User talk:Doug Danner

Hi Doug. I hope you like the place and choose to stay.

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Please put source material such as UN security council resolutions at Wikisource, at. There is already a substantial number of the resolutions at the site. If you want to write about the resolutions, please do so, but link to thes ource material at Wikisource.

Thanks Dysprosia 04:57, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

1373 is an anti-terrorism resolution which bans material support for terrorist organizations. Hizbullah is already on the terrorist list of US, UK, Canada, and Australia, and if not for European Union internal politics would be there as well. I mention that 1373 has been argued as a framework for which to posit Lebanon's violation of other resolutions. Otherwise, Mustafaa is a blatant propagandist, and I therefore feel little need to discuss politics with him.

Further, Hizbullah is active in arming and training (material support) of Hamas terrorists. Hamas is on the terrorist list of not only US, UK, Canada and Australia, but also the EU and Russia. UNSCR 1373 prohibits material support for terrorist organizations, and as such Hizbullah is in further breach of 1373. Again, by not extending law and order to south Lebanon, and not disbanding Hizbullah, Lebanon is also in breach of 1373, and many other resolutions, including 425.

Specifically, the UN has adopted UN Security Council Resolution 1559 that calls for Syria to withdraw, cease interfering with Labanese politics and the dismatnling of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias in the country. That'll be hard to misread, huh Mustafaa?

Leon Pinsker
Hi, I've merged your text with an article I was drafting. There were a few details I didn't want to lose, like Judeophobia. &larr;Humus sapiens&larr;Talk 10:11, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the addition. Now we need to add a Hibat Zion/Hovevi Zion entry. Doug

See these six categories up for "votes of deletion":
See these six categories up for "votes of deletion":

Categories_for_deletion and Categories_for_deletion and Categories_for_deletion and Categories_for_deletion and Categories_for_deletion and this one too: Categories_for_deletion

IZAK 10:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Opinion for IZAK
Please see Requests for arbitration/IZAK/Evidence. Thank you. IZAK 07:16, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

History of Lebanon article
You might be interested in the recent edits to the History of Lebanon article (see history), and the Talk: page. The current anonymous author seems to be relying almost exclusively on Chomsky. Jayjg (talk) 02:40, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hey Doug - I've left some responses on the "discussion" page of History of Lebanon. For the moment I haven't made any changes, which I explain there. Hope to hear from you. sneaky 08:50, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)
 * I just did. After setting yourself up with a user account, Josh, how about you get a user page so that I can actually discuss edits with you there?

Hi Doug. You've done great work on the article, thanks for taking care of it. It's kind of funny how these ideologues come in with their Chomsky-influenced POV and assume that their edits are all neutral, while everyone else is a pro-Zionist bigot. Anyway, thanks again. Jayjg (talk) 19:47, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Doug: Thanks for explaining your edits, which I generally agreed with. I can't respond to your comments today, but I plan to soon. It appears that I do have a talk page - i.e., when I click on "my talk", a page pops up that displays some welcoming comments from Jayjg and room for others - but I'm not very familiar with the Wikipedia software, so it's quite possible I don't know what I'm talking about. If in fact I don't have a talk page, could you tell me how to set one up? I was thinking of responding to the tangential Arab-Israeli conflict points here on your talk page, perhaps tomorrow. If you'd rather I use my page or some other location, just let me know. sneaky 09:23, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Arab-Israeli conflict
'''Woa. I just started contributing a little bit to the Lebanon related topics, when I peeked in my user page. I forgot about this long winded rant. I'm still flooded with work so I doubt I'll be doing much wikipedia work. For sure I have no mental energy to go through the tedium of answering all the pro chomsky babble on this page. Given some luck I'll be in a position to blab more and work less soon enough :) . Anyway, I'll keep the following rant around for later revision.  Right now this has been a good year.  Syria, Iran and Hezbollah under mountain domestic and international pressure.  Hezbollah making absurd  mistakes trying to reignite the border with Israel while Israel is making good use of diplomacy and good tactics to smack them around.  Chomskyites having to watch their little pet terrorists eat shit diplomatically and militarily.  Sweet.'''

