We?ll start with samples of common sense: Sensible people don?t go out of their way seeking to pass through a dark alley full of unexpected hazards; sensible people don?t champion violence; and sensible people don?t brag about killing people.
All logic ends here. What logic is there when a British subject injects himself into the middle of a war zone thousands of miles from home? Or when athletes champion war? Or when student political candidates brag about the number of innocents they killed?
We?re talking about a triple-threat of nonsense, on three continents, among Palestinians and their supporters. With friends like those described below, how can we ever explain why the average Palestinian is in such trouble?
As a charter member of the Pity-the-Poor-Palestinian Club, Tom Hurndall traveled from England to Israel to protect the Palestinians by disrupting military activities in Gaza. This kind of action serves only to heighten tensions in what amounts to a war zone, which does nothing more than endanger people?s lives even more.
Hurndall was shot in the head when he went to the aid of some Palestinian children on April 11, was pronounced brain dead and is now in a London hospital, according to the New York Times. An Israeli soldier was arrested on December 31 in Hurndall?s shooting.
Some tasteless people might joke that Hurndall was brain dead long before he was shot. I would never say that, but I guarantee you that there are crass people out there who think such an assessment is too mild.
In all seriousness, it?s tragic when anyone dies before his time. Hurndall may well have been genuinely concerned about the Palestinians. If he was, he went about trying to help them the wrong way. Members of the International Solidarity Movement like Hurndall have blithely ignored political avenues back home, where they can attempt to counter what they regard as Israeli transgressions, which of course are open to debate.
Even the San Francisco-based Mother Jones magazine ? with its strong leftist reputation ? depicted Hurndall?s fellow members of the International Peace Movement as reckless. They quoted an unidentified human-rights observer in Jerusalem thus: ?Part of their gig is to break laws in acts of civil disobedience in order to draw attention to what the Israeli military is doing. They provide important information about places where journalists and other human-rights groups don?t often go. But what they do is incredibly frightening. Would I do it? No way.?
The magazine?s October issue also quoted Mohammed Qishta, a Palestinian interpreter for the ISM, as saying, ?They were not only brave; they were crazy.?
Hurndall?s ?crazy? ways apparently run in the family. Another news account noted that family members want aggressive prosecution of the soldier. Obviously, they are the kinds of people who want to escape examination of Hurndall?s responsibility in this. Putting the onus on the soldier conveniently helps them avoid the reality that Hurndall put people?s lives in danger by getting involved in this garbage to begin with.
I don?t know the circumstances. Maybe the soldier shot Hurndall by accident when you consider the tense circumstances, or maybe his actions extended beyond human error. The matter needs to be investigated, but that does not change the fact that Hurndall contributed to the conditions that led to his shooting.
On the other side of the world, a group of young Muslims living near Los Angeles organized a series of pickup football games for the New Year?s holiday. Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote in the Washington Post that he saw nothing wrong with three of the team names ? Intifada, Soldiers of Allah and Mujahedin (the latter term means ?holy warrior?). Other team names were quite innocuous and some older Muslim leaders, to their credit, asked the organizers to alter the names to something more sensitive.
Navarrette wrote, ?There doesn?t seem to have been any malicious intent? It looks as though these young men never considered the possibility that the seemingly innocuous act of choosing names for football teams might prompt others to declare the equivalent of a rhetorical holy war on them.
??The critics should take a deep breath and cut the Muslim football players some slack. The young men just want to play football. What kind of subversives are these? Why, instead of agitating, they?re assimilating.?
Assimilating? Championing violence is how you assimilate in a nation based on the rule of law? If that?s the way Navarrette feels, judging by his name, I guess he would not mind if a bunch of white players named their teams ?English-Only? and ?Return Mexicans to Mexico.? In case of doubt, I?m being sarcastic.
I?ll grant that the Muslim football organizers have every right to name their teams what they want, but the attitudes that fueled the choice of names is weird and scary. They only respect the American way when it benefits them. Should I ever move to California, I?ll make sure to avoid their neighborhoods.
Back in the West Bank ? excuse me, Palestine ? a student leadership election at Bir Zeit University ignored such issues as tuition, the lunch menu and dormitory rules unless guns and bombs were involved. Hamas won 25 of 51 seats on the student council, losing its narrow majority after Fatah candidates argued that its Al-Aqsa Martyrs? Brigades was ?striking the occupation every day,? as Fatah candidate Khaled Samara put it. According to an Associated Press story, a Hamas candidate asked a Fatah candidate: ?Hamas activists in this university killed 135 Zionists. How many did Fatah activists from Bir Zeit kill??
Huh? If anything, the Israeli military should have arrested any candidate who proclaimed their support of violence. As part of Hamas and Fatah, they were automatically participating as part of these groups? terrorist activities. In the United States, that would amount to conspiracy to murder. They should not be let loose, much less run a student government.
