If You Were Ahmadinejad, What Would You Do?

[Aristophan3s]

I see. So if Israel wants lasting peace, they need to agree to whatever agreements are offered, no matter what the consequences of it are. Why didn’t we think of that sooner?

What do you think compromise means? They signed the 1967 agreement and they are not following it. I cannot say the Palastinians are systematically uprooting the Israeli population can I? But I can sure say that Israel is systematically uprooting the Palastinians…and since the Palastinians don’t have a state, they get no recognition for the injustices that are wrought upon them.

The suicide bombings don’t even begin to compare to the amount of force Israel uses (white phosphorus, missile stations, etc.) What was the casualty comparison in the Lebanon/Israel conflict?

Israeli civilians:
44 dead

Lebanese citizens:
1,191–1,300 dead

The sheer force alone…

The Israeli government is not racist.

The apartheid laws seem to indicate otherwise…

Safundi: Do you think, then, that the term “apartheid” is an accurate term for this situation?

Chomsky: Apartheid in South Africa meant something different. Apartheid wasn’t [only] Bantustans, apartheid was the arrangement inside South Africa. Bantustans were bad enough, but that was something else, that was caging the population into unviable territories. Like putting Indians in reservations. We don’t call that apartheid. We call it something else.

Safundi: But the term has been invoked by people within Israel, as well as among scholars.

Chomsky: It has been invoked, but for different reasons.

Safundi: What are those reasons?

Chomsky: Those reasons have to do with Israel itself. Uri Davis-[who] has been involved in civil disobedience since the 1960s, he was the first serious activist in civil disobedience in Israel-in the 1960s, he protested real apartheid, inside Israel. This had been going on for the whole history of the state, but it was particularly dramatic around 1967 or 1968.

Israel has a technique for dispossessing Israeli citizens-non-Jewish citizens-that’s apartheid. One of the ways of doing it is to declare an area a military zone, so therefore for security reasons people have to get out, and it always turns out that it’s never a Jewish area, it’s Palestinian, and then after it’s declared a security zone, you build settlements afterwards. And that’s what’s been going on. Palestinian villages had their lands taken away.

Safundi: So it’s similar to the forced removals that were happening in South Africa.

Chomsky: Kind of, yes. And then, after people have forgotten about it, you go in and you build an all-Jewish city. And that’s what was happening. Palestinian villages were restricted and they started building an all-Jewish city, Karmiel. This was a closed area, and Uri Davis went in, breaking the law, to protest what was happening. And that was the first serious act of civil disobedience.

I can’t argue with them being demons; I’ve suffered at its hands myself, although I hardly see how that makes them different from any other state.

True. The U.S. did the same thing Israel is doing to the Palastinians to the Native Americans…

The Arabs don’t want to just destroy the state though, they want to get rid of the Jewish majority there and create a theocratic Islamic (“Palestinian”, as if the term means anything) government.

As opposed to a theocratic racially pure Jewish state?

“Palestinian” refers to a loose collective of different sects of arabs that never had a state. As most arab tribes are, they were stateless, but run in a church-like manner. Then the Zionists came in formed a state and are now herding the Plastinians into “reserves” (again, just like the US).

The main difference is that the US did this 200 years ago. “We” can stop Israel from doing it today.