Doug, here are some comments on your recent additions to the History of Lebanon discussion under the heading "Feb 26 2005 round of edits".

(1) You wrote: "Don't patronize me on [not] having a stated position on the conflict. You're clearly anti-Israeli, though similar to Mustafaa you use the deceipt of 'I don't see myself as anti-people'. Whatever. Using Chomsky who is a propaganda mill par exelance is a clear indication of your bias and is similarly highly problematic for a Wikipedia editor dedicated to ensuring NPOV in Mideast entries....Chomsky and Pat Buchanan can agree at least on a few things. Both are anti-Israeli, and both have a paranoid dellusion of Jewish/Zionist control of the US/World."

First, a few words about my "stated position", which I described in this way: "I just tend to view people as people, with motives that are understandable from their particular perspectives, and I think that's the essence of NPOV." That is, I actually do have a stated position: I approach historical questions by trying to understand the perspectives of the major actors. For example, I have read three books specifically about the Arab-Israeli conflict: the Smith book, which I read first, and then Dershowitz's A Case For Israel and Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, back-to-back, using Smith to check facts and data. You may quibble with my choices, but I think my strategy was sound: first read a standard survey of the topic, and then read one reputedly biased account from each side of the spectrum. I did not approach the readings, then as now, as a Zionist or Palestinian sympathizer: in fact, I knew next to nothing about the conflict until I started reading Smith, and that was in college a few years ago. My personal view is that the actions of each major player in the conflict have generally been rational or at least comprehensible from that player's perspective, and to be honest, I am not interested to go further than that and delve into normative questions (nor, to state the obvious, is Wikipedia an appropriate forum in which to do so).

I do, however, bristle at self-serving omissions or distortions of basic facts about the conflict, e.g., staunch Israeli rejectionism throughout the period in question, which is rarely mentioned but certainly no less important than PLO rejectionism if one wants to understand the issues (see section 11, below, for a detailed discussion of this matter); or, e.g., dismissive discussions of "Palestinian terrorists" that do not mention the striking parallels with Jewish terrorism in the pre-state period, led by future prime ministers Begin (Irgun) and Shamir (LEHI) among others. I bristle when someone mentions the PLO Charter but fails to mention, among numerous examples, the slogan of Begin's Herut party that "there are two banks to the Jordan" and both belong to Israel (which is substantiated in the Hebrew Bible and is perfectly understandable according to Begin's brand of Zionism). I am also entirely open to correcting omissions or distortions vis-a-vis the PLO, which I hope I have demonstrated through my receptiveness to certain of your edits to the article, because I honestly have no personal stake or interest in portraying one actor as being more noble than another. When I happened upon the History of Lebanon article, it seemed to me that the omissions and distortions were substantially more favorable to Israel and the Maronites than to the Druze, the Palestinians, and the Syrians. That's why I got involved. Really, Doug, there is no "deceit" intended here.

Second, I have to take issue with your statement that "Chomsky...[has] a paranoid delusion of Jewish/Zionist control of the US/World." In this case, he actually thinks the opposite of what you claim, and in fact he is at pains to distance himself from the "paranoid delusion" you mention. His argument, very roughly, is that the US controls Israel, essentially for geopolitical reasons, and he explicitly refutes the thesis that the Jewish-Zionist lobby controls US policy. He writes: "No pressure group will dominate access to public opinion or maintain consistent influence over policy-making unless its aims are close to those of elite elements with real power....[A] closer look will illustrate the correctness of the assessment that the evolution of America's relationship to Israel 'has been determined primarily by the changing role that Israel occupied in the context of America's changing conceptions of its political-strategic interests in the Middle East.'" (Fateful Triangle, p. 17; the quoted passage is from Nadav Safran, Israel: the Embattled Ally, p. 571.) Again, I suggest you read Chomsky's study of the conflict before you attribute particular views to him.

