subject change

billbartlett at dodo.com.au billbartlett at dodo.com.au
Sat Jan 25 02:15:47 PST 2003


At 9:19 AM -0500 24/1/03, Dennis Perrin wrote:


>" If you don't permit people to build new houses, then blowing up existing
>ones is genocidal. People need houses and the policy of incremental
>destruction of essential infrastructure of one ethnic group, accompanied by
>rapid building of settlements and infrastructure exclusively for another
>ethnic group, is genocide. No getting away from it."
>
>> Bill Bartlett
>> Bracknell Tas
>
>Well, if you say so.

I do say so.


> Feels nice saying that word -- g-e-n-o-c-i-d-e. Has a
>nice ring.

Perhaps, but if you bother to read the first two sentences above, you just might notice that I argued my case for calling it genocide of rather more logical grounds than that. Obviously you are unable to refute these arguments logically though, or else you would do so. Instead you babble on about how it has a "nice ring". As if that was my reasoning. Genocide is just a word, it has a widely agreed meaning. The policy of the Israeli state towards the Palestinians seems to fit very closely with that agreed meaning.

I'm not particularly emotional about it. I get no satisfaction from observing it. Your attempt to characterise me as some sort of crank for daring to point out this fact is merely evasive.


> I remember, during marches, when the inevitable chant would
>arise: "So-and-so, you can't hide! We charge you with GENOCIDE!" Ah, the
>rush that swept the crowd.

I don't get a rush out of discovering genocide.


> The tingle. People actually smiled when saying
>it, imagining themselves as brave anti-fascist resisters screaming at a
>brick building across the street while passersby looked on with blank faces.
>The allure is understandable.

Yes, yes. Very clever rhetoric. I suppose you get a tingle of satisfaction from ripping your flimsy straw man into shreds, but meanwhile my reasoning doesn't have a mark on it.

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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