I saw that the commentor William Balty said the following;
“Isn’t it time for SarahAB, who seems to be his only ‘supporter’, to ask Marc to reply specifically to this comment and to those of say NickG and anninpt below. Not his usual flip remarks within the thread but a separate, new and substantial post. It’s getting boring, repetitive and unproductive when Marc’s posts only provoke unanimous criticism. Surely HP of all places could try to move this vital conversation on?”
The comment that Balty was referring to was the following and is worth repeating in full;
It’s possible to cut to the chase quite easily and without all the ‘ round the houses’ wordage . Ask yourself one simple question . Why do you have to do Miluhim two months of the year and why Israel requires a conscript army of 18-21 year olds making it apparently the 4th largest in the world . You know the answer but let me spell it out for those who aren’t too sure . For some 80 years or so your neighbours have been trying to kill your co religionists . From the Hebron massacre in 1929 through the War of Independence and the subsequent wars of 56 , 67 and 73 . When that failed, your neighbours and erst while partners in peace resorted to acts of terrorism and especially the Second Intifada , when Jewish eviscera was painstakingly collected from the sides of buildings , buses and the like . Innocent people blown to smithereens going about their daily business .
Now ask yourself what would happen if you disbanded that standing army . The Palestinians would be ok . So would the neighbouring states . But you wouldn’t be . Syria would forget its internecine murder and mayhem . All sides would join together from every Arab state failed and failing , and join arms to wipe you out . So basically you need to get a handle on things . Israel is not perfect but its a hell of a lot more perfect than what surrounds it . Israelis take no pleasure in the death of Palestinians . They do not hand out sweets or exalt their fallen martyrs . Its a pity the same cannot be said of the Palestinians .
Firstly regarding miluim. I don’t do 2 months of miluim a year, though there are some people (officers in the Special Forces mostly and maybe a couple of the top gun pilots) who do more than 30 days. The responsibility is up to 30 days though in the past couple of years, due to very drastic budget cuts, reserve duty has been severely restricted. Personally I think I did about 10 days last year and if things continue in the same way it will be about 5 days this year if there is no war.
It’s difficult to answer a question or statement whereby the sole reference is to “the Arabs” or in this case “your neighbours”, for instance it wasn’t Egyptians who were responsible for the slaughter in Hebron in 1927, by the same token it wasn’t Jordanians or Syrians Israel went to war with in 1956, it was Egyptians and furthermore it was Israel who fired the first shots in 1956 and 67. I suppose you could argue that Israel’s pre-emptive strike wasn’t what started the 6 Day War but the closing of the Straits of Tiran and/or the movement of Egyptian armour into the Sinai Desert.
In short Balty (going by this comment alone) looks at the Middle East and sees a bunch of different events by different people and countries and pushes them together into one ongoing event and argues they are the result of one big Arab attempt to kill Jews. They aren’t.
Though Jordan, Syria and Egypt were all on board with one another in 1967 they were also lying to each other and intimidating one another at the same time. There have been wars in those 80 years between various Arab countries in the Middle East such as Jordan against the PLO and Egypt against Yemen that show just how this Arab bloc isn’t much of a bloc at all. It certainly isn’t very united. So lumping them all together is not especially accurate.
“When that failed, your neighbours and erst while partners in peace resorted to acts of terrorism and especially the Second Intifada”
There is a confusion here between Palestinians and other Arab states. When War failed and Begin agreed to give up the Sinai we had peace with Egypt.
I have a problem with this term “partners for peace” the implication is that it is someone who has already made peace with us before moving into negotiations, invalidating the need for such negotiations.
The Palestinians are currently the enemy, therefore my expectations from them are the same that I would have of any enemy. In that sense they have been an incredibly weak enemy to have, they provide occasional attacks though are nothing like as threatening as either Egypt or even Jordan or Syria.
Once again I don’t say they are our friends I recognize them as the enemy. I would like to change this fact. I believe that people on HP seem to expect them to first make peace and then, as our partners for peace, negotiate peace. This strikes me as being counter intuitive. In fact having them engage in us with a peace process would place much greater responsibilities on the PA than cutting them loose, as we have done here. Worst case scenario is that they continue with attacks precisely as they are but have no cover to blame said attacks on Israel, best case scenario is that they stop altogether.
Furthermore I recognize the huge difference between the PA with their Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of 2004 and the PA of today. The reason that much of the discourse revolves around stone throwers and driving attacks is because there aren’t any suicide bombers blowing up buses. As I said in an earlier post there will always be a list of people for the IDF to arrest or kill but whereas once that list held the names of suicide bombers that list has been reduced to picking up young stone throwers as well as the occasional terrorist who tried to carry out an attack and failed.
As I said earlier Palestinians are the enemy. Since they’re the enemy I don’t expect the PA to be singing the praises of Israel. Furthermore I also see it as unrealistic to expect Palestinians on the ground to have any reason to have faith in an Israel who is building all around them, arresting them en masse and killing them at demonstrations.
Furthermore the comments left here seem to reflect a feeling that all Palestinians are terrorists. They are not. Though many of the security measures we have in place hit them just as hard as they do terrorists. Once again I know that many of you simply throw that back at them and say it’s their fault. That lack of empathy and assumption that all Palestinians simply wish to kill Israelis is both incorrect and frankly disturbing.
“All sides would join together from every Arab state failed and failing, and join arms to wipe you out.”
No they wouldn’t. Even when the Arabs were “united” in attacking Israel in the past their divisions were so powerful that they were at each other’s throats most of the time. When Saddam Hussein was firing Scuds on Israel (after invading another Arab country) Arab armies from various Middle Eastern countries were attacking him, not joining him. Even now just after promising billions of dollars in aid to Gaza they have yet to actually cough up the cash. I would be surprised if it ever appeared.
“Israel is not perfect but its a hell of a lot more perfect than what surrounds it . Israelis take no pleasure in the death of Palestinians . They do not hand out sweets or exalt their fallen martyrs . Its a pity the same cannot be said of the Palestinians.”
True enough. Most Israelis don’t take pleasure in Palestinian deaths. Hopefully a group that does is about to be banned as a terror group.