Third, Pat Buchanan does not speak for the right on Israel, but focusing on one side of the political spectrum misses the point, I think, which is that Israel is strongly supported by all mainstream political groupings, as well as the ideological right with the exception of Buchanan and other isolationists, who constitute a pretty small minority, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure you noticed, in the 2004 election, how Kerry, and especially Edwards in the V.P. debate, went out of their way to praise Israel and even tried to criticize Bush/Cheney for not going far enough to ensure Israel's security. It's a consistent pattern in US politics going back at least to the early 70s. Most criticism of Israel emanates from the left, with some notable exceptions, e.g. oil industry personnel who have called for Israel's withdrawal from the territories to foster stability in the region.

Finally, a few words about the term "anti-Israel". Abba Eban once observed that "One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all" (Congress Bi-Weekly, March 30, 1973, quoted in Fateful Triangle, p. 15). In reading your and Jayjg's comments, both in the discussion page and in notes left on each other's talk pages, I get the impression that you are using "anti-Israel" in the same pejorative sense that Eban advocates for "anti-Zionism". I would note that the term "anti-American" has evolved to function in a similar fashion, replacing "communist" in the patriotic lexicon. But in practice, it seems to me, these terms are generally used to describe critical perspectives on Israeli and US state policies, not visceral prejudice against Jews or Americans, Israel or America. As such, I don't think "anti-Israel" is an accurate term for my contributions. I think "non-Zionist" would be accurate, or "unpatriotic". I'm interested in your take on Eban's comments and on this issue generally.

(2) You wrote: "My statement referred to the 1981-1982 period, not 1968-1982....I restate it - during the so called cease fire period Israel did violate Lebanese airspace in order to monitor the PLO. I wonder why you don't see the occupation of southern Lebanon by an non Lebanese militia (PLO, PLA, or whichever other front you wish to use) since 1968 as anything but a violation of Lebanon's integrity as a nation....What you refer to as 'one' attack after the Argov assassination attempt is actually multiple towns being attacked simultaneously. An odd way to count, except for of course your aim is to minimize the severity of the PLOs threat to Israel, and hence paint Israel as an over the top aggressor. Can't stray from Chomsky for too long or what?"

First, not quite clear on your point about the 1981-82 period. There were Israeli bombing attacks during the August-May period, two of which - April 21 and May 9 if I recall correctly - I have documented. So, as I said before, your statement "no attacks were done from the air" and your restatement "during the so called cease fire period Israel did violate Lebanese airspace in order to monitor the PLO" are both false. Do you think those two statements are not false? I won't argue with your statement that the PLO's presence was "a violation of Lebanon's integrity as a nation". I hope you do not mean to imply - I'll assume you don't - that Israel is a stranger to violating national integrity. It's safe to say that few parties to this conflict are strangers in that sense.

On your second point, I think it's customary to refer to a military offensive as an "attack", even if it includes more than one target or operation. For example, Israel's "attack" of Beirut took more than a month. Seems like a semantic question to me, but sure, say "attacks" if you like. The relevant point is, the "attacks" together constitute one violation of the cease-fire.

Third, according to B. Michael in Ha'aretz, sometime in 1981 or 1982 (don't have the cite with me today, but I can provide it if you like), 282 Israelis were killed in all acts of Palestinian terror from 1968-81. Israel's "retaliation" for the Argov assassination attempt killed roughly 100 on that single day. I don't mean to "minimize the severity of the PLO's threat to Israel", but I think it's fair to point out Israel's massive superiority militarily. Patently, Israel was a far more severe threat to the PLO than the PLO was to Israel - militarily, that is.

