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We are talking Benny the racist here, no?
Benny who was instrumental in proving that the Nakba really did happen, that massacres and rape were used as co-ercion, that there was a "military plan D" to actively "purify" the land?
Who now decries the fact that there wasn't more rape and killing.........
You call him "balanced and fair"?
That is just plain sick.
Benny Morris's Shocking Interview
No More Tears: Benny Morris and the Road Back from Liberal Zionism
Plenty more substance
Thanks for your well informed opinion on the matter. I will take it into consideration when your investigative resources exceed that of the CIA and MI6 combined.
Wrong. The war was a stunning success - considering it was a country of 20 million and only a few thousand people were actually killed in the fighting and major combat operations were over in days.
But never mind eh? I know you were rooting for the Yanks to be slaughtered - maybe next time?
Yeah - all those WMDs eh mat? Real good intelligence that was.
Letting the Iraqi 'insurgents' get hold of tons of military strength explosives that were already under US control was an inspired move too.
Only 2000 dead working class Americans and rising.
You're a parody of a real person mat.
:rolleyes:
Wrong. The war hasn't finished by any means. Bombing a piss-poor, demoralised and terribly equipped conscription army was a success (how could it have been any different?). Gaining control of the country and fighting guerilla warfare has been an unmitigated disaster and the country is nearer to total anarchy and civil war that it has ever been.
Go tell the mother of the 2,000th US soldier fatality that the war was a success- or that it is over.
Like many professional historians with integrity Benny Morris the historian and Benny Morris the person can be separated. G.R. Elton who wrote in depth on historiography (see his book The Practice of History) suggested that the historian should be judged on the merit of their work and their findings rather than their personal views, etc. What a historian says in an interview with a newspaper is quite different to his professional findings in a journal or in a book. I think you’ll find that even the most extreme pro-Palestinian commentators such as Norman Finkelstein recognise the research and findings of Benny Morris (although Finkelstein in Image & Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict disputes the conclusions Morris draws from his own research).
I struggle to see how you can back up your claim that Morris ‘now decries the fact that there wasn’t more rape and killing’. The findings of his 2003 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (updated version of his 1988 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49) contradict your claims.
Still it’s pointless discussing this with you as I doubt you’ve even read any of the books in question. Have you even read any scholarly history text of Israel/Palestine from a reputable historian? Leaflets distributed by unemployed racists picketing Marks & Spencer are not scholarly.
iv lost my mind for a few days, what is a zionist, extreemist jew? forgoton
yeah iv never read it, thankyou for even enlightening me with it, i WILL research it and recomend to others, thankyou
Nice try.
I linked to 2 critiques of Benny's "historiography",
Your own little prejudices managed to slip through there in that last sentence, no?
:chin:
BTW - Heres his revisionist claim of what he said to Haaretz:
So, he is saying a bit more rape, a bit more murder and we could have stolen the whole of Palestine........
Are you talking about the subject of the OP or Islamist terrorism in general?
Straw man.
You heavily implied it.
I suggest you educate yourself a bit more. How many car bombs were there in Iraq under Saddam? How many are there now?
I think you'll find that the CIA and MI6 actually concur with me on this one. Unless you're still clinging to the discredited propaganda that we went into Iraq to deal with Al-Queda?
Stunning success in what way? Do you ever actually watch the news?
Or alternatively he's saying if the Arabs had been able to get their act together there wouldn't be an israel. Nice try to twist his words...
Can you not read or something? You don’t appear to have grasped the point I made in my last post at all…
Benny Morris is a professional historian and widely recognised as a very good one. In his research he is incredibly balanced and scrupulously fair. He is deeply professional and most readers of his work generally feel he doesn’t allow any personal bias to cloud his judgement. Even Norman Finkelstein – one of the most pro-Palestinian commentators recognises the significance of Morris’s work:
‘Morris has tapped a wealth of archival material which no serious student of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can afford to ignore. In effect, Morris’s research will serve as the benchmark for all future scholarship on the topic.’ Finkelstein Image & Reality p. 87
What he says in a newspaper interview – his political views are quite separate to serious academic publications. I know that for some people – yourself for instance, if you were a historian you would be unable to separate your extreme anti-Israel views with your role as a historian. However for a respected intelligent academic such as Morris that is possible. (And anyway, lets put this into perspective – you’ve taken a few things Morris has said out of context. This guy isn’t some extreme Zionist, to the contrary he was boycotted by the Israeli academic establishment before because he was seen as anti-Zionist. He has changed some of his views but he’s still pretty moderate).
