Women's Rights in the Middle East

[embuchho]

why do you think they want war with Israel?

For these reasons:

1) Israel is a bunch of Europeans and Russians who quite simply invaded an area that was multi-cultural (though strongly Moslem) for about 1500 years. To the locals, this is a (hopefully temporary) invasion and occupation of an area that already has residents.

Suddenly, following WWII, in come this tsunami of a minority culture who quite literally take the homes and villages of the locals at gunpoint (provided by the Brits at that time), despite the nonsensical PC propaganda we learn in the USA that the poor Israelis are the victims. They are not.

They are invaders from Europe and Russia who claim that their religion gives them the right to a home where someone else already lives.

They were VERY motivated invaders having just come out of WWII, Soviet brutality, and, of course, the Nazis. I can't really blame them for how that generation felt but it was wrong to inflict them upon an innocent population (the Palestinians). (The Jews should have been given their own state in the strongly Nazi areas. Punish the guilty, not an irrelevant third party.)

Many Muslims want to protect members of their own religion, so that's why they take this so personally.

Also, again, despite the white-washing of Israel's actions in the US media, the Israelis are brutal and humiliate and punish the locals they displaced in hopes that they will all get up and leave. Go read Likud party statements - don't trust me on this (and don't trust the American press).

2) The barbaric Middle Eastern despots keep their populations riled up against Israel in order to keep their anger focused elsewhere and prevent the kind of revolts that we're now seeing in Tunesia, Egypt, Lybia, Yemen, Bahrain, and perhaps Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. (I'll bet $10 that Algeria will revolt within the next three years...)

3) The counter-force to these Middle Eastern despots is Islamism (a political movement based upon the religion). Al Quada started as a counter-force against these dictators and not against the West. Their ideology is one that unites Muslims against non-Muslims. Israel is obviously not Muslim and the fact that it is built upon 1,600 years of Muslim homes makes it easy to rally the Islamists against.

I'm not saying any of this is morally right or wrong, just that this is the mechanism and the set of beliefs that motivate the "they" in this question:

why do you think they want war with Israel?

(Personally, I think we should have followed FDR's policy toward the Middle East and never should have gotten involved in the region. Damn Truman for getting us mixed up in the Unholy Land. But that's all spilled milk at this point).

 

[ElasticNinja]

Thanks for that insight, regarding interference, it goes both ways, there are successes like Korea, WWII, Yugoslavia, but there are failures too. It can be hard to call.
Most of your points can be seen in other regions/countries too

 

[cipher6]

I don't dissagree totally with your points:

2) The barbaric Middle Eastern despots keep their populations riled up against Israel in order to keep their anger focused elsewhere and prevent the kind of revolts that we're now seeing in Tunesia, Egypt, Lybia, Yemen, Bahrain, and perhaps Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. (I'll bet $10 that Algeria will revolt within the next three years...)

Maybe to a point, but not a big one. The despots, I see, for the most part, are keeping a lid on anger at Israel. Mubarak kept alive a very unpopular peace treaty with Israel for example. And as the Arab spring spreads, we're seeing that anger bubble to the top, Elbaradei, a liberal UN peace loving guy, calling for war with Israel another example.


I don't think the current(past) Arab leadership really wants to do anything about Israel or Palestine for that matter. The per capital GDP of Palestine is higher than nearly any other Middle Eastern country, they have higher literacy rates as well, the average Egyptian lives on 2 dollars a day. Keeping Palestine a perpetual refuge camp seems to be what everyone wants.

Medium Term - Probably another attempt at pan-Arabism (recall the 1950s-1960s when Syria, Egypt, and Iraq were working on forming one country). Arab countries could either start fighting each other for leadership or turn against Israel, the US, UK, and France as a common enemy to unite against. They'll keep making oil money from China and India and other up and coming economies in the stage where they are consuming lots of oil. This means we (USA) won't be able to influence the region much economically as they will have other customers/partners.

Their making those friends now, and regional instability will increase oil prices, because oil won't be able to flow from the area, plunging the world into global depression.