As an aside, I don't mean any disrespect here, but I must say I find your Chomsky comments tiresome. Smith is my primary source; Chomsky's an excellent source for quotes. As I have demonstrated here and elsewhere, your grasp of Chomsky's views is not particularly firm, cf. your unwitting inversion of his views on "Jewish/Zionist control of the US/world". Can we drop the Chomsky jibes and focus on substantive responses?

(3) You wrote: "Why is it that Palestine has an entire General Assembly committee assigned to it, but no other conflict in the world does??? has it anything to do with the fact that DR of Congo (Zaire) has no oil and therefore no powers are interested in it, though the casualties are in several orders of magnitude higher than the total Arab-Israeli conflict? So much for the partiality of the UN."

Yes, of course. The Arab-Israel conflict receives unique attention for a few reasons, foremost among them the abundance of oil in the region, "one of the greatest material prizes in world history" as a US diplomat put it during WW2. There are countless conflicts that have caused far more human suffering and received less attention. I think Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor is an excellent example. Another reason, a derivative of the first, is the colossal US support for Israel and Egypt, as well as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran before the revolution, Iraq during the '80s, and so on, as well as massive Soviet support for Egypt (till the mid-70s), Syria, PLO, etc. during the Cold War. Every country has a stake in the conflict, because much of the world's oil supply hangs in the balance (25% in Saudi Arabia alone). So much for the impartiality of anyone.

As far as UN bias against Israel goes, let me give you one example to consider. In 1987 the UN passed UNGA 42/159, which condemned international terrorism but stated that "nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice the right to self-determination, freedom and independence, as derived from the Charter of the United Nations...particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation or other forms of colonial domination". The vote was 153-2. The two negative votes were the US and Israel. Doug: in this case, were those 153 countries simply biased against Israel? Isn't something more going on here?

(4) You wrote: "Technically - you're stating this based on the fact that you're Phillip Habib, or one of his staffers from the 80s? No, you're probably just basing this on Chomsky and/or Smith again....As far as I know the agreement was one between Israel and the PLO urging and end to attacks across the border. An attack in Israel that was organized out of lebanon is clearly a violation....An attack sourced to PLO in Lebanon is a violation regardless if it's a shell leaving a PLO cannon in Khiyam towards Nahariya, or a bus being bombed by a PLO terrorist."

I base this on the following statement in Smith: "On July 24 [Habib] gained a cease-fire, mediated separately with the PLO and Israel, who agreed to a cessation of hostilities in southern Lebanon and along Israel's Lebanese border" (p. 376). I did an internet search and couldn't find the text of the actual agreement. Based on Smith's description, I disagree that an attack "sourced to the PLO in Lebanon is a violation...if it's a...bus being bombed by a PLO terrorist." If you can find a source that says the cease-fire technically applied not only to the Lebanese border but to all other fronts of the Israeli-PLO conflict, I'd be interested to see it. In my search, I was not able to find such a claim.

(5) You wrote: " I don't see how we're going to agree on this so lets agree on dropping absurd attempts to make an intentional act of violence such as the rocket attack on Israel seem as if they missed on purpose."

Presumably you are referring to Chomsky's statement that the attack was "directed away from settled areas". Allow me to quote myself from the immediately preceding entry on the Lebanon talk page: "Yes, he says 'directed away from settled areas' in reference to the May rocket attack, which I find hard to believe and thus excluded from the article." I cannot see how my rejection of Chomsky's analysis constitutes, on my part, an "absurd attempt to make an intentional act of violence...seem as if they missed on purpose."

(6) "As for Chomsky, like any student at an American university I've had this dubious intellectual crammed down my throat in many politics and history classes by propaganda peddling professors."

I find this interesting, because when I was at Amherst, none of my professors ever assigned any of Chomsky's political writings. I hardly knew the first thing about him until last year when I randomly picked up his latest book, Hegemony or Survival, and realized that I had no idea about most of what he was talking about, and whether he's right or not, I'd better start learning about it. Anyway, I'm surprised to hear that he was crammed down your throat in your classes.

