Robin van Spaandonk wrote:
In reply to Stephen A. Lawrence's message of Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:25:32 -0500:
Hi,
[snip]
Perhaps the fact that the president of Iran asserted that their goal is
to erase Israel from the map has something to do with it.
The actual phrase, reported in LeMonde IIRC, was something like "rayer
Israel de la carte" -- the word "rayer" stuck in my mind; it's pretty
dramatic when applied to an entire country. AFAIK LeMonde doesn't take
orders from Bush so, even though I haven't seen the original speech, I
expect the French translation was not too far off base.
As I understood it at the time, he should Israel "should" be ....
I think you're right about that.
There is a big difference between stating an opinion, and stating an actual
intention to act.
Right, but if you're the president of a country it is good to recall
that people often take your "opinion" as being identical with your
personal game plan. Which points up another assertion, which is that
Ahmednejad is a fool.
Whether or not Israel has nuclear weapons, everyone in the
middle-east believes they do, and consequently no one is going to attack them.
Hence it is IMO fairly clear that Ahmadinejad speaks his opinions freely, and
that the US administration and media do their utmost to paint it as black as
possible.
So do the French, Canadian, and British media, then, or so it would seem.
I don't see the U.S. media unless I go out of my way to look at it.
Since this went hand in hand with Ahmednejad's bellicose assertions that
Iran has every right to pursue their nuclear program without outside
intervention or oversight,
..which of course they do, though if they wish to pursue it free of oversight,
they should withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation pact. Of course, doing
this is as good as admitting that they want to produce weapons. Not that they
have any less right to such weapons than anyone else.
If Israel is so worried about Iran, then they could end their problems
overnight, simply by coming to an equitable agreement with the Palestinians.
I'm afraid it may be too late for that. Relations between the
Palestinians and the Israelis are so bad that an equitable agreement may
be impossible; from what I've read, an entire generation of Palestinians
on the Gaza Strip has grown up in an atmosphere of total fear of Israel.
We're talking about people who've been suffering from stress-related
problems from the time they were old enough to talk, all from fear of
the demon Israel. It would be very difficult for them to come to an
equitable and peaceful agreement with Israel, even if the Israeli
government wanted to do so. Any such agreement requires some level of
trust on both sides; the trust is missing, and instead there is intense,
ingrained, well-learned hatred. That's going to be very hard to overcome.
Things look very bleak over there to me. I would tend to blame Israeli
government policies and actions for that state of affairs, though others
may find different roots to the problems.
My favorite quote regarding Gaza, from some former Israeli leader, many
years ago, not so long after Israel first occupied it: "Why do they
_want_ Gaza? It's insane -- it's like wanting to get cancer because it
gives you more cells!" Wish I could recall the source.
For what it's worth, if it were up to me, I would excise (old?) Jerusalem from
both Israel and Palestine, and make it a small city state, similar to Vatican
City, but governed by a 7 member board, comprising 2 members from each of the
major religions, and 1 secularly elected member. Having an odd number ensures
that there is never a tied vote. With Jerusalem out of the way, it would be much
easier for both parties to reach an agreement on boarders.
Yeah, right, I agree -- and while we're at it let's do the same with
Hebron and Bethel. But I disagree about the board -- it should be
populated entirely with atheists.
Seven copies of Jed, running Jerusalem... Imagine...
and with his rejection (or disregard) of
Russia's offer to provide the pre-enriched fuel for their reactors in
order to avoid the need for (weapons-convertible) enrichment facilities
in Iran, it made a lot of people understandably nervous about what the
future might hold if Iran's course is not changed.
Only they get nervous who don't look deeply enough, or listen carefully enough.
Personally I find the whole situation is making me very nervous and
looking more deeply doesn't help me relax.
Whatever Iran's plans really are I certainly hope the rumors of a
preemptive (nuclear) first strike against them are unfounded.
According to at least one apologist for Iran found on the Internet, the
literal phrase used meant "This occupation regime over Jerusalem must
vanish from the page of time.” That doesn't sound a whole lot better to
me than the French version, frankly, and in this case, I'm inclined to
trust the translators who most likely knew what the Persian idiom meant
when they translated it to "rayer de la carte" -- which, by the way,
means exactly what it sounds like it means.
Still, it's just his opinion, not a statement of policy.
BTW note that my suggestion hereabove might satisfy his wish.
[snip]
Regards,
Robin van Spaandonk
http://users.bigpond.net.au/rvanspaa/
Competition (capitalism) provides the motivation,
Cooperation (communism) provides the means.
