The feeble ‘I would rather wait for ages at an Israeli check-point than sit next to a suicide bomber on a bus, but that’s a matter of personal choice’ should read ‘I would rather have three times the chance of being killed as a Palestinian (impoverished, probably purged from my place of origin, stripped of my human rights and under a racist government) than have a third the chance of being killed by the people my government persecutes’. That is an honest phrase based in the reality. And we can see how feeble it is, because you wouldn’t rather be in this Palestinian reality at all, of course.

By the way, I’ve seen the Israeli report delineating the large number of non-civilian IDF-inflicted casualties and it has been discredited by the observations of all the major human rights organisations working in the occupied territories. You should be ashamed for supporting such lies that make a legitimate military target of young boys throwing rocks.

For those interested in the grotesque disparity – http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp

Re double standards: I just applied your standard for Israel, Tom, to the Palestinians. When I do, you accuse me of Israel-bashing. I am understanding your outlook, but applying it to both sides of the conflict. Should I poke one of my eyes out?

Our societies do not support morally, militarily, politically and economically the regimes you say I hold to a different standard to Israel – at least not even faintly to the same degree . On the contrary, I want the standard to be the same. Israel (and Saudi) should be treated much as we now treat Syria and Iran – on the outside looking in until they adopt civilised standards towards the millions who are held under its racist laws and colonisation – the farce of the Gaza strip pullout – veiling further incursion into Jerusalem and the West Bank, notwithstanding.

So, was ‘Jeninograd’ an example of ‘deliberate attacks on population centres’? And do Hamas and other murderers count as ‘overwhelmingly civilian Palestinians’? I am sure, Israelis would rather send in bombers to wipe out a Hamas camp in a desert, but as terrorists are hiding among children and women, the choices are limited. Still, as Chechnya, Iraq and other campaigns show, Israelis are doing a much cleaner job than Russians or Americans.

There are several Zionist narratives; I am not sure which one is ‘real’ and why.

Oh, ‘Palestinian pain’. I would rather wait for ages at an Israeli check-point than sit next to a suicide bomber on a bus, but that’s a matter of personal choice. Stealing international aid money – I guess all those Palestinian millionairs need pain-relief straight away – or spending it on explosives and anti-Semitic propaganda at schools and media rather than hospitals is also Israel’s fault?

Anyway, to understand ‘my outlook’ try and drop double standards when dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Then your ‘outlook’ will be more about ‘values of fairness and justice’ and not just partisan Israel-bashing

You don’t think that inflicting 3 or more times the death toll on overwhelmingly civilian Palestinians, collective punishment via deliberate attacks on population centres and the real Zionist narrative stretching from the late 19th century etc belies your claims to their purely sectarian outlook a little?

If I should imagine Israeli pain in the comparitive manner that you posit, then how much more should I imagine Palestinian pain? Three times more? Do I then draw conclusions about the inflicters of this pain via these numbers? Palestinians only a third as culpable as Israelis?

And then should we assign a linear blame on numbers of people purged from their land and numbers of people locked down on their land? I mean, I’m applying your formula here, but your attitude doesn’t square with the results of it – if you’re claiming to apply values of fairness and justice. Do we need to look to a different formula on all those issues in order that I can understand your outlook?

There are fewer Israelis than Londoners. Imagine the degree of hatred if not 52 but over 1,000 people had been murdered (and tens of thousands maimed) in the past few years in the UK capital with full Muslim approval and encouragement. Imagine the aim of this terror was to push the Britons into the Sea. Then you can talk about Israelis who ‘hate and despise’.
The most ‘racist’ comments about Arabs I heard in Israel were from a secretary of a socialist kibbutz near Tel-Aviv. He wouldn’t even allow Arab labourers, never mind members on kibbuts grounds

You’ve never been to Northern Ireland then, have you? Ask them there whether sectarian is a nice neutral word then.

I suspect Mr. Cohen is just doing this to make a rhetorical point, though. Notice his “It’s a dictatorship here, it’s a dictatorship there. So what’s the difference?”. Well, the Palestinians just had an election, and their leader is not a war criminal like some.

“Sectarian” is a nice neutral word isn’t it? Are the suicide attacks against Israeli civilians by Palestinians then not anti-semitic?

Are you aware that some of those “racist”
settlers are actually considering Palestinian Citizenship?

Heres the link …

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/world/12347357.htm

And gosh … guess what … even Hamas has no problem with it. You would think that they would take great umbrage with “racist Jewish Settlers” staying in Gaza.

It is, simply, a SECTARIAN dispute. Not a “racial” dispute.

And note what has happened within this thread.

It has gone from “All Israelis are incurable racists [even Israeli Arabs?]” to the Israeli’s are “not nice”.

And it happened just because a few of us objected to some posters use of inappropriate pejoratives.

I did see, of course, many normal and very good people inside Israel proper.

