World opinion on Arafat Assassination/Exile

[Lord Lothar]

Hey Baron, relax guy. You can discuss this in a civil manner instead of insulting another member of the forum. While you may know a lot about Israeli history, WW2, communism and so on, Skunk may also know a lot about the same things and is providing his opinion of the matter. If you don't like his opinion of the matter then disagree with him on the points civilly instead of calling his opinions crap. Everyone is entitled to their own say and if you don't like it, then it's too bad for you. Don't get worked up thinking that only what you know or think is what everone else should know and think.

[Stratos]

Originally posted by Azred: If the US can ignore the UN and do what we please, then why can't the UN ignore the US and do whatever it pleases? That seems only fair, even if we disagree with the UN's decisions. Seriously, aren't the UN diplomats supposed to be adults? If so, then why are they always trying to get permission as if they were little children? [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img]

To do this the UN would need the support of several countries, even smaller ones. Problem is that the US gives quite alot of financial aid to many small countries and would, logically, withdraw that aid if those countries went against the interrest of the US. Not´a fun situation to be in for small economies.
Also don't forget that the US have veto in the Security Counsil and can stop any decision that goes against the US's interrests.

Personally I think it would be a very unfortunate situation if the US and the UN wouldn't get along at all. The US is one of the founding nations and has been an active member from the very beginning. The UN headquarter lies in America for crying it out loud.

[Skunk]

---Black Baron It [The 1967 War] started with the arabs drawing the forces near our borders. What did you learn at school about ww2? what nothing? i am not surprised. The communists and the left idealists that name every one a fascists, seldom know history.

Perhaps you would be convinced by what some of the the main Israeli protagonists of the day had to say about the 1967 war...

"I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to The Sinai would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive war. He knew it and we knew it."
Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's Chief of Staff in 1967, in Le Monde, 2/28/68

"In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."
Menahem Begin, in 'The Fateful Triangle', Noam Chomsky.

What about Syria?
According to Moshe Dayan, the then Minister for Defence, most of the hostility with Syria was deliberately instigated by both the Israeli government and by Kibbutz residents residing near the Golan heights who wanted to seize the land for their own:
"'They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land...We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot.

And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us."
The New York Times, May 11, 1997

I could argue the point about the remaining wars that Israel started - but it boils down to this: Israel fired the first shots and engaged in the first moves in all of the wars bar the 1973 war: that it undisputable fact.

---Black Baron About your word-fascist. Where is the oppression against opposition? where? show it to me! bring facts! bring news! I live here for 13 years so i must have missed something, that you in holland do not miss!!!

Azmi Bishara and Ahmed Tibi were banned from standing in the elections because they were Arab-Israeli's who were critical of the occupation policy - it took a Supreme Court ruling to over-turn the ban by the Central Election Committee. Meanwhile, the state attorney Talia Sasson is still attempting to get Bishara's Balad party banned because it "supports making Israel a state for all its citizens, which she said would contradict Israel's founding principle as a Jewish state"

And the expulsion of innocent arab-Israeli's to the the West Bank/Gaza strip is yet another example of oppressing the opposition. If simple chance association with someone labled as an 'enemy of the state' can get you thrown out of your *own* country, then that counts as terrorising the opposition into silence.

I noticed that you didn't ask me to justify the line of: and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. Guess that you knew that I could cite too many sources and laws to have that one challenged.

---Black Baron now let me say this. if you want to discuss israel, bring some facts and proofs, because i study history of israel, ww2, comunism and jewish-arab relations in this region for waaaaaaaay to long to agree with the crap that skunk wrights, without thinking that there may be some who can answer to him.

Yet you have attacked my standpoint without bringing any evidence to the debate yourself. If you wish to dispute anything that I claim to be as fact, the onus is on you to provide sources and citatations in the first instance and then for me to respond in kind; rather than the other way around.

I trust that we can continue this debate in a (more) civil manner...