Nothing is inevitable, Turkey is not lost, but how do you expect to win it over to your side when you’re not even willing to put up a fight? Oh, they’ll sell you their oil, but when the prices are triple their current rate, you’ll discover that the money you need for border surveilance is not so easily come by. Not that it matters, since with a negative birth rate and aging population, Europe needs the immigrants. Without your help to solve their problems at home, they’ll just be importing it into your heartland, border control or not.

But all this is entirery beside the point. All you’ve dealt with are the examples, not the core of the issue. You assume your spheres of interest and that of the fanatics are mutually exclusive. This is hardly the case. Your interests go far beyond your borders, and neither do theirs stop on your frontiers.

Democracy will not arrive in the Middle East overnight, but that does not make it a cause unworthy to fight for. You think Muslims are unready for Democracy? How will they ever be when you’re not even willing to help them get there? The problems will not disappear simply because you choose to ignore them.
You keep bringing up World War II analogies in your arguments. “Not our problem” was a very popular argument back then as well. When the Germans entered the Ruhr, when you took over Austria or Czechoslovakia, with the Japanese in Manchuria, the Italians in Ethiopia and Fascists in Spain. Wasn’t Europe in for a surprise, huh? Appeasement doesn’t work, Europeans should be the last to think so.

Originally posted by seahawk
The simple solution is to stay out of their areas of interest.

Do you define their areas of interest? What happens when their areas of interest overlap yours, in Turkey for instance? What happens if they decide Europe is in their sphere of interest? Heck, why go that far, my car runs on fuel, what do your car run on?

Attacks on tourists in arabic nations don´t bother me. There is a simple solution, don´t go there. If we europeans are not welcome, then we can spent our money inside the european community. Let those countries see how they will do without the money.

Ah, but we already know the answer to that, they will immigrate to Europe. You cannot escape dealing with the realities of this planet, they are neither going to go away nor leave you alone simply because you’re trying to ignore them.

Originally posted by seahawk
Honestly I think. pulling troops from Afghanistan and Iraq is a wise move anyway. Those are not places europeans do belong.

I would rather concentrate on finding the terrorists already living in europe, instead of playing savior of the arab world.

Over the past few years we’ve had Al Quida attacks in New York, Bali, Mombasa, Istanbul, Casablanca, German tourists have been attacked in Jerba, and a French tanker off Aden, to name a few. Yet you think you can avoid this by retreating into yourselves? Terrorism is not someone else’s problem, and in this day and age, local measures can hardly provide security when a plane taking off in North Africa can arrive over Europe within the hour or when anyone can drive any bomb across your borders. The effectiveness of a military mission in one place or another can be debated but aborting them all will be sheer folly. There are no fortress walls to hold these people back.
You’ve got to appreciate the irony, this is after all a thread dealing with Spain. Is it not the Spanish civil was that taught us “ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee”?

The official resume credits him with two kills from the 1982 war, but I don’t even know what squadron he served with, let alone what kills he scored. Should be interesting to find out (if that’s ok with munir, that is, otherwise we’ll just withdraw until he approves of our participation here :rolleyes: )

It’s one of a series of shots taken over Tel Aviv in May 2002. It left the country not long afterwards, for Russia I think. Could be the same aircraft, whose property was it?

And the hope of establishing a Jewish state would not have been eliminated, they just would rightfully not have formed one in the middle of a bunch of people already occupying the land they want.

Jews did not arrive in Palestine from outer space and capture in the land in some blitzkrieg fashion out of the hands of the poor helpless Palestinians. This land had not less Jewish history to it than Arab one, and had always been home to Jews, who had in fact constituted the majority of the population of Jerusalem long before Zionism even existed. Early Zionists (avowed socialists, even communists) had no illusion that a future state would not be both Arab and Jewish, Israel (or rather Palestine) would have become an Arab majority country if not for the complete rejection of any Jewish rights in this land.

Do you support the idea of a withdrawl to 1947 borders and giving back stolen land?

The 1947 parition plan? Don’t make me laugh. The Arabs rejected the partition, they never intended there to be one. Palestinian representatives didn’t show up for the discussions prior to the plan’s formulation, all Arab members of the UN voted against it, and when it went through, they launched a war. They neither intended to set up a Palestinian state in the land allocated to them, nor did they intend to let an Israel exist in any borders. In 1949, after the war ended, no one in his right mind even thought of asking Israel to keep to the partition lines the Arabs had rejected out of hand and had tried to erase through their failed war. Any land the feel deprived of was solely through their unwillingness to compromise and their complete rejectionism.

I don’t dispute the intelligence vacuum involved in trying to pursue this route when others are available. I do dispute the logic in condemning them for using terrorism to achieve their goals when you already admitted that without terrorism it’s possible Israel would never have been formed.

That’s just the point, if not for the Irgun and Stern Gang there would not be an Israel today. On the other hand, if the Arabs had accepted the 1949 cease fire lines (not to mention the 1947 partition lines), not only would they have had a country 50 years ago, they would have actually gone away with a deal far better than the one present conditions offer them. 50 years of terrorism, and what have they got to show for it? Nothing, their adoption of that tactic was not only useless, but downright counterproductive!

Zionist terrorism:

1920-Formation of the HAGANA, the Jewish militia, which became the military backbone of the Zionist movement in Palestine and later, of the Israeli Defense Forces.