1) Israel is a bunch of Europeans and Russians who quite simply invaded an area that was multi-cultural (though strongly Moslem) for about 1500 years. To the locals, this is a (hopefully temporary) invasion and occupation of an area that already has residents.

I'm not going to get into all this too much, it ends up being a pointless argument. But the ME was home to jews and arabs for a long time, I think trying to say anyone has first rights to it is a loosing argument that wastes time. Which is a big part of the problem, no one wants to give up that claim to first rights to the area. At least Israel is willing to theoretically accept the idea of sharing it, Hammas won't, until that road block is overcome, I think the situation will continue as is for a while longer... But this Arab spring might hasten that day.

 

[embuchho]

What you guys wrote makes great sense but I was only trying to explain the feelings and motivations of "them" in the original quote.

Just trying to keep my posts in scope.

And you're right, Cypher, about despots keeping anger away from Israel - that's exactly what we've been paying $2 bn per year to Egypt for. I should have specified that this applies only to some countries that are less-aligned with The West. My bad for miscommunicating. Sorry.

 

[cipher6]

What you guys wrote makes great sense but I was only trying to explain the feelings and motivations of "them" in the original quote.

Just trying to keep my posts in scope.

And you're right, Cypher, about despots keeping anger away from Israel - that's exactly what we've been paying $2 bn per year to Egypt for. I should have specified that this applies only to some countries that are less-aligned with The West. My bad for miscommunicating. Sorry.

duly noted, and I agree with your explanation of why the Arabs hate the Jews.

How we get past those deep feelings (on both sides) towards something constructive is beyond me.

 

[ElasticNinja]

Israel may have an oppurtunity with Tunisia, Libya and Egypt's new governments. If they could halt and reverse settlement, try to reconcile with the Palestinians they may get new friends there.
I'm not sure what the Arabs could be convinced to do, IMO Israel needs to give first.
I think Turkey is a lost cause though for Israel

 

[cipher6]

Israel may have an oppurtunity with Tunisia, Libya and Egypt's new governments. If they could halt and reverse settlement, try to reconcile with the Palestinians they may get new friends there.
I'm not sure what the Arabs could be convinced to do, IMO Israel needs to give first.
I think Turkey is a lost cause though for Israel

And Israel would say Palestine needs to give first... first would be Hamas recognizing Israel even has a right to exist.

A favorate commentator of mine, Spengler has an interesting take on the whole situation:

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

Palestine problem hopeless, but not serious
"The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," declared United Sates President Barack Obama in his June 4 Cairo address. Really? Compared to what? Things are tough all over. The Palestinians are one of many groups displaced by the population exchanges that followed World War II, and the only ones whose great-grandchildren still have the legal status of refugees. Why are they still there? The simplest explanation is that they like it there, because they are much better off than people of similar capacities in other Arab countries.

Other data confirm that Palestinians enjoy a higher living standard than their Arab neighbors. A fail-safe gauge is life expectancy. The West Bank and Gaza show better numbers than most of the Muslim world:

Literacy in the Palestinian Authority domain is 92.4%, equal to that of Singapore. That is far better than the 71.4% in Egypt, or 80.8% in Syria.

Palestinian Arabs are highly literate, richer and healthier than people in most other Arab countries, thanks to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and the blackmail payments of Western as well as Arab governments. As refugees, they live longer and better than their counterparts in adjacent Arab countries. It is not surprising that they do not want to be absorbed into other Arab countries and cease to be refugees.

If the Palestinians ceased to be refugees, moreover, it is not clear how they would maintain their relatively advantaged position. They cannot return to farming; for all the tears about bulldozed olive groves, no one in the West Bank will ever make a living selling olive oil, except perhaps by selling "Holy Land" products to Christian tourists. Apart from tourism, the only non-subsidy source of income the Palestinians had was day labor in Israel, but security concerns close that off. Light manufacturing never will compete with Asia, and surely not during a prolonged period of global overcapacity.

An alternative is for the Palestinians to continue to live off subsidies. But why should they? Why should Western taxpayers subsidize an Arab in Ramallah, when Arabs in Egypt are needier? The answer is that they represent a security concern for Western countries, who believe that they are paying to limit violence. That only makes sense if the threat of violence remains present in the background and flares up frequently enough to be credible. One cannot simply stage-manage such things. A sociology of violence in which a significant proportion of the population remains armed.

