Alright, I think we're confusing "points" with "beliefs/theories":
BELIEFS
Quote:
by Almaci
"Ah yes and attacks against Israeli intrests have got absolutely nothing to do with 5 decades of oppresion and collective punishment of the innocent."
Quote:
by spacecowboy
"Please, this is just another American ploy to get more oil. We don't want to have to pay for more oil so we'll make up some asinine excuse to attack another country. 43's just picking up where 41 left off. Firefighters from OKC are being sent to Iraq in case Saddam decides to torch their oil fields. All this so everyone can save 10 cents on their gas. Ridiculous."
Quote:
by Stone
We're going to war, we're going to win, US-style Democracy will be the world's dominant style of government, Israel isn't going anywhere, and Old Europe is going to become progressively more useless. Suck it up and deal with it.
These are beliefs/theories, not points. Where's the substance? How can you engage statements that have such breadth? "No" - "What are you talking about, what five decades, which innocents?" - "How can you be so cocky, you jerk?!"?
Look at how Jimmy Carter reacted to Almaci and spacecowboy in the earlier stages of the thread - watch the back and forth:
Quote:
Israel is in material breach of 64 UN resolutions, never signed the nuclear non proliferation treaty and has used US money and weapons to terrorise Pelestines for over 5 decades.
vs.
Quote:
Every single Israeli attack was due to the actual attack against them or the planning of an attack against them.
vs.
Quote:
Ah yes and attacks against Israeli intrests have got absolutely nothing to do with 5 decades of oppresion and collective punishment of the innocent.
vs.
Quote:
I'm Jimmy Carter, this is a whole bunch of complicated FACTUAL evidence being presented about the rights of Israeli Arabs and Israeli history.
vs.
Quote:
However, the Arabs didn't want it that way so they went to war and the Israelis decided to take more than they were given while Egypt took the Gaza Strip and Jordan took Jerusalem and the West Bank.
vs.
Quote:
It's me, Jimmy Carter, again, specifically addressing each of the unframed beliefs of spacecowboy with facts checkable and documentable by reputable sources.
vs.
and so on...
In the first two pages of this thread, the quantantative, documented, or specific historical evidence presented by Almaci and spacecowboy in total seemingly amounts to: two links to Israeli papers detailing isolated incidents of Israeli brutality and what, the "5 decades of oppression". Compare that to the array of POINTS given by Jimmy.
Almaci and spacecowboy post as if they're telling stories - look at the posts. You can't argue with or against stories, narratives, whether they're fictional or nonfictional.
Okay? And, save a few (I think) statements, my posts in this thread have been directed towards trying to address the fact that Almaci and spacecowboy have been posting theories, not making "points". One thing - Jumping on Almaci for anti-semitism involved a fair bit of overreaction. Sorry about that. My statement was, however:
Quote:
That sort of shit is at the heart of most of Almaci's brand of protester, and it's what Europe is full of.
And in referring to other protesters with similar political beliefs, I'll stick to that. However, Almaci isn't anti-semitic in any self-aware way.
By the way, I'm glad you like Jewish food, man, and good for you that you've been able to make friends with some Jewish guys. If we're going for full disclosure, then I love Jewish food, I am Jewish, my uncle and his family live in Tel Aviv, and I have two nephews actively serving in the Israeli army.
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Anyways...reading over this thing, I don't think I can manage all the various threads going on well enough to acutely level a full-on counterstatement.
If anything that's why I think those jokey criticisms about run-on-sentences mentioned by Nick that I've made at least hold some weight.
Usually criticizing a poster's grammar or spelling is in poor taste, I agree, but with a thread like this, the sheer weight of unseparated, unpunctuated paragraphs and sentences can make creative, respectful responses difficult or impossible.
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I'll stick with my having dismissed Almaci's sources prima facie. If you're going to make broad claims ("50 years of oppression"), then you're going to need to quote from internationally respected, widely available sources that broadly address the issue. The actual sources presented hardly fulfill those requirements, unlike that BBC link I posted, for instance.
I'll stick with my claim that Almaci was making "broad, bullshit claims" based on "single, isolated incidences", although my phrasing could've been more delicate. I'll stick with associating Almaci with spacecowboy's wonderful summation of the events of 1948 - "50 years of oppression" is wide enough that it implies a dismissal of the events leading to that so-called "oppression".
I'll stick with my claim that "they live in a state of apartheid with theyre political parties being banned" is "shit". States ought to be innocent until proven guilty of apartheid, and without sufficient evidence from Almaci to the contrary (evidence he would not have been able to provide), then a claim of Israeli apartheid is, well, worthless.
Almaci writes about "independent verification", and does very little of it.
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THE ONE POST I'VE MADE THAT SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSES HISTORICAL EVENTS AND ATTEMPTS TO POSIT "POINTS", RATHER THAN REACT TO BELIEFS, CAME ON 02-24-2003 08:52 AM"
Got that? Go find Almaci's response to it. Go find spacecowboy's response to it. (hint: it's "let's debate in a chatroom")
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In addition, I'd like to think that I picked up where Jimmy Carter left off - my reaction was spurred by their reaction to Carter's facts. Perhaps I should've just quoted Jimmy Carter's 3 or 4 posts when Almaci said "And again apart from saying WE KNOW youre not providing anything, where are YOURE credible links to youre claims, where are YOURE sources etcetera." Wouldn't that have just been redundant? We saw their response to a fact-based argument yesterday.
Anyways, I think I need to leave off here - this post is taking a long time to finish. I'd do that IRC debate thing, but it'd be really time consuming, and it'd only be worth it if there were a good number of unconvinced people who wanted to read it.
Plus, I think we've all done a good job of showing a debate over this topic, as this thread stands here. I think, if anything, someone looking at the thread would see a fairly accurate depiction of the two sides of the Israeli (+ Anglo-American style Democracy/capitalism) vs. Palestinian (French-German social democracy/victimization/anti-colonialist) argument. Hopefully, it's been interesting. (By the way, thanks to everyone who has been supportive on the topic.)
I think Almaci and spacecowboy's arguments, reactions, language, posting style, and so on give an extremely accurate depiction of the mindset and philosophy of the Palestinian (+EU/anti-colonialist) side.
I think the other collective group (JC, Chao, Lhadatts, JMETs, Hero, Briscobold, diffusionX, so on, and me), summed up by our arguments, reactions, language, posting style, and so on, will act as an extremely accurate depiction of the Israeli (+Anglo-American/capitalism) side.
I'm comfortable with that, don't know whether Almaci is.