Anyway I’m not discussing this with you further until it’s clear that you’ve actually read some of Morris’s work. (Or perhaps I should say something that even resembles a scholarly history rather than a few propagandistic pamphlets).
You have no idea what I have and haven't read.
So get off your high horse and note that Morris's work has some serious flaws.
As you still haven't managed to read the Kimmerling and Beinin critiques - including:
Kimmerling:
Beinin:
"incredibly balanced and scrupulously fair"?
I think not ............
In spite of all that, his work does serve to illustrate that the zionist project was and remains dependant on ethnic cleansing/genocide.
Which leads Kimmerling to conclude:
Pappe would certainly disagree with you on the question of Morris's 'professionalism' - and with good cause - the idea that somebody can collate facts in a neutral way is old fashioned bollocks. Furthermore, Pappe insists that Morris's racism was known to him from the very first meeting.
Pappe is more honest in his approach - regardless of what you make of his conclusions.
:wave:
Elton?
Funny coming from someone himself who was very biased in his works.
Elton is like every other historian in having a bias; nobody is free of a bias so his suggestion in The Practice of History of focusing mainly on the documentary record as the ultimate authority of historical accuracy and legitimacy makes sense. With Carr’s What Is History? Elton’s The Practice of History is considered very authoritative in historiography.
freethepeeps - I’m not suggesting Morris’s research is flawless; Efraim Karsh in Fabricating Israeli History makes some interesting criticisms for instance. However I think Finkelstein's quote summarises the significance of Morris's work. Shlaim seems more credible than Pappe, there are many criticisms of the latter's approach. Such is this history being as contentious as it is my definition of a 'balanced history' will be different to yours; for you a 'balanced history' is nothing less than Israel being completely to blame. I happen to agree with Morris, who generally seems to conclude that wrongdoings have been committed on both sides. Some would say that as Morris is so strongly criticised by both sides implies that he's closer to the truth than the traditional Zionist/Arab interpretations
Finkelstein also said:
:eek:
You are so fucking disingenuous MoK. Heres the whole sordid discussion .....
A claim of EQUAL blame from yourself. And that their "representatives" should be held accountable.
A refutation of your claim of EQUAL blame - one lot are indigenous - one lot are immigrants. The POWER is held by the Israeli incomers.
A claim that the resistance hold power. `The resistance are not elected - so how can the Palestinian people hold them accountable?
A wriggle.
Noting that Israelis fuel hostilities and that they attack more often and kill more.
Duly amended quotation.
A failure to answer the question. An attempt to decontextualise Palestinian resistance to military occupation, a theme that runs throughout your attempts to apportion equal blame to the occupier/occupies indigenous/immigrants strong/weak. Perhaps the suggestion here is that Palestinian violence has no context?
Wriggle 2. As above - how do the people of Palestine hold non-elected "representatives" accountable? And you still haven't explained what power the elected "representatives" hold.
IE the conflict is fuelled by massive amounts of US funding of the Israeli military.
Meaning what? The sub-text reads - The Palestinians should just stop all resistance and let the Israelis do whatever they want.
Restating that this is not an EQUAL fight - one side has massive military advantage and control and power.
It is a classic colonial situation where the indigenous people are overpowered by the immigrants - whose leadership comes from Europe and are white.
Meanwhile - you now start to focus on yet another excerpt from a discussion with someone else........
Restating the fact that it is Palestinian land that has been stolen and Palestinian people who have been dispossessed
Straight zionist propaganda - suddenly your impartiality is looking like a very tired charade - all your argument is on the side of the powerful/strong/occupier/immigrant.
acknowledging the above
And so back the original quote:
[QUOTE=Man of Kent[/QUOTE]So fucking what?[/QUOTE]
So there is no fucking EQUALITY. You're constructing a strawman whilst advancing a zionist argument.
The answer being - the indigenous, the colonised, the ones not from Europe, the ones NOT funded by the Western superpowers.
Now all you have to do is continue to assert that there is EQUALITY between the two sides, and I'll happily put you on ignore. Because I have no interest in playing a game when you pretend to be 'balanced and scrupulously fair' when in fact you are a conservative who has every sympathy with the coloniser and no problem with the ethnic cleansing and bullying of the indigenous Palestinian people.
Alternatively, why not just admit that you are a zionist sympathiser who couldn't give a flying fuck about injustice?