Add to this bloated police force the numerous other state security organizations as well as private militias, and it is clear that security is the biggest business in the Palestinian territories and the largest employer of young men. The number of armed Palestinian fighters is estimated at around 80,000 or more than six times the soldiers per capita in the United States. About one out of four Palestinian men between the ages of 20 and 40 makes a living carrying a gun.

That is, the economic structure of "pre-state" Palestine is heavily skewed towards the sort of institutionalized means of violence that is supposed to disappear once a state has been established. This is absurd, and creates a double disincentive for the Palestinians to maintain a low boil of violence. Just how this violence-centered society is supposed to make the transition to an ordinary civil society is an unanswerable question.

 

[ElasticNinja]

why would the idiocy of Hamas justify Israels settlements?

 

[embuchho]

How we get past those deep feelings (on both sides) towards something constructive is beyond me.

The best idea I can come up with (which doesn't mean it's a good idea, just the best I can come up with) is for Israel (who has the power) to cease annexing, back up to or near the 1967 lines, in order to show good faith.

They need to stop their land-grabbing settlers, be open and obvious about showing that they are willing to play fair and honorably as opposed to simply being nationalists.

They are as duplicitous as any Middle East propagandist if not worse.

I don't object to a physical buffer zone with counter-artillery radar watching it, but that zone would be measured in 100s of meters, not villages and kilometers. I also don't object to having a non-permeable border (once they've backed up a bit and withdrawn from the occupied territories) so the Palestinians are separated.

But Israel, getting $5 bn/year and heaps and heaps of Apaches, F16s, F15s, and all the munitions they can dream of from the USA, as well as a blindly loyal big buddy on the Security Council, needs to give first. They have such the advantage.

 

[cipher6]

why would the idiocy of Hamas justify Israels settlements?

Hamas doesn't just not recognize the settlements, they don't even recognize the '67 boarders or Israel as a nation, at all.

Direct from the Hamas charter:

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

Refusal to drop that stuff, and recognize the existence of Israel is a big road block.

But Israel, getting $5 bn/year and heaps and heaps of Apaches, F16s, F15s, and all the munitions they can dream of from the USA, as well as a blindly loyal big buddy on the Security Council, needs to give first. They have such the advantage.

The other side of that coin is, Israel has such an advantage, they don't have to give first. If your an Israeli thinking in terms of protecting your country, the argument would be, why give up something and open up an avenue to be attacked if the other side isn't showing any signs of giving up something in return.

They need to stop their land-grabbing settlers, be open and obvious about showing that they are willing to play fair and honorably as opposed to simply being nationalists.

Again, I can't disagree totally, but in 2005 Israel dismantled the Gaza settlements. Then they elected Hamas and started firing rockets into Israel again, and another Israel/Palestine flare up.

And I know all the criticism of, it was an attempt to take more of the West Bank and throw off the peace plan... but it was, at least partly, a step in the right direction. I can't help but think, if the Palestinians had reacted differently, progress could have been made.

They shot themselves in the foot with that reaction, now every time there is a call to close down more settlements, Israel can point to the 2006 conflict and say, "see thats what happens."

 

[ElasticNinja]

again, what do these settlements have to do with Hamas?
Hamas is an argument for the Blockade, there is no argument for land stealing

 

[embuchho]

Israel did dismantle a few settlements, that's true, but they weren't fooling anyone (other than people watching US news) as they were still building other settlements.

It was just a propaganda ploy, was not serious, and was hardly honorable. The Palestinians (and pretty much everyone who gets non-US news) was well aware of this.

Israel failed to show that they were at all serious which is why it did not work (unless you count "working" as providing Israel with yet another propaganda victory, which seems to have been their goal, anyway).

Also, Hamas (who has been infiltrated by the Mossad - don't believe me, go read the news) has proven to the Palestinians to be corrupt and useless. I think the Palestinians had to go through that step in order to make better democratic decisions next time, and even better the time after that, and so on. At least I hope they're learning how to do that.

