Originally posted by Stryke 9
Whee! Issues!
Yes, indeed. Whee.
Originally posted by Stryke 9
1. I know all about the Black Panthers. They're marginalized in public grade schools, as are all parts of history where people aren't standing around giving each other warm fuzzies all the time. But everyone I've met with any real education PERIOD knew about as much about the Black Panthers as they did about MLK's peace movement. It probably helps that a good deal of the greatest literature of the time was from Eldridge Cleaver and Malcolm X.
Define "real education." For that matter, define "greatest literature."
Originally posted by Stryke 9
2. I was referring to your preaching nonviolence for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I gathered you weren't a pacifist from before, but you're applying a double standard here. The Palestinians and Israelis ARE fighting a war, and have been pretty much since the Israelis moved in- it took a short time to pick up at the VERY beginning, when the British were still putting Israel together, but it's been a war the whole time. Whoever chooses to fight or is impressed into one side or another is a "passive resistance" to be had there, any more than there was in Normandy in the fortysomethings, Iwo Jima whenever the hell, Vietnam in the fifties and sixties, etc. Passive resistance is strictly civil-conflict only. This isn't a civil conflict.
3. So the hundreds of years of slavery, segregation, lynchings, etc. were simply the result of an honest misunderstanding? It had just never occurred to whites that black people might be human? Even though there had been countless other people campaigning like MLK before (but no unified black militant movement before), pointing it out- it had to be televised to be understood or something?
Wait, wait, now it seems to me that
you're the one applying a double standard here. You said previously that the only reason that King was successful in the Civil Rights movement was because it was backed up by the Black militants like the Black Panthers who employed violence or the threat of violence. And, granted African-Americans were shamefully taken as slaves and abused and oppressed for a hundred years and kept as second class citizens for another hundred. But we both seem to agree that that was a civil conflict.
Now you're saying that another oppressed people (at least, they believe themselves to be opppressed) namely, the Palestinians who have made a campaign to "end the occupation" as they put it, but they've been employing violence only for 40-odd years as opposed to the 200 years tha African-American suffered.
What makes the things that African-Americans suffered (for a much longer time than the Palestinians, I might add) a civil conflict and the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis a war? Isn't it precisely because King used non-violence and the Palestinians use suicide bombers?
How successful do you think the Civil rights movement would have been if King never refuted the Black militants, Stryke? Isn't it precisely because of his refusal to use violence that he managed to convince all Americans that everyone deserved equal rights?
How willing would you be to grant equal rights to someone who was bombing your children every other day? The Palestinians say they want the occupation to end and their militants employ violence to try and end it. Isn't it King's refusal to use violence that makes the Civil rights movement a civil movement? Isn't it the Palestinians' refusal to give up violence that makes it a war?
Are the two different or aren't they? If the Palestinians truly gave up violence tomorrow and started using non-violent resistance, wouldn't that change the nature of the conflict from a war to a civil rights movement? And if not, why not?
Originally posted by Stryke 9
You've got an odd view of the world, man.
It's no stranger than anyone else's, Stryke. *shrugs*
BTW, Stryke, I
do agree with you that the Israeli-palestinian conflict
is a war. Where we seem to disagree is whether the nature of the conflict could change from a war to something else, like a civil rights movement. I seem to think that a Palestinian civil rights movement is still possible, but only until the Palestinians renounce violence fully and completely. You seem to think that such a possibility is impossible, or at least, extremely unlikely. Am I right?
EDIT: Ok, now that Sandwich and Stryke have both posted here while I was writing this, I agree that Stryke is right that there are as many sides to any story as there are people involved in the story.
Man, Arafat actually refused to become Prime Minister of Jordan? I had no idea!
In hindsight and in light of that fact, it should have been obvious that Arafat was going to refuse the peace offer Clinton and Barak made to him at Camp David...
Stryke, maybe you were right about the impossibility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becoming a civil conflict and it forever remaining a war, after all...
Like the Israelis, I just hope and pray it's not true.