Over to you - and probably GOODBYE.
Actually that was more "snippets" of the conversation, but never mind.
My "so fucking what?" comment was in response to your comparison of funding. So what is the Palestinians don't have the same amount of cash available to arm themselves?
Yes, equal blame as ordinary Israelis, NOT the Govt.
The power to do what though? I think you are talking about something different to I.
They don't? Aren't they responsible for their own actions then, as I said they are not instructed to carry out attacks by the Israelis, are they?
Here's a scary thought for you. How about they stop protecting, hiding, supporting and manning them?
Says Mt Pot. But for the record I never mentioned elections, you did. That wasn't may argument so why would I defend it?
So what?
Or do you subscribe to the "well he started it" method of international politics?
Er, or not. Still includes "elected", which wasn't what I was talking about at all.
Or perhaps it's exactly what was written. You wanted a compariosn between the last violent act on either side. As I tries to point out in fairly simple English, without hidden meaning without the need for you to interpret my words, was that it really isn't that simple.
But that's something you just don't understand about the whole conflict. It isn't simple. It's it's tit for tat one for one killing. It's warfare. One side trying to use it's military, the other guerilla tactics. Neither actually recognising that their own action only serve to fuel more death for their own side. Well, either not realising or not caring.
Because it wasn't me who raised the issue of "elected" representation. You did that.
I don't know about you, but I can see people who claim to represent the Palestinians cause who haven't actually been elected and yet seem to have a major impact on what is happening...
What sub-text. I didn't put one there, you did when you tried to interpret what I said instead of just reading the words that I used.
The Palestinians are funded too you know. Just because it isn't the "big bad US" which funds them doesn't mean that the funding doesn't exist.
Please point out where I said it was
They think they do, you seem to think that they do. They don't. Control and power over the region lies away from both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
So it's propaganda to say that Israelis arab neighbours have attempted to destabilse them, that Jews have been oppressed or that they faced a holocaust?
And yours...? Not exactly even in your approach are you?
Ever considered that I am actually just stating another side of the coin, and opposing argument to yours?
The world does not operate in absolutes, there is always at least two sides to every story. Perhaps you should look into that which is opposite to yours, get inside the mind of your "enemy". Then, maybe, you might understand their actions. It's is that which will inform you how to address the situation.
It's a fairly simple concept, perhaps you need to understand Jungian Theory?
So?
How can I continue to do something which I haven't actually done.
Unless you count the point where I suggest that both sides have equally failed to take necessary steps to curtail the excess of their representatives...
You're funny. Do you interact with people, real people, ever? I don't mean fellow class warriors? Because you really seem to struggle with simple concepts.
I suggest that you look up this phrase, maybe even ask your friends what it means. Ready, because it's a tough one for you...
"Devil's Advocate".
My claim to balance and fair play, if you read some of my posts in this very thread, it because I am putting across and argument counter to yours. Not because I necessarily believe it, but because it needs to be said. Otherwise all that is posted on these boards, or the majority of what is posted, is very one sided. Not because that is necessarily the "right" argument, but because of the political make up of these boards.
Now, you appear to think that you are intelligent, so how about you devote a few brain cells to this:
Read what I write. There is no space between the lines so you don't need to try and read there. I choose my words carefully because I don't want them misinterpreted.
Secondly, don't assume that because someone puts across an argument to counter yours, that they actually wholeheartedly support it. A one sided debate is not a debate but grandstanding.
Thirdly, understand the oppising viewpoint and you may actually find the right argument against it. Pontificating will not work. Neither will moralising. Both sides can do that.
That will happen around the same time that you admit that your stance has little to do with justice, and more to do with class war.
Yes indeed - all Israelis are one class, and all Palestinbians are another.
You stupid, stupid man.
I'm not intereted in playing pointless games - I've no more time for your disingenuity.
Bye Bye MoK
:wave:
Because that is what I said, isn't it? I said that you saw Israelis and Palestinians as different classes.
Oh, hang on, no I didn't. You've just inferred that from a very small part of my comments, once again reading between lines when the rest of my post might actually show you what I really meant.
Perhaps you should look at the "power" aspect you are so fond of... then consider where the class divide, referred to, might appear... couldn't be those weathly western nations you were talking about, could it? Surely not.
You stupid, stupid man.
"The brave Sir Robin he turned and fled..."
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I'm kinda guessing that the Matador won't be starting a thread called "They donate kidneys"
Ho hum