<<No, if we were being clear about the numbers we will have to determine who these ?innocent? Arabs actually are. Who are they? Why were they in a position to be killed by Israeli forces? Who does the reporting? The answer is that terrorists lie. You can?t tell the players without a program, and you can?t tell a terrorist from a civilian. Especially when terrors are writing the program.>>
The innocent Arabs are children. They are people killed in their homes. Farmers in their fields shot and killed by settlers. Worshipers in a mosque massacred by a Jewish settler. Kids demonstrating against the occupation and shot to death by soldiers. Kids in school hit by Israeli rockets. The numbers don't lie. Who is doing the reporting? Every reputable news source in the world acknowledges that the Jews kill many more Arabs than the so-called "terrorists" kill Jews.
<<The answer is that terrorists lie. >>
The Jews lie too. They lied about Mohammed al Darra, the 12-year-old they shot to death and it was caught for TV. Bundled with his father against a wall for protection from Israeli rifle fire, but the Jews killed him and even killed the ambulance driver who had cometo help him. And now they are lying about it, trying to blame it all on the Arabs. Of course, they don't mention the ambulance driver in their lies. That's a little too much to explain away.
<<Once again, pure propaganda. >>
The 40-year military occupation is pure propaganda? The bulldozed homes, the murdered children propaganda? The million Arabs living as refugees in Gaza pure propaganda? Sure, Rich, sure. It's propaganda.
<<In the interest of clarity, I think we both can agree that killing is something we both wish wasn?t happening. I?m going to assume you believe that when it comes to Arabs, and Jews. The difference, as I see it, is that Arabs living in Gaza take a different view than Israelis. >>
Yeah, that's for God-damn sure. The Arabs want to live free of the Occupation and the Jews won't let them.
<<Israel would like to live in peace. >>
Yeah on the land they displaced the Arabs from. Why should they live there in peace while the people they took it from by force want it back? Is that reasonable?
<<Arabs want the Jews either out of the Middle East entirely, or dead. Preferably both.>>
That is just such bullshit - - you just make up Arab opinion as you go along. Put whatever words in their mouths that best suits your purposes. There are obviously many Arab opinions on the subject of the Jews, from "Kill the whole God-damn bunch of them" to co-existence in a one-state or two-state existence. You have no proof at all - - NONE - - that "Kill them all" is majority Arab opinion on the subject. It is just not true.
<<A Jewish mother is sitting in her kitchen reading the morning paper sipping on her tea. A rockets rips through her apartment and she?s dead. A teenage girl get?s on a bus to visit her friend across town. A crazed homicide bomber boards the bus and rips her to shreds along with everyone else on the bus. A bomb goes off in an Israeli night club killing and maiming hundreds.>>
That's war. As long as the Jews occupy Arab lands and won't resolve the situation, Arabs will strike back. They don't have an army or an air force, so they strike with suicide bombers.
Give them a regular army with regular weapons and equipment if you'd prefer them to wage the same kind of war on the Jews as the Jews wage on their people.<<There is no occupation. >>
Get real.
Of course there's an occupation. Even the Jews themselves admit there's an occupation. See "
Finally Israel Admits the Truth - Sharon Uses the Word "Occupation" for the First Time," which was headline news when it happened, because the Jews had been repeating that same "there is no occupation" lie for years - -
http://forums.techguy.org/civilized-debate/135964-finally-israel-admits-truth.html - - and the links in the article to the news sources.
<<Israel is a sovereign nation. Had Israel not been attacked by it?s neighbors, and had the Muslims practiced what they preach, there would be no refugee problem. The refugee?s are a manufactured problem. >>
The refugees are in no way responsible for the actions of Israel's neighbours, they are innocent victims of a war. Israel wound up in possession of the lands these people live on and for forty years thereafter, their lives have been a living hell. If they're a manufactured problem, the manufacturer's name is stamped all over the problem - - it's made in Israel. It's the Israel Defence Force and no other that occupies their land. It's the Israeli government that orders lands expropriated, houses bulldozed, soldiers to block traffic, and when the protests are met with gunfire, it's the Israeli army that is shooting the guns.
<<It works for the other Arab nation, so they keep them in the camps and use them as weapons in their on going war against Israel. Syria, Jordon, and other surrounding Arab countries got the Arabs to leave Israel because they started a war and then wouldn't let them in their country.>>
That is just pure bullshit. You are completely misrepresenting the history of the conflict. Civilians everywhere will leave a war zone and the Palestinian civilians of 1948 were no different. They had every right to leave a combat zone and every right to return after. International law recognizes a universal right of return when the shooting stops. The Jews don't.
This talk about Syria and Jordan "getting the Arabs to leave Israel" is just pure fiction. They did no such thing.
In 1967, the Arabs DIDN'T leave their homes, their homes were occupied by the invading Israeli army.
<<Arabs live in Israel, work in Israel . . . >>
So what? Who says they don't? How does that justify the Jews occupying the West Bank and Gaza for over 40 years? It's OK becuase they let a few Arabs live and work in Israel? Your thinking on this subject is really illogical.
<< . . . .and [Arabs] occupy important positions in the Israeli government.>>
They do? News to me. What important Israeli government positions are held by Arabs?
<<When Arabs want peace, they get it.>>
Obviously they don't want peace. They've been occupied for 40 years. They want the occupiers to leave and they want their land back. Peace has gotten them nothing but a royal screwing. The Jews continue to settle on their land, and the more peaceful it is, the more Jews come to settle it.
I think the general problem you have is that you proceed from a bunch of unexamined assumptions, about the nature of the Palestinians, what they really want (although it is true that at this point, some of them just want to kill Jews,) how they became occupied and/or refugees and especially how the Jews got hold of the land. As long as you continue to accept myth as fact, these discussions are kind of pointless. I really think you should read a little more broadly than you have been up to now. Noam Chomsky would be a good place to start. You seem to have a great grasp of all the Zionist propaganda machine's talking points, but know virtually nothing of the actual facts of the situation. It wouldn't hurt you to get to know some Palestinians and talk to them as well. You might not like what you hear, but the scary thing for me is that you don't even seem to have heard any of it before.