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| Middle East |
| Orson Scott Card: "Are Israelis the Palestinian Police?" |
| 2003-09-03 |
| Since so many people agree that Aris came up with a good link, here’s a few key paragraphs of the article he linked to: . . . as usual, the anti-Israeli media were quick to find a way to blame Israel >[for the end of the "cease fire"]. Apparently, you see, the Hamas leader that Israeli soldiers eliminated was a "moderate," so now Israel was leaving only the "hardliners" in charge of Hamas. Get a clue, folks! There are no moderates in Hamas. An actual moderate wouldn’t live for five minutes within the Hamas organization. There are only terrorists who think it might be beneficial to have an occasional hiatus in the killing in order to secure a temporary advantage, and terrorists who think the killings should continue without interruption. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any moderates in Palestine. The fact is that Palestinians are human beings, which means that despite the pressure to outwardly conform, most of them are heartily sick of all the conflict and killing and would much rather things settled down to a normal kind of life where nobody gets killed and people just do their jobs and raise their families. However, if you actually say something like that in Palestine today, you’ll be ostracized at best, probably beaten up, and maybe killed. Because Palestine, despite all the recent show of democracy, is still a dictatorship, and Yasser Arafat is still the dictator. That’s because despite Abu Mazen’s lovely title and all his meetings with foreign dignitaries and all the media coverage of his every word, Yasser Arafat’s boys have all the guns and aren’t afraid to use them. Arafat allows Mazen to act like he’s in charge outside of Palestine, but inside, Arafat has no intention of releasing his iron grip. . . . So the peace process is all over, right? Arafat is taking back control and it’s terrorism as usual, with the back and forth retaliations between Israel and the terrorists that we’ve known for so many years ... Maybe, just maybe, there’s something else going on. Maybe Abu Mazen, realizing that Yasser Arafat’s "security forces" will never cooperate in the suppression of terrorist groups (since they’re terrorists themselves), and realizing that there is no hope for peace until the Palestinian government is able to control or eliminate all the gun- and bomb-wielding forces inside its territory ... Maybe Abu Mazen is using the Israeli military as his police force. No, I’m not suggesting some treasonous, under the table deal between Mazen and Sharon. All I’m suggesting is that Mazen is not an idiot. He knows he has no military force that obeys him. But he also knows that the only reason he was allowed to assume his office was because Israel had Arafat and the other terrorists up against a wall. Hamas might be blustering right now about how Israel needs to "prepare coffins" as Hamas retaliates for Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’s truce-breaking bus bomb. But the fact is that Hamas’s leadership really hates it when their own guys are getting killed. It scares them to death. Remember, Hamas’s leaders aren’t brave suicide bombers — they’re the cowards who send out other people’s children as brave suicide bombers. They themselves don’t strap on bombs and go blow up Jewish children and other innocents. So when Israel systematically targets Hamas’s (and Islamic Jihad’s, and Al Fatah’s) leadership, they start screaming about how awful Israel is ... but they also look for a place to hide. How do you think Israelis are finding out where these Hamas leaders are? Somebody’s telling them. Not Abu Mazen. But ordinary Palestinians who hate what the terrorists have done in their names, and hate the way Palestinians have to live because of the terrorists — some of them have found the courage to help the Israelis do what the Palestinians can’t do for themselves: rid Palestine of the thugs who oppress them and commit atrocities in their name. . . . Orson Scott Card is the author of the excellent Ender’s Game series of SF novels -- and, it would seem, a darned good Middle eastern policy analyst to boot. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 May God bless those Pal's (and I do say that with some conflict, but not the "God bless" part) who are of the calliber of our own founding fathers and patriots that did so much more than any, except the few. Your fight is like those of the Warsaw Getto. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2003-9-4 12:24:19 AM |
| #3 Ok, Aris, I have to definitely give you points for this one. A very interesting read with a point of view I hadn't considered before. I'd like to think this guy is right about the Palestinians' real feelings (anyone else remember the survey that showed that most Palestinians did not want a "right of return", contrary to what Arafat and Co. said?) I just hope if the Israelis are getting their info from Palestinians who are sick of the whole intifada that they are able to protect their sources from the neighborhood nutballs. There may be yet another source that Card didn't consider. There are Israeli Arab soldiers, and they all have relatives, friends, you name it. The Israelis would be crazy not to take advantage of the knowledge that they could gather on their behalf. |
| Posted by: Baba Yaga 2003-9-3 11:38:58 PM |
| #2 interesting possibility. Keep whacking away at the radicals, and MAYBE the moderates will be able to take over. MAYBE. I'd say 40% chance, which is about 40 percentage points better than the chances of the pre-bus bombing situation working out. Good article. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2003-9-3 8:06:46 PM |
| #1 Where is this "Palestine" he speaks of? |
| Posted by: someone 2003-9-3 5:32:34 PM |