Moderate Palestinians have a strange way of ending up dead. Generally machine gunned down by 'unknown assailants' that the PLO never seem to be able to track down (maybe they should try a mirror).

“Another signer, Ahmad Hilles, the head of the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip, said that ‘it is not in the Palestinians' interest for the conflict to become an armed conflict, . . . the arena preferred by Sharon.’"

The signers are apparently conceding that Israel is more powerful militarily. The option of continuing attacks on Israeli Jews is backfiring. It is dooming the Palestinians to a life of harsh poverty. Ariel Sharon must continue ordering the killings of the militants. This is the true path to peace. These militants are similar to rabid dogs. They are not mere soldiers who will eventually once again become regular citizens. No, these scum bags are true believing nihilists devoted to butchery. They have to be either killed or jailed. There is no other alternative. This is the most important way to help the moderate
Palestinians.

Moderate Palestinians have a strange way of ending up dead.

If they're really moderate, yes.
But consider the way they phrase things:

...urging restraint and peaceful protest instead of violent revenge for Israel's assassination this week of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder of the militant group Hamas.

Am I alone here or does anyone else find it amusing that a group supposedly dedicated to peace would be protesting his killing at all, given he was decidedly not a man of peace? Think about the charter f the group this man founded and was running at the time of his death:

Article 7: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him."

Article 13: "So-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement ... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad [holy war]."

It is far more logical to assume that what's going on here is what's ALWAYS gone on... Israel is once again expected to make nice and waddle back to the peace table even though by their own words, peace talks run contrary to their goals. Why? To prevent attacks on the terrorists while they work up another attack against Israel and the west.

hmm they werent crying when terror started just when they saw they didnt get anything from it, also they're are seeing the danger of a Al-queda-Hamas link....
Intifada is a bad PR for palestinian now that Internet can bypass partially the Big Media spin = Reuters, AP, and AFP.

Daniel,

Until you can answer these words from Mark Steyn, you are dreaming about the Palestinians being anything _other_ than their stereotype:

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1003/steyn_2003_10_08.php3

Jewish World Review Oct. 8, 2003 / 12 Tishrei, 5764

Palestinian death cult

By Mark Steyn

"The Palestinian death cult negates all the assumptions of western sentimental pacifism: If only the vengeful old generals got out of the way, there'd be no war. But such common humanity as one can find on the West Bank resides, if only in their cynicism, in the leadership: old Arafat may shower glory and honor on his youthful martyrs but he's human enough to keep his own kid in Paris, well away from the suicide-bomber belts. It's hard to picture Saeb Erekat or Hanan Ashrawi or any of the other aging terror apologists who hog the airwaves at CNN and the BBC celebrating the death of their own loved ones the way Miss Jaradat's brother did. "We are receiving congratulations from people," said Thaher Jaradat. "Why should we cry? It is like her wedding day, the happiest day for her."

I spent a short time on the West Bank earlier this spring. I would have spent longer, but to be honest it creeped me out, and I was happy to scram across the Allenby Bridge and on through Jordan to Iraq. Say what you like about the Sunni Triangle and RPG Alley, but I never once felt I was in a wholly diseased environment. On the West Bank, almost all the humdrum transactions of daily life take place in a culture that glorifies depravity: you walk down a street named after a suicide bomber to drop your child in a school that celebrates suicide-bombing and then pick up some groceries in a corner store whose walls are plastered with portraits of suicide bombers.

Nothing good grows in toxic soil. You cannot have a real peace with such people; you cannot even have the cold peace that exists between Israel and Jordan, where King Abdullah, host of the Arab-American-Israeli summit at the start of the road map, did not dare display the flag of the Zionist Entity, lest it provoke his subjects.

The problem is not the security fence, but the psychological fence a chasm really that separates a sizable proportion of the Palestinian population from all Jews."

I would say from all humanity myself.

The Palestinian culture has been over run by the Islamic death cult. They are going to reap the normal historical reward of death cults. Either they will kill themselves in large numbers or their neighbors will.

Only the Palestinians can change their fate, but they would rather engage in fantasies about killing all the Jews.

“Until you can answer these words from Mark Steyn, you are dreaming about the Palestinians being anything _other_ than their stereotype”

You are far too pessimistic. I don’t think you realize the overwhelming impact true believing nihilists have on a society. They may be few in number---but they terrify the more moderate elements. My guess is that 90% of the Palestinian population would gladly live in peace with their Jewish neighbors. This is why the militants must either be killed or jailed. It would be a horrible mistake to cease the military operations to root them out. A political agreement in the current climate is virtually a complete waste of time. Silly liberals like Shimon Peres should be guided to the children’s area so that the adults can conduct serious business.

Who wants to guess how many of the signatories to this statement will be alive next year? Two-thirds, half or none?