 

[ElasticNinja]

It would seem many Palestinians now fear Hamas... watch a documentary, so that would limit my hopes of booting them out - and who would replace them? even more corrupt Fatah?

 

[cipher6]

I don't know how upset the people are with Hamas, Abbas recently said he would give up Western Aid money if it meant Hamas and the PA could form a united government.

I doubt he is serious about giving up aid, but why would he be so concerned with making nice with Hamas, if the people were upset with them?

And maybe the Gaza move was a propaganda ploy, but the Palestinians played right into it, launching attacks after a getting something they've been calling for years, however disingenuous only hurt their cause even more.

again, what do these settlements have to do with Hamas?
Hamas is an argument for the Blockade, there is no argument for land stealing

The land is already occupied, the settlements aren't taking more. The land was taken after Arab states tried to invade Israel. They took the land in the wars, and kept it to form a buffer against surrounding armies to help defend attacks. While the land is held, their building settlements, which people fear means, they will never give it back.

 

[Dark Jedi]

Thats one perspective, the other is, everyone is protesting and things can't get done.

.

Isnt that the whole point of a protest? By refusing them the right to protest isnt that infringing on their freedoms? So its ok for them to protest one leader but not another? Here I thought you was all for them to protest? Now you think its ok for it to be taken away now?

 

[ElasticNinja]

they are grinding the country to a halt

 

[cipher6]

Isnt that the whole point of a protest? By refusing them the right to protest isnt that infringing on their freedoms? So its ok for them to protest one leader but not another? Here I thought you was all for them to protest? Now you think its ok for it to be taken away now?

I'm not for anything, I'm not Egyptian. I just like to understand whats going on. If your police, doctors, lawyers, rail workers, and practically everyone else is protesting everyday instead of working the country is gonna have some problems, so I can see the thinking behind it.

But there is also the points you mentioned.

Time will tell if this is just a temporary measure to get the country moving again, or the start of dictatorship under a different name.

 

[cipher6]

Egyptian democracy’s growing pains

Abou Youssef and other activists held a rally two days before the referendum to urge residents to vote “no,” arguing that more time was needed to write a new constitution and organize parties. As she left, she received an anonymous text message warning that if she didn’t stay away, extremists would throw acid on her face and burn down her community center.

In the hours before the referendum, rumors spread in Old Cairo and across Egypt that because Coptic Christians were campaigning against the amendments, Muslims had an obligation to vote “yes.”

Abou Youssef had organized buses to take neighborhood voters to the polls. On the way, she heard one woman advise her friends: “You have to say ‘yes’ to keep Islam. If you say ‘no,’ we will be a Christian country.”

The Muslim Brotherhood used other hardball political tactics. Members gave away food, household products and even small appliances to friendly voters. And needless to say, residents of Old Cairo voted overwhelmingly in favor of the limited amendments. A sheik in one Cairo mosque is said to have told worshipers afterward: “Islam has won. Now, whoever is not happy with ‘yes’ can go to Canada or the United States.”

Egypt’s romance with democracy is exciting, if sometimes also discouraging. But there’s one big danger the ballot box won’t address, and that’s Egypt’s sinking economy. Tourism has collapsed, industrial production has fallen sharply and foreign investment has all but stopped.

Nabil Fahmy, Egypt’s former ambassador to Washington, worries that a liquidity crunch will hit in mid-summer.

Egyptian democracy’s growing pains - The Washington Post

 

[cipher6]

Speak of the devil:

Fighting flares in Gaza, shattering lull

GAZA (Reuters) - An anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hit an Israeli school bus on Thursday, wounding two people, and Israeli forces retaliated by shelling the territory, killing a 50-year-old man, Palestinian medics said.

The Israeli military said 45 rockets and mortars were launched into Israeli territory from Gaza in the space of three hours, the heaviest fire in two weeks. There were no immediate reports of further Israeli casualties as a result.

An Israeli helicopter gunship machine-gunned a target in Gaza for the first time since the January 2009 war and fired a missile at some targets in the center of the coastal territory.
Palestinian sources said militants in the enclave fired back at the helicopter with a heavy machine-gun.

Fighting flares in Gaza, shattering lull - Yahoo! News