I dare advocates for the Palestinians to justify any of this nonsense.
All logic ends here. What logic is there when a British subject injects himself into the middle of a war zone thousands of miles from home? Or when athletes champion war? Or when student political candidates brag about the number of innocents they killed?
We?re talking about a triple-threat of nonsense, on three continents, among Palestinians and their supporters. With friends like those described below, how can we ever explain why the average Palestinian is in such trouble?
As a charter member of the Pity-the-Poor-Palestinian Club, Tom Hurndall traveled from England to Israel to protect the Palestinians by disrupting military activities in Gaza. This kind of action serves only to heighten tensions in what amounts to a war zone, which does nothing more than endanger people?s lives even more.
Hurndall was shot in the head when he went to the aid of some Palestinian children on April 11, was pronounced brain dead and is now in a London hospital, according to the New York Times. An Israeli soldier was arrested on December 31 in Hurndall?s shooting.
Some tasteless people might joke that Hurndall was brain dead long before he was shot. I would never say that, but I guarantee you that there are crass people out there who think such an assessment is too mild.
In all seriousness, it?s tragic when anyone dies before his time. Hurndall may well have been genuinely concerned about the Palestinians. If he was, he went about trying to help them the wrong way. Members of the International Solidarity Movement like Hurndall have blithely ignored political avenues back home, where they can attempt to counter what they regard as Israeli transgressions, which of course are open to debate.
Even the San Francisco-based Mother Jones magazine ? with its strong leftist reputation ? depicted Hurndall?s fellow members of the International Peace Movement as reckless. They quoted an unidentified human-rights observer in Jerusalem thus: ?Part of their gig is to break laws in acts of civil disobedience in order to draw attention to what the Israeli military is doing. They provide important information about places where journalists and other human-rights groups don?t often go. But what they do is incredibly frightening. Would I do it? No way.?
The magazine?s October issue also quoted Mohammed Qishta, a Palestinian interpreter for the ISM, as saying, ?They were not only brave; they were crazy.?
Hurndall?s ?crazy? ways apparently run in the family. Another news account noted that family members want aggressive prosecution of the soldier. Obviously, they are the kinds of people who want to escape examination of Hurndall?s responsibility in this. Putting the onus on the soldier conveniently helps them avoid the reality that Hurndall put people?s lives in danger by getting involved in this garbage to begin with.
I don?t know the circumstances. Maybe the soldier shot Hurndall by accident when you consider the tense circumstances, or maybe his actions extended beyond human error. The matter needs to be investigated, but that does not change the fact that Hurndall contributed to the conditions that led to his shooting.
On the other side of the world, a group of young Muslims living near Los Angeles organized a series of pickup football games for the New Year?s holiday. Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote in the Washington Post that he saw nothing wrong with three of the team names ? Intifada, Soldiers of Allah and Mujahedin (the latter term means ?holy warrior?). Other team names were quite innocuous and some older Muslim leaders, to their credit, asked the organizers to alter the names to something more sensitive.
Navarrette wrote, ?There doesn?t seem to have been any malicious intent? It looks as though these young men never considered the possibility that the seemingly innocuous act of choosing names for football teams might prompt others to declare the equivalent of a rhetorical holy war on them.
??The critics should take a deep breath and cut the Muslim football players some slack. The young men just want to play football. What kind of subversives are these? Why, instead of agitating, they?re assimilating.?
Assimilating? Championing violence is how you assimilate in a nation based on the rule of law? If that?s the way Navarrette feels, judging by his name, I guess he would not mind if a bunch of white players named their teams ?English-Only? and ?Return Mexicans to Mexico.? In case of doubt, I?m being sarcastic.
I?ll grant that the Muslim football organizers have every right to name their teams what they want, but the attitudes that fueled the choice of names is weird and scary. They only respect the American way when it benefits them. Should I ever move to California, I?ll make sure to avoid their neighborhoods.
Back in the West Bank ? excuse me, Palestine ? a student leadership election at Bir Zeit University ignored such issues as tuition, the lunch menu and dormitory rules unless guns and bombs were involved. Hamas won 25 of 51 seats on the student council, losing its narrow majority after Fatah candidates argued that its Al-Aqsa Martyrs? Brigades was ?striking the occupation every day,? as Fatah candidate Khaled Samara put it. According to an Associated Press story, a Hamas candidate asked a Fatah candidate: ?Hamas activists in this university killed 135 Zionists. How many did Fatah activists from Bir Zeit kill??
Huh? If anything, the Israeli military should have arrested any candidate who proclaimed their support of violence. As part of Hamas and Fatah, they were automatically participating as part of these groups? terrorist activities. In the United States, that would amount to conspiracy to murder. They should not be let loose, much less run a student government.
I dare advocates for the Palestinians to justify any of this nonsense.