(7) You wrote: "Sneaky, I'd be laughed off if I wasn't an anti-Israeli zealot with marxist/Anarcho-Syndicalist-blah credentials".

Not to belabor the point, but Chomsky is not an anti-Israeli zealot; in fact, he is a Zionist of a certain stripe, and back when it seemed feasible to some, he advocated a secular, binational state as a home for both Jews and Palestinians. He is a critic of some policies of the state of Israel, notably its discriminatory practices against non-Jews, violations of international law, and support for repressive states (e.g., Argentina during the "Dirty War" era, El Salvador, Nicaragua under Somoza, Guatemala, apartheid South Africa, etc.). It's difficult for me to understand how that makes him an "anti-Israeli zealot". Is he also an "anti-American zealot" for criticizing the US on every count but the first one? Furthermore, he's certainly not a Marxist, and while he has made favorable comments about Anarcho-Syndicalism, that has little to do with his writings.

(8) You wrote: "A curious thing happens when anti-Israeli people such as yourself write on the conflict. It seems that you believe that by merely losing, the Palestinians become just and Israel the aggressors.....So, the fact that the PLO had been staging continuous attacks out of Lebanon for 14 years prior to the war are erased merely by losing....You keep erasing the 16000 number, which is another telling sign - is that intended to erase the fact that a very large number of PLA troops dug into West Beirut? does Israel having less casualties than the PLO have anything to do with the fact that (a) a portion of those civillian deaths is attributable to the PLO shooting at (Christian) civillians and (b) that by fortifying Beirut and intentionally fighting out of a civillian area the PLO forced the civillians of West Beirut to become their reluctant human shields?"

First: nowhere do I say that one party is "just" and another not. That is not my concern as a Wikipedia editor, nor presumably is it yours. Again, I think most actions and events are understandable through the lenses of the respective participants. I do however maintain that Israel was the aggressor in invading Lebanon. That is because I cannot perceive any other tenable reading of the events leading up to the invasion, which have been reviewed ad nauseum in our discussion, and which are clarified by my recent additions of actual text from the relevant UNSC resolutions. (Though I will briefly respond to your views on aggression below.) I erased the 16000 number because no number was given for the size and strength of the IDF forces. But that's a minor point and I left it alone in my edits.

Statement (a) above is no doubt true, but what portion? What about the Israeli officer who encouraged regular bombardment, because otherwise, people would get complacent and start doing their laundry and drinking their tea? (See my minor edits in the current revision, including an expanded quote from the globalsecurity article.) That's a wash; we can't know who was responsible for killing certain numbers of civilians. We can speculate, based on the IDF's massive firepower advantage and its policy (comparable to the PLO's) of targeting neighborhoods of Beirut to disrupt civilian life, but that's out of place in an NPOV article. Statement (b) reminds me that you have not responded to my repeated question: What else was the PLO supposed to do, go fight the IDF in the desert and get slaughtered? I need to know your answer to that before I can respond to your statement here.

(9) You wrote: "Before Lebanon's arm was twisted into relinquishing its sovereignty to the PLO in 1968 there was no conflict between Israel and Lebanon....So, who is the aggressor if not the PLO?"

Sure, you can certainly say that if the PLO had not regrouped in Lebanon, there would have been no Israeli-PLO violence having to do with Lebanon. You can also say, with equal validity, that if Israeli forces had not expelled most of the Palestinians from its eventual borders in 1948-9 (you may have read Benny Morris's comments that Israel's biggest mistake was not expelling all of them), and if Israel had declared itself not "the state of world Jewry" but rather "the state in which Palestinians, Jews, and all other nations are equally welcome as both citizens and officials", then there would be no PLO, and therefore Israel is the aggressor. The underlying question you are hinting at is this: Is the PLO's enterprise justified? I don't think that question is answerable in any meaningful way - but, I also think that by solely blaming the PLO for aggression in Lebanon, you are implicitly answering "No". Reducing your logic about PLO aggression to absurdity, I might observe that if Jewish nationalists hadn't decided to create the concept of a Biblical homeland, then there would be no Arab-Israeli conflict, and therefore Zionism itself is the original aggressor. But that's not the point, is it? The question of aggression is a very narrow one in our discussion: In the context of the Habib cease-fire, agreed to by both sides, whose actions were more aggressive, Israel's or the PLO's? I think the answer is clearly the former.

