Fred,

Gary Farber at Amygdala thinks you are advocating the slaughter of Palestinians here. I've been reading you for a long time, and that notion coming from you seems inconceivable to me. I think you're merely pointing out the propensity of Palestinian terrorists to step up their rate of atrocities (slaughters) whenever Zinni - or any other possibility of a truce - appears on the horizon. Care to settle the discussion?

Bill
Posted by Bill Quick [www.dailypundit.com] 3/15/2002 1:55:47 AM

Perhaps, sometimes brevity isn't the soul of wit.

I puzzled on this one also, but torqued it in the following manner:

1. The Mitchell plan espoused negotiations after a week of no violence, and everyone was officially backing that for over a year, except the PLO/PA thugs. Whither Arafat, nobody knows.

2. Instead of violence being ended or even attenuated, the "slaughters" have increased in frequency and effectiveness as both sides used the interim to train their front line operations units.

3. Now the "logic" of the Zinni trip is that the escalating violence requires a US intervention to get the negotiations to start up, despite the fact that this contradicts the policies stated above ( http://www.nzz.ch/english/editorials/2002/03/14_us_middle_east_ab.html is a fair summary of this).

4. As rhetoric is the mode here, and not concrete logic, we can easily extrapolate this equation and conclude that if the "slaughters" increase in frequency, then the US and Israel, and the PA thugs as well, will be begging for a ceasefire tommorrow.

Unfortunately this "logic" is about as likely as the Second Coming happening soon, but you can never tell for sure.
Posted by Tom Roberts 3/15/2002 9:15:52 AM

Bill and Tom,

Your interpretations of what I mean are correct. I suggested on 3/9 that the exploder in the hotel lobby was a part of the Zinni welcome committee. The day before that, when it was announced that Zinni would be returning, I opined that "they'll be exploding by the dozens next week."

It's SOP for the Philistines to ratchet up the level of violence when there's any chance of talks. Even if Yasser wanted to tone it down, which I don't believe is so, Hamas and Islamojihad would go ahead, if only to demonstrate that he can't tell them what to do. Al-Aqsa will join in to show that they're Real Terrorists, too.

I've been wrestling with a particularly nasty problem at my real job, and haven't been putting the obsession into Rantburg for the past few days that I normally do. I should have expounded a little more.

Gary, I'm so disappointed you could think such a thing...
Posted by Fred 3/15/2002 10:16:29 AM

I've just posted:
I APOLOGIZE TO FRED PRUITT: Having read Fred's clarification at Rantburg, I apologize to him for misinterpreting his meaning.

Gary, I'm so disappointed you could think such a thing...

I'm sorry. Now I shall, presumably, know better. In retrospect, it would have been more respectful to have first queried you in e-mail as to your meaning. I apologize that your actual meaning didn't even occur to me, until Bill Quick suggested it in e-mail, as a possibility; I didn't spot any possible ambiguity, and that was my error and my responsibility.

I continue to recommend Rantburg as a valuable source of coverage of the Mideast, India/Pakistan, the war, and related topics.
Posted by Gary Farber [www.amygdalagf.blogspot.com] 3/15/2002 4:05:44 PM