I don't think Pakistanis are well-equipped to make such judgments.
That might be true for Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and a few other countries, but is it really true for Israel? American aid was not a major factor until after the Six-Day War. In 1973 when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish year and Israel responded by crossing the Suez Canal into Africa and closing to artillery range of Damascus, America bribed Israel to refrain from destroying its enemies by promising to maintain Israel as the strongest military power in the region.
You aren't talking about the flotilla any more.
Herzl was a journalist. Sir Herbert Samuel was a British cabinet minister. Abdul Hamid II and Mehmed VI were Ottoman Caliphs. The League of Nations was an assembly of the victors of WWI, and in 1947 the United Nations was an assembly of the victors of WWII, mostly democrats but some dictators and communists as well. All of these helped "found" Israel - indeed, I doubt Israel would exist without them. Do you consider all these people and entities "terrorists by any definition"?
By "snatch" do you include "purchase"? The issue is more complicated than that. If you want all "snatched" lands returned to the victimized peoples, do you support returning lands taken from the Jews as well? I don't hear anybody offering to give the Jews Medina or a quarter of Baghdad in exchange for Tel Aviv - and the Israelis wouldn't want it, either.
The Jews were promised a homeland in Palestine as part of the great de-Imperialization movement after WWI. Many nationalities, which had been mixed up before, were separated into nation-states: Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, Arabs, etc. The provision for the Jews, however, had a key difference: the existing civil rights of the Arab population was to be maintained. The Zionists agreed to accept this and as proof of their good faith over 20% of the population of Israel is Arab.
However, the Jews kicked out by most of the Arab countries, where were they supposed to go? When the world is prepared to discuss not just how small Israel should be but how big Israel should be, then I think there will be a greater chance for peace.
Many of these still support the existence of Israel. This is an exercise in freedom of debate that Pakistanis, it seems, do not care to experience.
I urge you to study world history more fully to understand how laughable your words are. That an intelligent person like you stands by them without entertaining the possibility of error - is there a better indication of how demented Pakistan has become?
Are you interested in justice or enforcing your own sense of righteousness?
Are you so certain it is unconnected? Isn't it the same sort of thinking?
They aren't. Read Totten: the flotilla was never about aid.
I believe that judgment should be a matter for courts, and courts should follow law, not the opinion of the majority. The difference is that the accused gets a hearing and alleged violations are judged by their evidence and context of events, not hot-headed emotion.
Wow, you've really bought "the narrative", as Arabs describe it, hook, line, and sinker.
How can blood feuds end? If one party wants peace and the other doesn't, is that sufficient?
No, TL. This incident ranks as a depraved plot, one certainly not of Israel's making. (Israel didn't make the flotilla set sail, nor compel its passengers to attack the boarding party with clubs and knives.)
Who is more likely to have a better perception of such matters, you or I? It frightens you even to approach the line of thinking that what Israel does is usually right and just, doesn't it?
True. Nevertheless, public disorder and miltarism has gotten worse, hasn't it?
I think it was under 600,000 - still a large fraction of America's population.
Um, no you're not. East Pakistan broke away forty years ago. Rump Pakistan has been slowly fracturing since. The P.A.'s efforts of the past year may have reversed that, but as Nadeem Farooq Paracha put it, "Anything to do with Allah, or the prophet, and everyone keeps quiet. That's the problem with our country."
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You're not out of the woods yet. And I think re-considering Pakistan's views towards Israel, Jews, and its own minorities will be a big part of it.
Consider Germany. Nobody doubts that Germany is a civilized state today (one where civil law applies, not prejudice.) Germany just awarded its highest civilian honor to a man working at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum who spent years of his life in a successful quest to open sequestered Holocaust records. That may be because when the records were unsealed, it was discovered that less than half of them had to do with Jews; the majority dealt with crimes committed by the Nazis against Germans and non-Jewish minorities.
In my opinion, it is a similar legacy Pakistan must face and acknowledge if it is to move forward, rather than succumb to a barbaric and destructive mentality.
I gotta go to school tomorrow morning.