There is also the relevant question of proportionality. As I said, the PLO was responsible for 282 deaths in Israel from 1968-81. In the Sabra/Shatila incident, over the course of what, two or three days, roughly three times as many civilians were killed. Almost certainly, more people were killed in Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1978 than in all PLO violence from '68-81. Israel's bombing of West Beirut in July 1981 killed an estimated 200. The list obviously goes on. Even if you are not swayed in your belief that the PLO is the aggressor, what do you make of Israel's consistent Ben-Gurionist policy of meting out disproportional punishment to Arabs, sometimes retaliatory and sometimes just for shock or political value?

(10) You wrote: "Not a single Western country would have accepted a neighboring country being used as a base for continuous cross border guerilla attacks, and local and international terrorism against it without moving to eradicate that threat."

Yes, that's true. Some examples from history include the South African government vis-a-vis the ANC, and the US government vis-a-vis American Indians. In each case, the governments were acting in their rational self-interest by "eradicating the threat". In order to understand the dynamics, though, it is not sufficient to call one side "terrorist" and leave it at that. In each of these three cases, terrorist tactics were used by elements of the government in its rise to power, quite explicitly. For example, Shamir wrote an essay in the '40s defending terrorism as a legitimate strategy against the British occupation, which was substantially more benign than the ongoing Israeli occupation. I think terrorism - both the sub-state variety and the state-sponsored variety - is usually pretty understandable from the perspectives of its practitioners.

(11) You wrote: "Israeli parties have discussed handing over the West bank and Gaza since 1967, and have met (illegally until 1991) with the PLO since the six-day war. So the PLO wasn't any more diplomatic than Israel had been. And as I've mentioned over and over in previous comments, diplomacy was Arafat's ploy. He did nothing to actually show Israel he didn't intend to continuously threaten its existance - not until 1993 and by then Rabin after all signed a peace deal with him. Show me the full interview with Rabin claiming Israel should never give land to the Palestinians, otherwise it's another out of context propaganda hack job - Chomsky and his followers are good with those."

First: Palestinian elements were discussing a two-state settlement along the lines of the international consensus from the mid-70s, epitomized in the early stages by PLO support for the 1976 UNSC resolution that I've mentioned. The resolution received 9 positive votes and 3 abstentions in addition to the US veto, with a couple non-participants (China and Libya). The resolution

"Affirms:

(a) That the Palestinian people should be enabled to exercise its inalienable national right of self-determination, including the right to establish an independent state in Palestine in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations;

(b) The right of Palestinian refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours to do so and the right of those choosing not to return to receive compensation for their property;

(c) That Israel should withdraw from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967;

(d) The appropriate arrangements should be established to guarantee, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries".

This was supported by the PLO, as well as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. The US vetoed, and Israel boycotted the session. Note that there are three important differences from UNSC 242: the insertion of the word "the", the provision for a Palestinian state, and the specific language regarding the refugee question (rather than 242's vague "just settlement"). If Israel was interested in a settlement along the lines of the international consensus, then why did it boycott the session? Why wouldn't it attend the session and say, "Okay, we like this, but you gotta take the 'the' out, and you gotta change the refugee part; how about 'minor and mutual adjustments' and 'a just settlement of the refugee problem' instead?"

