When NATO bombed Kosovo, the Yugoslav authorities had killed about 2000 Albanians over the course of 12 months in putting down the guerrilla uprising. That's about 170 a month.
So far, the Israelis have killed over 100 Palestinians in about two weeks.
A case for intervention?
Seth
> ----------
> From: Nathan Newman[SMTP:nathan at newman.org]
> Reply To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 5:05 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: RES: Said on American Zionism
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Alexandre Fenelon" <afenelon at zaz.com.br>
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>
> >To say democracy is an either/or situation like pregnancy is ridiculous.
> Of
> >course there are levels and extents of democracy. Syria's cult of
> >personality and consent by mass murder (ie. Hama) is at the worst end of
> the
> >spectrum.
> -Israel commits large scale murder too (something like 1,000 civilian
> deaths
> -during Intifanda)
>
> And 1000 deaths during a number of years during a revolutionary uprising,
> however brutal and it was brutal, is on a different order of magnitude
> from
> 10,000 killed in one city like Hama in a single repressive operation to
> obliterate the Islamic Brotherhood opposition in Syria, since that mass
> murder was merely part of a continual operation of complete and total
> repression of all opposition in Syria. It was interesting when I
> travelled
> in Syria that the one person who felt willing to speak somewhat freely to
> me
> was a relatively depressed Palestinian (the hopelessness one reason he
> probably was loose-lipped) who could only lament the even worse repression
> of Palestinians within Syria compared to the general repression of the
> rest
> of the population. While it was impossible to talk to any opposition to
> the
> Syrian government, there are multiple well-funded opponents of Israel's
> government, both in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza. Even though
> West
> Bank and Gaza Palestinians lack a formal vote, the ability to speak and
> organize by Palestinians is a critical democratic right that is completely
> lacking in less democratic countries than Israel.
>
> To repeat, it does not excuse the systematic violation of human rights
> that
> Israel engages in, but democratic rights are a separable category from the
> range of other human rights by which we judge governmental actions. The
> need to deny that Israel has some admirable characteristics in order to
> condemn its other terrible acts is an analytic blindness.
>
> > Israel's combines a freewheeling internal democracy with
> >elected Arab politicians combined with dramatic repression of West Bank
> and
> >Gaza Palestinians. That Israelis consider Arabs traitors, yet their
> elected
> >leaders remain in government is exactly the point of what makes Israel
> more
> >democratic within the pre-1967 borders.
> -So Israeli democracy could be compared with apartheid´s South Africa,
> right?
>
> Again, the need to reach for the Apartheid comparison is rhetorical and
> analytically weak, when there are far better analogies. Apartheid was
> rule
> by a minority against a majority population. If the West Bank and Gaza
> Palestinians were given full voting rights, Arab parties would still be a
> minority. Even if all Palestinians were given the right of return and all
> exercised that right, Jews would still be a marginal majority in an
> integrated Palestine-Israel.
>
> And however admirable many would find such a non-ethnic democratic state,
> it
> is a result that neither Jews nor Palestinians generally desire. So for
> this reason, the real conflict is not over the extension of democratic
> rights to Gaza and the West Bank but over the borders between two states
> where each contesting population wants a strong majoritarian dominance.
>
> In fact, the best analogy is to Ireland where the British always had a
> majority over the United Kingdom, but the Irish wanted not the extension
> of
> democratic rights but of sovereignty over territory. And the dispute is
> over where that border would extend (i.e. the ongoing conflict over
> Northern
> Ireland). Note that Ireland also has a comparable problem of Irish
> diaspora, mostly to America, with a similar reality that large chunks of
> that diaspora will never return to the home country despite their
> international political support for Irish Catholic rights.
>
> -I doubt if a negotiated settlement is possible, since Israel doesn´t want
> -to make real concessions. (Water reserves in one of them, the
> -Jews use 80% of water in West Bank, despite the fact they are 10% of
> -the population). Even if Israel was willing to make significant
> concessions
> -(retreat from West Bank and Gaza, more fair division of Water, permission
> -to Palestinians have their own Army) I doubt if a Palestinian state would
> -be possible, due to abyssal economic conditions. A bantustan like
> arrangement
> -is inherently unstable, as the Israelis are already learning. I think the
> -only possible solution would include the unification of Israel and
> Palestinian
> -territories with granting of full Israeli citizenship to Palestinians.
> There
> -still remains the question of refugees return, but I can´t see any
> definite
> -solution different from this. But neither of the factions involved in the
> -conflict seems to be thinking seriously in such an arrangement.
>
> The details of water and security are real issues in the negotiations, as
> well as Jerusalem of course, but the economic issue is actually the
> win-win
> result of successful negotiations. There is little question and both
> sides
> clearly sought negotiations on the basis that both Israel and a potential
> Palestine are operating economically far below what they could if a secure
> peace could be achieved.
>
> In some ways, it is unbelievable that so much blood is being spilled over
> what is truly wretched land by any arable or resource measurements. But
> the
> "bantustan" analogy (again the weak misplaced South Africa analogy) would
> only make sense if Israel proper was some great prize on that basis.
> Despite all the making-the-desert-bloom rhetoric, Israel is mostly desert
> with only a bit of decent land in the North (a chunk of which they are
> negotiating to hand back to Syria). But the wealth of the region, among
> both Israelis and Palestinians, are the educated dynamic people who could
> economically bloom under a secure peace. And of course tourism in the
> region is a massively undeveloped resource that could be a quite large
> economic boost for any new Palestinian state.
>
> What was most striking to me from discussions with Palestinian folks I met
> with last summer, particularly the labor advocates (both pro- and
> anti-Fatah), was how many saw the possibilities of economic development in
> the West Bank and Gaza. Part of this was political nationalism but many
> saw
> incredible opportunities for rapid economic expansion as just the basics
> of
> infrastructure expand and are combined with the educated talent that is
> unemployed in the area. Of course there will be intense economic
> integration between Israel and Palestine, but there are good reasons why
> the
> Palestinians would rather have democratic control over their economic
> development at this point in history. Down the line, maybe we could see
> the
> evolution of a Middle East Economic Community, including a range of states
> with shared economic interests over water and economic development. But a
> two-state solution is probably the best approach now for both political
> and
> economic development in the region.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
>
>