DT, for the first time I can recall, I'm going to disagree with you publicly.

I don’t think you realize the overwhelming impact true believing nihilists have on a society. They may be few in number---but they terrify the more moderate elements. My guess is that 90% of the Palestinian population would gladly live in peace with their Jewish neighbors. This is why the militants must either be killed or jailed.

And given we've been doing that, at least partially doing that, tell me; what evdience do we have this will work?

I'm sorry, but my frustration with these bastards has gotten to the point where I'm openly questioning if we'd not have saved many lives and brought this war against the west to a quick end by calling in an air strike on Yassin's funeral the other day.

David Thomson wrote:

"My guess is that 90% of the Palestinian population would gladly live in peace with their Jewish neighbors."

Either you can read Palis minds or your guess is totally off.

Here is info on independent poll of Palis:

"A large number also wish for the destruction of the State of Israel (51%)"

www.factsofisrael.com/blog/archives/000099.html

More recent polls exists, just now I don't have time to look them up.

Mick,
How are polls like that conducted? Do they get the information from the Israelis, the Palestinians, or do they collect it for themselves?

Trent Telenko sez:

"Daniel,

Until you can answer these words from Mark Steyn, you are dreaming about the Palestinians being anything _other_ than their stereotype"

Mark Steyn is a great political writer and Drezner is an elitist hack. Why would you even want Drezner's answers? You will get pure PC drivel.

Uncalled for, Homer.

Sam,

"How are polls like that conducted? Do they get the information from the Israelis, the Palestinians, or do they collect it for themselves?"

No, polls of Palestinians usually conducted on the beaches of Maui :-)

Seriously, polls of Palestinians, by definiton, ask Palis what their thoughts are on different issues. There are many such polls, some conducted by reputable organizations.

As with any poll, there are issues of questions and interpretation. In addition, PLO-Thuggery is not exactly a liberal democracy. However experienced pollsters know how to adjust for this and how to poll un-free public.

“I'm sorry, but my frustration with these bastards has gotten to the point where I'm openly questioning if we'd not have saved many lives and brought this war against the west to a quick end by calling in an air strike on Yassin's funeral the other day.”

“Either you can read Palis minds or your guess is totally off.”

The problem is that probably neither of you have ever read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. I am utterly convinced that most people desire to live normal lives. This is true whether we are talking about the violence in Ireland, Spain, or Israel. Almost certainly, a handful of nihilist murderers intimidate the majority. That is why you don’t waste time fooling around with political attempts to bring about peace. They are a waste of time until the militants are rooted out.

Israel is paying an awful for price for listening to the Oslo idiots. These fools have allowed the situation to dramatically worsen. That’s why they must be ignored. I predict that Israel can have peace in a just a few years. Its childishly immature liberals are the true stumbling blocks to peace in the region. There is another reason for my optimism: the invasion of Iraq. Saddam’s removal was mandatory if peace is to have a chance. Have you read Bernard Lewis? If not, you once again likely do not understand what I’m talking about.

Mick,
That's basically what I was wondering about. How honest an answer can someone give if they know that there's a good chance that they'll be killed if they speak their minds. If the PA "security teams" are watching the pollsters as they ask their questions then thats going to skew the answers towards Arafats ideas.

But, assuming they can properly adjust for that then the poll sounds accurate. There is probably a larger margin for error in these polls though, to account for the adjustments.

The problem is that probably neither of you have ever read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. I am utterly convinced that most people desire to live normal lives.

Sure... but isn't the definition of "normal", every bit the issue, here?

How many of you think there will BE a "Palestinian people" twenty years from now? Or ten years from now?

My responses: No in twenty years. Probably in ten years, but perhaps not.

Martin Peretz has just written an insightful article partly concerning the justified assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin. He sounds like David Horowitz and I agree with every single word. Here is a brief example:

“If anybody really believes it was wrong for Israel to kill Yassin, they must also believe the United States should immediately give up the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri.”

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040405&s=diarist040504

There’s only one problem with Peretz’s piece. This man has done enormous damage to Israel with his knee jerk rear licking of the Democrats. Peretz is regretfully part of the problem and not the solution.

"This man has done enormous damage to Israel with his knee jerk rear licking of the Democrats." should instead read:

This man has done enormous damage to Israel with his knee jerk rear end licking of the Democrats.

Sam writes:

"assuming they can properly adjust for that then the poll sounds accurate. There is probably a larger margin for error in these polls though, to account for the adjustments."

It appears that experienced polling organiztion can. Results - majority of Palis being pro-suicide bombers, for destruction of Israel, for driving Jews into the sea - are fairly consistent accross polls by different organizations using different methodologies, different set of questions, different mechanisms of polling.

Margin of error is published by pollsters and it is a part of polling methodology.

David Thomson writes:

"The problem is that probably neither of you have ever read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer."