The primary reason for the Israeli boycott was likely the matter of a Palestinian state. The Labor journal Davar, July 4, 1976, recorded Rabin's response to the proposed resolution, which was his own version of the "Three No's", i.e., "total opposition to negotiation with the PLO even if the latter recognizes the State of Israel and its right to exist and stops terror acts altogether" (Chomsky, Towards a New Cold War, 286). The Rabin quote I cited before, regarding "a third state between Israel and Jordan", is: "I repeat firmly, clearly, categorically: it will not be created." I can't find the original source - an issue of Ma'ariv from 1975 - online. But do these sound like "out-of-context hack-jobs" to you? I've got one more. This is a "Decision of the Government of Israel," July 21, 1974: "The government will work toward negotiations for a peace agreement with Jordan. The peace will be founded on the existence of two independent states only - Israel, with united Jerusalem as its capital, and a Jordanian-Palestinian Arab State, east of Israel, with borders to be determined in negotiations between Israel and Jordan." (Chomsky, TNCW, 247-8.) Do you think Chomsky made that up?

Maybe you do. So let me prove to you that he didn't. Here's a quote from the online summary of an Israeli army radio interview with Rabin on December 9, 1975, which was right before the UNSC met to discuss the proposed resolution - the session Israel boycotted. This is Rabin talking (note that he refers to the July 21, 1974 policy statement):

"The Palestinian question [section heading]

There has been no change in the government's policy on this question as decided on 21 July 1974. Furthermore, in my opinion, severance of the solution to the Palestinian question from negotiations with Jordan would be a grave error of Israel policy. Any severance of the Palestinian question from negotiations with Jordan will inevitably lead - whether the person proposing it so intends or not - to a third state between Israel and Jordan. In my conviction, whatever nuances of approach there may be among the parties composing the coalition, there is no argument on this question of resolute opposition to the establishment of a third state." Again, this is right before the UN session got underway.  Doug, at this juncture - December 1975 - it is clear that Israeli rejectionism was pervasive, from Labor to Herut, while the PLO was willing to compromise with a two-state settlement in accordance with the international consensus.  In light of this, your statement "the PLO wasn't any more diplomatic than Israel had been" appears to be false.  In fact, Israel appears to have explicitly rejected PLO-supported international diplomacy.  I'm interested to hear what you think about this.

(12) You wrote: Chomsky "loops around [the fact that Israel did not massacre civilians at Sabra/Shatila] by repeating himself endlessly throughout other propaganda tomes, and talks, and videos, ad nauseum. Standing guard [from NYT quote] - sort of what you do when you're in a battle zone. Have you read the full article, or can it be once again that two words are out of context, hammered into Chomsky's thought control?....Must I be held accountable for not keeping that one Chomsky textbook - other books of his are crowding precious bookshelf space already. In fact I think I'll pass - I had to read it once, and I'll be damned if I spend another cent to support him."

First, yes, I will hold you accountable when I notice that you have made false accusations against an author. I expect you will do the same for me.

Second, the "standing guard" quote. Let me quote from the report of the Kahan Commission: "We heard testimony from Lieutenant Grabowsky, a deputy commander of a tank company, who was in charge of a few tanks which stood on an earth embankment - a ramp - and on the adjacent road, some 200 meters from the first buildings of the camps. In the early morning hours he saw Phalangist soldiers taking men, women and children out of the area of the camps and leading them to the area of the stadium....  At a later hour he went up the embankment with the tank and then saw that Phalangist soldiers had killed a group of five women and children. Lieutenant Grabowsky wanted to report the event by communications set to his superiors, but the tank crew told him that they had already heard a communications report to the battalion commander that civilians were being killed, [and] the battalion commander had replied, 'We know, it's not to our liking, and don't interfere.'"

I think the interpretation that the tanks were "standing guard" while the massacre was perpetrated is not entirely outlandish. At the very best, the tank personnel were ordered to do nothing while a massacre of civilians proceeded before their eyes.

