clem:
I'll never forget the pictures of "the poor Palestinians" dancing in the streets as the WTC towers burned and fell.
The hell with them and curses on anyone who supports them.
There are some Americans who thought that we "deserved it" too. Are you going to condemn all Americans for that too?
The good thing about her death is that it's one less traitor that has to go to trial.
Quite frankly, I think that she was stupid in so many different ways. I already stated that I neither mourn nor celebrate her death, but merely shrug with incomprehension.
But she was no traitor to the United States - certainly not in the strict sense of that word, as we are not at war with the Palestinian people.
CMichael:
The people who victimize the Palestinian people are the Palestinian government.
Some time ago Israel offered to put the arabs in the west bank and gaze in apartments rather than having them in refugee camps. The leadership wouldn't let that happen.
I am right there with you as far as the victimization of the Palestinians by their own leadership is concerned.
But let's not ignore the fact that many ordinary Palestinians have been victims of Israeli settlement policies driven by the Jewish fundamentalist segment of the Israeli government that has sought to, and even now seeks to, ethnic-cleanse the Occupied Territories for some sort of a notion of Jewish messianic prophesy.
Independent of the evilness of the Arafat dictatorship (which, thankfully, seems to be crumbling), the Israeli occupation authorities have not exactly been "benevolent" to ordinary Palestinians (I still remember the days when the Israeli government taxed the Palestinians as if the latter were Israeli citizens, yet offered them no civil rights of any kind, not to mention diverting the vast majority of the natural resources of the land to a comparatively few Israeli settlers).
Now, have the Israelis been as bad as the Syrians, Iraqis or Iranians? Heck no! Not even close! But that does not mean they did not use, quite frankly, extremely dubious methods of "population control" for an equally dubious purpose (religious colonial settlement to displace existing population by force). To claim "we are not as bad as the Nazis" (or Syrians or Iranians or whatever) is not much of a defense for comitting evil deeds. "Less evil" is still often "evil enough."
For the record, I support Israel as an ally of the US over any other Middle East country and genuinely wish for the success of the Israeli "experiment." However, for both moral AND practical reasons, I hope that the Israelis EVENTUALLY withdraw from the Occupied Territories.
But that requires more than Israeli sacrifice and generosity - it requires Palestinian sacrifice and generosity, which, unfortunately, has not been forthcoming, particularly at the "leadership" level... It's a difficult situation. Though I have my favorite side in the conflict, it has been waged in the rules of tribal warfare rather than 21st Century American rules of warfare, with the attendant bitterness, sorrow and thirst for revenge on both sides.