I submit that 99.9% of people in the USA would not consider not reading that book a problem :-)

"I am utterly convinced that most people desire to live normal lives."

As was pointed out before, what is definition of normal?

But lets assume that you mean normal in the Western, civilized, Judeo-Christian sense. The belief that all men are inherently good and the human nature is perfectable is, if one can assign a political label to it, a Liberal belief. Deviations from goodness usually are explained by evil capitalism, religous oppression, male-dominated societies, etc.

In your thinking, of course, evilness is caused by Liberals, Bill Clinton, US Democratic party, Israel Labor party and a few others.

Conservatives, on another hand, believe that the man is capable of good and evil, human nature is not perfectable and social arrangements must be made to minimize evilness and maximaze goodness.

Despite all efforts, from time to time some societies would fall into a state of frenzy where most people do become evildoers or their helpers. Germany from 1929 - 1945, Japan 1930-1945, Palestinians 1991-currently.

“In your thinking, of course, evilness is caused by Liberals, Bill Clinton, US Democratic party, Israel Labor party and a few others.”

You are truly brilliant. Still, I must slightly revise your sentence. It should instead read:

“In your thinking, of course, much evilness is inadvertently caused by Liberals, Bill Clinton, US Democratic party, Israel Labor party and a few others.”

Now, doesn’t that sound better? These above mentioned liberals possess a silly notion concerning human nature. They fail to realize that there are some real scum bags in this world. You are wasting your time negotiating with these true believing nihilists. They must be removed from society. It’s regrettable that you hold Eric Hoffer in such contempt. Of course, that explains your gross ignorance.

“Results - majority of Palis being pro-suicide bombers, for destruction of Israel, for driving Jews into the sea - are fairly consistent accross polls by different organizations using different methodologies, different set of questions, different mechanisms of polling.”

I am very well aware of these polls. The majority of Palestinians do indeed desire the eradication of the Jews. Paradoxically, I am still convinced that most of these people would change their tune almost overnight if the militants were eradicated. The mass majority of people prefer a so-called petty bourgeois lifestyle. A mere handful of extremists are enough to upset the apple cart.

David,

Nope.

The "Palestinian problem" is hate as a tool of power, married with modern media and information techniques, and used for decades.

Phyllis Chesler says the following about hate as a tool of power in an interview about her book on Anti-Semitism published over on NRO:

http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/chesler200311250905.asp

"What's new is that Jew-hatred has reached a surreal level in the Islamic world. The Arab Islamic Middle East is almost entirely judenrein (free of Jews), except for Israel, which remains under profound and almost permanent siege. Christians still remain endangered in Muslim lands. Historic Islamic and Koranic views portray Jews as "pigs and monkeys," to be segregated, impoverished, jailed, tortured, exiled, and massacred.

What's new is that these ideas and practices, which are native to Islam, gathered additional force over an 80-year period in which Arab Muslims collaborated — literally — with Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s, and with Stalinists from the 1950s until the fall of the Soviet Union. Islamic Jew-hatred, anti-Americanism, and totalitarianism now fuse both East and West.

What's new is that this hatred has, incredibly, been embraced and romanticized by Western liberals, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize winners, all manner of so-called progressives and activists and, to a great extent, by the presumably objective media. The educated elites claim that they do not in fact hate Jews. How can they — the noblest among the "politically correct" — be racists? They loathe racism — except, of course, where Jews are concerned.

What's new is that Jew-hatred (disguised as anti-Zionism) has itself become "politically correct" among these so-called intellectuals. They have one standard for Israel: an impossibly high one. Meanwhile, they set a much lower standard for every other country, even for nations in which tyranny, torture, honor killings, genocide, and every other human rights abuse go unchallenged.

Today anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism. Israel has increasingly come to represent the Jews of the world, and is treated as they have been treated for thousands of years. She is demonized, isolated, and attacked while the world either actively rejoices, or simply does nothing to stop it. Israel has also become the symbolic scapegoat for America and for Western values such as democracy, religious freedom, and individual and women's rights.

The intellectuals control the masses with linguistic distortions that would make George Orwell weep. The way language is being used to misrepresent both the truth and Jews is relatively new. The intelligentsia tell us that Israelis are the "new Nazis" and "worse than Nazis." This is a new form of Holocaust denial. It lets Europeans off the hook: they no longer must wrestle with their own formidable colonial pasts and their persecutory-collaborationist-bystander roles in the Holocaust."

The Palestinians have been subjected to this control technique the longest, so their group pathology is the most advanced.

Thanks to the emergence of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia's "All Jihad, All the Time programming" the organized hate has completely warped the Arab Sunni-Muslim Culture to the point where it breed the Islamist Death Cult.

This organized hate campaign is also doing wonders to the left-secular multi-culturalists in the West via their self hate.