(13) You wrote: "As for 445/446 and 1559 - have you not noticed that Israel is in full compliance since 2000? read the entries I started on UNSCR 1559, Taif Agreement, the Blue Line and my attempt to fix the awful Sheba'a Farms entry. And yes, 1559 is a bit more important since Israel was in violation of 445 for 18 years, while Syria has occupied Lebanon 1976-2005 and going strong."

Are you referring to 425? I said 446 (and not 445), i.e., the 1979 resolution on Israeli settlements, which Israel has violated from 1979-2005 "and going strong."

(14) You wrote: "notice that 242 isn't appropriate since 1993, considering Israel and the PLO have been negotiating for this entire period."

I quote from "The Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles, Washington, D.C.", i.e. the Oslo agreement, September 13, 1993: "The aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations...is, among other things, to establish a Palestinian interim Self-Government Authority...for a transitional period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. It is understood that...the negotiations on the permanent status will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338" (Article I). (Smith, p. 506.)

So, I actually notice the opposite of what you stated: 242 was intended to be the foundation of the Oslo agreement and subsequent negotiations.

Look forward to your responses. sneaky 07:42, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Lebanese Civil War and History of Lebanon
Hi Doug, see my reply to your concerns at the talk page. Kaisershatner 17:33, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hey Doug, I put a few comments on Kaisershatner's talk page and the Lebanon talk page. sneaky 02:12, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

In response to your message about the civil war being from 1975-1990 or thereabouts...well, I see what you mean. I did a search and the consensus from the first few pages of the results seems to be 1975-ca.1990. Predictably, my original source for the 1975-6 duration is Smith, whom you are probably pretty tired of hearing about (me too - wish I had other sources but I am in Japan, so libraries are out), but anyway, he writes: "Scholars date the period of the Lebanese Civil War from April 1975 to October 1976, when an Arab summit led to the formation of a peacekeeping force to maintain order in central Lebanon. These dates are technically correct, but tensions between the Maronites and the Palestinians on the one hand, and between the Maronites and the Lebanese Muslim and leftist forces on the other, long predated the war" (p. 352). Now, in my search, I came across the site www.onwar.com, "A comprehensive guide to armed conflicts in the last two hundred years: over 1500 events recorded". Dunno anything about the site. It could be complete bunk. But, it echoes Smith on the duration of the civil war. But then, the next search result is a stub from Encyclopedia Britannica, and it gives the duration of 1975-91 (not a Britannica member so I can't read the article to determine if it's accurate). So I'm not sure how to proceed. If your sources shed any light on this, especially that Lebanese history book you said you had ordered, let me know. sneaky 04:21, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Israel
Hello Doug: Please contact User:Humus sapiens who wishes to start a Wikiportal/Israel See his request below. Thanks IZAK 07:47, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Hi IZAK (and everyone else here :), Do you think it's time to create Wikiportal/Israel similar to Wikiportal/India, Wikiportal/New Zealand and other Category:Wikiportals? I'm writing this here because it was you who made those wonderful templates and we don't have a portal yet where we could communicate. What do you think? &larr;Humus sapiens&larr;Talk 05:26, 23 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Hi Humus, it's only me here, but I will pass your message on to "everyone". Yes, your suggestion is excellent, it is certainly time for what you describe, but I have no experience with Wikipedia portals, and if you know how, go ahead and start an Israel portal and I am sure editors of Israel-related articles will support you and join in the effort/s. Behatzlachah. IZAK 05:33, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Your contact info
Hi Doug: Hope all is well. You have not enabled your Wikipedia Email feature in your "tool box" on the left hand side of your user page. Sometimes editors overlook that when it's a useful way of staying in touch with other editors. Best wishes. IZAK 14:26, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi
Hi Doug: Could you please Email me via my user page at Email User:IZAK. Thank you so much. IZAK 11:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

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