And yeah, maybe it’s sloppy to call what goes on in Israel “racist”, but it is definitely not nice. I dunno that my experience was as extreme as abb1’s, but Israeli attitudes certainly were disconcerting – most seemed happy to accept the cheap land and cheap labour while being wilfully blind to whose land and labour it was. And I did meet some genuine religious extremists (most of whom were born in New York).

The level of Serb cooperation in Serbia is reasonably high. 12 of 20 war criminals sent to the Hague since Sept 2004 came from Serbia and Montenegro. With Croatia, the list of high level war criminals required by the tribunal is very low compared to Serbia. Croation resistance to handing over a national war hero whose claim to fame is a murderous ethnic cleansing, has been clear. So to answer this point, there is little to support the statement : “Is [what Croatia has done to bring war criminals to book]enough? Probably not. Is it way more than the Serbs have done – absolutely yes”.

But the level of Western cooperation in having a tribunal that would demand the handover of Western war criminal leaders – is nil. Britain is a part of the war crimes treaty, it clearly waged an aggressive war against Iraq and Yugoslavia. Where are the indictments?

We are largely if not wholly responsible for the unravelling of Yugoslavia. Much later we went to war against Serbia, having made Rambouillet unworkable, and Serbians understand full well the deep hypocrisy and lack of credibility of Western powers in holding Serb leaders to account but not their own in Yugo and other places such as Iraq.

Listen, I don’t care to defend the Serbs and as I have said I fully agree with their need to confront their past. That the West should be the instrument for that is wholly ridiculous, even more so since no western leader is on trial for any of the murderous interventions of the last 15 years. Not one. This is a surefire way to discredit Western democratic influence in the world and frankly we are seeing its eclipse now, not in our apparent power, but in the burning resentment of most of the non-Western parts of the world.

Croatia is not cooperating fully with the Hague, even as the European community does regularly threaten it with its accession. As for the slap on the wrist that Croatia has been given, it doesn’t compare with the Western violation of sovereignty, the destruction of Serbian infrastructure (to NO purpose) and the transfer of Serbian assets to the private realm against international law. Croatia’s reactionary politics benefitted from the West, Serbias was used against it to destroy its interests and its sovereignty and to break up Yugoslavia.

In a similar situation, I barely think England would feel it could have learned its lessons from a victor who was so patently part of the problem, so much at the heart of the dissolution of Britain, say, and the subsequent violence that would inevitably occur in a like situation.

So why isn’t Blair in the Hague? If we could send him there, would we not begin to build a track record that Serbs would have confidence in? International law can’t just be for ‘them’, the detritus washed up by our small wars, it has to be for all of us or there is no effective law. This lawlessness, now generalising itslef, is what we are just starting to reap.

Robin Cook’s death brings to mind the breadth of Western and more particularly Blair’s hypocrisy. While he is self-righteously looking to damaging legislation to close down supporting words of his particular definition of ‘terrorism’, including any supporting thesis for resisters of his illegal invasion, his 1999 actions in approving Hawk ground attack fighters (at one point called ‘trainers, I seem to remember) to the Suharto government whose sole use of these fighters was on civilians, show that he is in fact one who has consistently acted in favour of terrorism.

That sort of hypocrisy is what is destroying Western credibility in the world. It’s like water off a ducks back to Westerners, but it sticks in the craw of everyone else and for that reason alone unless we find a mainstream means of self-critique, of applying the rules of international instruments to our own leaders and of taking responsibility for our governments’ violent actions we will fail to convince the world that we have anything to offer.

And endlessly repeat the same.

They can sleep peacefully at night knowing the Palestinians terrorists they support are not murdering innocents.

Not at all. The terrorist are only doing their heinous acts because their opponents are “racists”.

I find it difficult to accept that a poster has actually talked with even representative sample of 100,000+ ‘settlers’. And can then supposedly and confidently state that “the vast majority” are racists.

But since it makes him feel justified in his anti-Israel feelings, I’m not surprised he would post such an obvious lie.

I don’t think you are credible on this or many other issues, like the religious makeup of Kosovar albanians.

Sorry, but Croatia still doesn’t have accession talks with the EU because of Ante Govina, so I would argue that we are holding Croatia to account. Several Croatian generals are in the ICC now. Stipe Mesic just apologized for the flight of the Serbs, some of which was called for by the Krajina government, after they ethnically cleansed Karjina of Croats and Muslims. Is it enough? Probably not. Is it way more than the Serbs have done – absolutely yes.

Look at the Serbian response to Srebrenica. Lots of people still don’t believe that mass killing happened there. Most Serbs still believe that mass graves of Kosovars don’t exist, or that bodies of Kosovars weren’t put into vans and buried in rivers in Serbia.

They still haven’t handed over many of their war criminals or tried them in their own courts, and recently they seem to have settled on paying off war criminals so that their families can reap benefits from their crimes.

I can’t see any comparison to any other group in the former Yugoslavia. Serbia is still wallowing in victimhood, though the situation is improving.

The EU seems to have the authority to demand reflection, and it seems to be working, though more slowly for Serbia. Montenegro and Croatia seem to be learning the drill rather more quickly.