The Death Cult is a genuinely popular movement in Arab Muslim culture and 80 years of cultural conditioning can't be changed quickly or without a great deal of blood.

That is why I doubt the continued existance of the Palestinians.

“What's new is that this hatred has, incredibly, been embraced and romanticized by Western liberals, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize winners, all manner of so-called progressives and activists and, to a great extent, by the presumably objective media.”

I agree completely with Phyllis Chesler. She is a most interesting person. Chesler remains an ardent social liberal who feels betrayed by her fellow activists. The woman is currently experiencing an existential dark night of the soul. In some way, she reminds me of a female Roger L. Simon. Please note my earlier sarcastic remarks about Shimon Peres. My contempt of the liberal media is also well known on this blog. The situation is indeed bad. Nonetheless, I still believe a quick turn around is possible once the militants are eliminated. Most human beings innately prefer a live of relative tranquility. Change the culture---and they will soon go along with the new ways of thinking. Am I saying that the Wall is not necessary? Not in the least. Israel still must put up a barricade to protect itself from the Palestinian extremists. Do you understand why the invasion of Iraq had to occur? Saddam Hussein had to be removed if peace has any chance whatsoever in the region.

“What's new is that this hatred has, incredibly, been embraced and romanticized by Western liberals, public intellectuals, Nobel Prize winners, all manner of so-called progressives and activists and, to a great extent, by the presumably objective media.”

I agree completely with Phyllis Chesler. She is a most interesting person. Chesler remains an ardent social liberal who feels betrayed by her fellow activists. The woman is currently experiencing an existential dark night of the soul. In some way, she reminds me of a female Roger L. Simon. Please note my earlier sarcastic remarks about Shimon Peres. My contempt of the liberal media is also well known on this blog. The situation is indeed bad. Nonetheless, I still believe a quick turn around is possible once the militants are eliminated. Most human beings innately prefer a live of relative tranquility. Change the culture---and they will soon go along with the new ways of thinking. Am I saying that the Wall is not necessary? Not in the least. Israel still must put up a barricade to protect itself from the Palestinian extremists. Do you concede that the invasion of Iraq had to occur? Saddam hussein had to be removed if peace has any chance whatsoever in the region.

Whoops, the double posting was a mistake. Sorry about that.

Veering totally off the topic and leaping headlong into the abyss of tangental thought, I respond to a snippet of DT:

These above mentioned liberals possess a silly notion concerning human nature. They fail to realize that there are some real scum bags in this world.

Then how, pray, tell, does one devine their attitides as regards Republicans?

I submit that you are correct insofar as what their perception of their own thought processes go. They certainly see themselves as being sweet and light, and open minded, incapable of hating anyone, or at least, they lean that way by intent.

Yet, the reality is far different... the recent campaign cycle as an offhanded example, makes this out a lie, and suggests it not about hating or not hating, but rather WHOM it is one hates.

I daresay for example, we might be able to find some Democrats who will publicly aver that Mr. Bush is a "real scum bag", nu?

To those who say killing innocent people is the ONLY weapon the weak can wield:
Put yourself in Sharon's shoes. Would you rather deal with another hapless teenager with a bomb strapped onto her chest, or with Hanan Ashrawi and several hundred others obstructing work on the fence?

The Israeli battle against the Palestinian terror war can not be claimed to be an unmitigated success in spite of the high percentage of terror attacks that have been foiled by Israeli security forces coupled with the failure of successful terror attacks to kill and maim more people. For close to 1,000 Israelis (and other targets of Palestinians terror) have been killed, many thousands more maimed, wounded, and psychologically scarred, families have been destroyed, and more generally, the Israeli economy is in shambles. To add that Israel is currently the world's political pariah is another tremendous achievement of the terror war waged by Arafat together with his compatriots in Hamas and Islami Jihadi.

And yet, despite Palestinian terror's successes, the desired effect has still not been achieved.

Not yet.

So that there is "a growing assessment among mainstream leaders that armed attacks have hurt the Palestinian cause."

"Mainstream leaders." One has to savor the irony.

Not that the terror tactics are wrong, mind you. Nor that the Arafat's terror war is inherently bad in any way.

But it's the results that count. And the results haven't yet been achieved.

Which is precisely Arafat's argument against the lily-livered. Israel is about to topple, he is sure. And his tactics will be proven to be correct. Ultimately. Palestinians must stay the course. The world and time is on their side. Etc.

Which is why all of this commentary about objections to Arafat's war, while interesting, are so misleading (they even conduct polls!), catering as they do to those of us who so dearly wish to believe that basically, I'm OK, and you're OK too. Not willing to acknowledge that the moderates, whether willingly or unwillingly, are running interference for those with the guns and the bombs (and the WMD?) who set the agenda.

And the agenda, in this particular case, is Israel's disappearance.