founding ideals, and fall back on powergrabs and warmongering in the effort to control what's happening to us.
When we make war on liberty in other countries, we loose it here at home. When we abandon the rule of law in order to justify power grabs and meddling, we become lawless abroad and here at home.
Bushco is doing on a global scale what he does to the Democrats. He raises up a strawman, punches it out, and then delcares victory. The problem with doing that to the Muslims and the middle east is that the Muslims and the middle east exist in reality, and when the victory was declared, they didn't disappear. And, they've got a trainwreak full of baggage trundling along behind them.
Wait a min - Israel has a muslim majority? last I heard it was less than 20%. Is that why they are so afraid of letting everyone vote? Is that why they want the cheap labor yet refuse to let their cheap labor live in the country with them? They are afraid they'll be overruled?
SB Gypsy, yes, Israel has an Arab majority population if you count all the people who live in Israel. Egypt gave the Gaza Strip to Israel in 1978, Jordan gave the West Bank to Israel in 1994, as part of their respective peace treaties with Israel, yet Israel refuses to give their new citizens the right to vote in Israeli elections or, indeed, any of the other benefits of Israeli citizenship. When asked why, the Israelis are rather blunt about their reasons -- it's because they are Muslims, and Muslims cannot be allowed to have equal rights in Israel or Israel would cease to be the world's only Jewish state.
ReplyDeleteIsrael is basically a smaller version of South Africa, where a small minority of European-descended immigrants rules over a larger majority of natives. The so-called "Palestinian Authority" has no more real authority than the tribal administrations in the Bantustans that the South Africans set up. The notion of full civil rights for all Israelis is not even debated by the Jewish minority in Israel, other than by a few brave souls who are swiftly shouted down and even shot at for daring to say that all Israelis, not just the Jewish minority, should have full civil rights as Israeli citizens.
-BT
Oh, SB Gypsy, I do suggest looking up the history of the Moghul Empire. The Moghuls were Turkik, not Arab, and basically were nomads who got driven out of Russia into Afghanistan as the Moskovy Rus expanded, discovered the benefits of gunpowder, armed the first cannon-armed military in the region, then because they had no liking for Afghanistan invaded the more lucrative states of nearby India (which was never a unified country before modern times any more than Europe was ever a unified country, India is a subcontinent that also happens to share a name with a modern-day country).
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, the Moghuls weren't nice people. They were basically your typical Mongolian "Golden Hoard" type, you know the game, rape and plunder and murder galore. But the Sikh religion originated *AFTER* the Moghuls conquered northern India, not *BEFORE*. I.e., it originated after Muslim rule of northern India had been instituted (at gunpoint, against spear-armed native armies). There was a later backlash against the Sikhs by a later Moghul government, but that's a subject for another story, and was as much a political thing as a religion thing.
-BT