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AW, who I alluded to before in this article, sends me a chat transcript with a well-known ex-blogger and the comment:
So, in a sense, the claim in those Leftist blogs WERE *sort of* true?... The leftist blogs to which he refers are, again: http://jim.blogspot.com/?/2002_04_01_jim_archive.html#75052799 http://stommel.tamu.edu/%7Ebaum/ethel/2002_03_24_ethel-archive.html#11247894 For some debate on the matter, see the comments over at Sgt. Stryker's (article for 3 April 2002, 0420 UT) . I agree with Andrea: AW seems to be pretending to a naïveite that he does not, in fact, possess. In Ethel the Blog, it is stated:
Arafat has been negotiating with Israel for years. The Hamas charter bluntly states that all peace initiatives are contrary to their beliefs. Hamas is behind the suicide bombings. With Arafat and the PLO out of the way, the Hamas will be the negotiating organization for the Palestinians. And since they'll utterly refuse to negotiate, Sharon will be able to negotiate entirely with his favorite tool: the military. No more compromises. Just more massacres along the lines of 1982. But Arafat's negotiations Israel have been barren for years. Perhaps what Baum is trying to imply here is that he and other hard lefties and EUnuchs would be successfully deceived by a tactic that has consisted of empty words and live bombs on Arafat's part, whilst they try to wring more and more concessions out of Israel. Of course, this is an argument that we should ridicule Baum and ignore the EU. Baum quotes Arafat as saying:
"We are doing everything to stop the violence. But Hamas is a creature of Israel which at the time of Prime Minister [Yitzhak] Shamir [the late 1980s, when Hamas arose], gave them money and more than 700 institutions, among them schools, universities and mosques. Even [former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin ended up admitting it, when I charged him with it, in the presence of [Egpytian President Hosni] Mubarak." Ah, yes, Yitzhak Rabin z"l, the man who was so dovish that he was assassinated by an Israeli who felt that he was giving away too much to the "Palestinians". If Peres and Rabin had not so done, might Baum not have written: "The hypocrisy of Peres, who pretended to negotiate with Hamas whilst in reality conceding them nothing"? (Curiously, whilst Baum asserts that Arafat's statement is "a matter of public record, the only link that he provides is to the anti-Semitic (and generally psychopathic) LaRouche organization. Perhaps Arafat's "statement" is not as public -- or genuine -- as he would have us believe?) Michael Lerner complains, and is approvingly quoted by Baum, that:
Sharon refuses to negotiate unless there is a period of non-violence So? No one else has demanded at least an armistice during negotiations? Lerner and Baum, of course, assert (without further evidence) that this is merely a device by Sharon to avoid negotiation with St. Arafat, as they admit that Hamas will never give up violence. Yet, leaving aside the involvement of Arafat's own Fatah in the murder of civilians, he is evidently helpless to restrain Hamas, and to admit this, even privately. What good, then, negotiations with someone who cannot carry out his end of a bargain? The best interpretation, again, that can be placed on Lerner's and Baum's words is that they value negotiations as an end in themselves, not as a means to peace and justice, and are willing to sanction any atrocity, so long as the parties committing and suffering it keep talking. The other link is to Objectionable Content, which is, to my mind, objectionable indeed. He mostly repeats the rantings of Lerner and Baum -- not in itself a problem, for it is thus that ideas (even bad ones) are propagated around the blogosphere, and this merely puts him in the "linker" category -- but commits the solecism of quoting approvingly and linking to the openly fascistic Jak King (to whose website I shall not link, may his name and works be forgotten by future generations). Quoting King puts him somewhere in the spectrum between "useful idiot" and "fellow fascist". AW protests:
But I was hoping that by posting those links in this manner, I would provoke an "objective" retaliation. Have the good info drive out the bad. But of course, it is the anti-Semites who have made the positive assertions, and failed to back them up with any evidence. Mocking them and demanding some proof of their ridiculous statements, not trying to prove a negative, is the proper course here. John "Akatsukami" Braue Sunday, April 07, 2002 |
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