So, Hagana in 1920, anti-Zionist attacks in 1937. Which is earlier?

You should really do some better reasearch. The Haganah (“The Defence”) was set up in June 1920 precisely because Jewish settlements were repeatedly attacked by Palestinians. Attacks in the north of the country escalated in Easter 1920 to Arab riots in Jerusalem where 46 Jews were murdered. The Haganah did not appear out of thin air.

1948, April 9-The Dayr Yasin Massacre, in which Jewish terrorists killed 254 Palestinian villagers. Fearing similar incidents, thousands of Palestinians began streaming out of areas under Zionist control.

Deir Yassin was a village overlooking the road to Jerusalem. In 1948 it housed forces which maintained the siege on Jerusalem, starving its Jewish sections. On April 6 1948 Jewish forces launched operation “Nachson” to break the siege, and on April 9 they fought a battle in the village of Deir Yassin against irregular Arab forces which ended in a Palestinain rout. While among the dead were indeed many villagers, and there is very little to be proud of in the events of that day, the stories of the premeditated massacre of “254 Palestinian Villagers” (even contemporary Palestinian researches admit the number is closer to 100 fatalities) by “Zionist terrorists” (of course, neglecting to mention the very savage war waged by both sides at the time) is a figment of the imagination, Palestinian propaganda which backfired with disastrous results. Instead of stiffening Arab resolve, it scared the Palestinian population sh#tless, causing thousands to leave despite no real necessity to do so.

Originally posted by google
Now, did the JNC condemn the attack because of moral outrage, or fear of British reprisals?

That is a question that is impossible to answer, it doesn’t even have a single answer. Various people voiced outrage, others the fear you speak of, some both, some none. At the end of the day, the Haganah broke off its contacts with the Irgun and Stern Gang.

Originally posted by google
No such warning for the Semiramis Hotel, eh?

No, but lets not take things out of context. The Jerusalem of 1946 was not the same city in January 1948, when full out war was waging between the Arab and Jewish populations. Jerusalem was besieged by Arab forces and fighting was taking place throughout the city. The Haganah bombed the Semiramis Hotel because it mistakenly thought it housed an Arab HQ, all at a time when the Arab forces had no reservations about detonating car bombs in the Jewish sections of Jerusaem.

Originally posted by SOC
Regardless of the details (which I admittedly may have gotten confused, but certainly not deliberately) it is still obvious that the original terrorists were the Zionists.

No, what’s obvious is that Zionists used these tactics in the past, but you’ve nothing to show that Arab forces learned this tactic from the Zionists or that the Arabs never endulged in it prior to its adoption by the Zionists. The sad fact of the matter is that the Arabs didn’t need to immitate the Zionists, they were quite adept at it all by themselves.

Originally posted by SOC
My question therefore is still relevant-why are the Palestinian terrorists to be condemned when they are merely following in the footsteps of the “freedom fighters” who came before them?

Because if not for the Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang, the British would never have left and even if they had, the Arabs would have succeeded in wiping out any hope of an independent Jewish state, not to mention the very real possibility of wiping out the Jews of Palestine.
Yet despite what some would like to believe, Palestinian terrorism is not aimed at an intrasigent Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state, but one which is unwilling to commit suicide in order to bring about such a state. They could have had the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, alongside Israel, following the 1948 war. They didn’t want it, they wanted to wipe Israel out. There was a chance for compromise after the 1967 war, but the Arabs would not even negotiate (The three ‘No’s of the Khartoum summit – no peace, no recognition, no negotiations). When Israel and Egypt sealed their peace treaty in 1979, the Palestinian were offered an autonomy that would have blossumed into an independent state. They refused. Same in 2000.
Palestinian terrorism should be condemned not only because it is wrong, not because it’s totally counterproductive, a failed policy which had done nothing for the Palestinian cause, but first and foremost because it is totally unnecessary! For all we care, they can have one tommorow, if only they realise we are here to stay, not on their terms, but on terms agreed upon by both parties.
Let’s just take a look at some of the Israelis on this forum : Me, JJ, Barak, Erez, to name a few. Have any of us ever expressed a refusal to accept a Palestinian state? Have we rejected their right to one? No, we havn’t. What the Palestinians are doing is nothing short of sheer stupidity, and those who wish to see an indepedent Palestinian state should be the first to see this!

To add a little to what JJ wrote:

Originally posted by google
They blew up the hotel yes, with lots of women and children inside.

Good luck trying to back the above claim with evidence, Google. The Kind David Hotel was home to the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine and Headquarters of the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan. Less than a third of it was an hotel proper, and since that section was not targetted in the blast, few of the hotel residents were hurt. The vast majority of victima were British military personnel and their employees, and that carnage could have been avoided had they evacuated the hotel as they had been warned to do prior to the blast.

Still, the Kind David bombing was stupid, which brings us to the next point :

Originally posted by SOC
Which was neither a political nor a military target, yet nobody seems to look at them in the same light as the Palestinians. Why is that?

It was very much a military target, but you’re right, nobody looked at them like the Palestinians. In contrast to Arab attacks against Jews, widely hailed as heroic actions, the Jewish National Council denounced the bombing of the King David. At a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive in Paris on August 5, 1946, it was decided to terminate the armed struggle against the British in Palestine, and all cooperation between the Haganah (the mainstream Jewish force at the time) and the Irgun (which carried out the bombing) ceased.