Those Crazy Jews

Has Iran, or North Korea, given anybody any reason to trust that the won't use it. Nuclear is kind of hard to react to when your dead, so a preemptive action becomes an option.

Problem is, the damn nuke has become a craving in the middle east amongst the dictators, much like cocaine. If we didn't get the impression that they look at it as the ultimate solution to Jihad, mayby they wouldn't have that problem.

We should sell them the right to future use or something. Like if they show us intel that says Iran has nukes, we say yes. On a just in case basis, maybe we say no.

Or we just sell them the things - they're expensive enough, it's not like they're gonna waste them.

Besides, we don't want the Israelis to feel they have to use their nukes.

This is too tough a situation to call, either way. Israel is in a crappy spot, strategically, and of course wants to arm itself as best it can. Alternatively, the surrounding countries have not yet gotten over the arbitrary "creation" of Israel as a result of WWII and, much as I hate to say it, are probably justified. (How would we feel if, say, the UN decided to park Israel smack in the middle of Alberta, say at Red Deer? Red Deer may not be the best choice, but you get my drift.)

I like Jay's response (but I'd want to see REAL evidence vs. the "WMD" stuff trotted out to support the Iraq invasion - skip the satellite photos, I want REAL UP CLOSE photos, please).

ps. Kate, please don't block me for some leftist leanings, I love your site

You mean like the arbitrary creation of Iraq, Iran, Syria, (Saudi) Arabia, et al by the French and English?

Re: Candace "How would we feel if ...."
1) Let us grant that this question can be asked without arguing that the interrogator is anti-semitic.
2) Mississauga Matt asks the relevant question as to the the existence of any borders in the Middle East.
3) Analogically, then Red Deer would be undeveloped tundra. (Please forgive the hyperbole. I live in Minnesota and it snowed here yesterday.) Israel would then cause the tundra to bloom, develop the only non-petroleum based economy in Canada, establish the only democracy in Canada, defeat Canada in numerous wars of self defense and would be the only trustworthy ally of Western Democracy in Canada.
4) An independant state within your borders? Sounds like the Indian Reservations here in Minnesota. We have avoided war with our Native American neighbors for well over a hundred years now. Perhaps a Canadian analog would be Quebec.
5) Since Israel is a socialist state, you may find yourself very comfortable with them as neighbors.

The big difference between Iran and Israel is that Israel can be trusted with nukes just as much as the US, France, and Britain can. They're a secular (albeit Jewish, just as England is Anglican) democratic (unlike here) state that is only concerned with their own defence (look at a map, you'd be paranoid if you lived there too).

Iran on the other hand is a religious theocracy run by dictators desperate to hold on to whatever remaining power they still have. They do not need nukes for defence purpose, they want nukes to retain their power over their people and to possibly nuke Israel (including any Palestinian Arabs in the neighbourhood, they wouldn't care). Don't forget that IRan has been funding terrorism in Israel and Iraq for years, whose to say they won't sell terrorists a nuke? Would it go against their 'religious' ethics?

I also take offence to the headline 'Those Crazy Jews'.

If you want to insult England do you refer to 'Those Crazy Anglicans'. How about referring to Quebecers as 'Those Crazy Catholics'. I could go on and on.

In reply to mondocognito- I disagree with a few of your points.
1)What's your point bringing up the 'you can discuss this without being antisemitic', other than to suggest antisemitism? I think that this point had no business in your reply.

2&3)Borders are not the issue; what is the deeper issue is the nature of the economy.

Before the WWs, the Middle East (ME) economies were peasant horticulture -which is made up of small settled villages, based on local self-sufficient crops for local consumers rather than international marketing. Crops would be small; there'd also be domesticated animal husbandry that required short term migration and open land use.
The percentage of arable land in the region is extremely low and therefore, without industrial technology and massive financial input it can't produce large scale market agriculture. Both require large populations and a 'growth' rather than 'stable' economic ideology. A stable ideology is found in a peasant economy; a growth is found in an industrial economy.

Your definition of this land as 'arid tundra' is incorrect. It IS arid - but can provide a sufficient economy for that population. But you cannot state that it was uninhabited wasteland. It wasn't. It functioned as a viable peasant horticulture for many, many hundreds of years.

The political infrastructure for this type of economy and population size would be tribalism - which is a hereditary infrastructure of stable authorities. This is very different from a democracy which emerges and functions in a large market and growth oriented population.

Israel was inserted into this area, and one cannot claim that the land was uninhabited, nor or that it was unused or 'undeveloped'. The land was NOT undeveloped tundra. It was used. A peasant horticulture is NOT 'undeveloped'. It is a different economy from an industrial usage, but it is utterly false to say it is 'undeveloped'. A peasant horticulture supports a small population (hundreds of thousands) while an industrial 'developed' economy supports millions. BOTH are valid economies. OK?

The WWs changed the economy, moving it to large scale resource extraction, i.e., moving it from a peasant localism to industrialism. This increased the population exponentially, who became urban rather than rural. But, the political infrastructure didn't change! You don't change ideologies that rapidly! So, tribalism remained (no middle class, no democracy..which is based around the middle class). This has to, and is, changing.

Israel didn't begin as a peasant horticultural economy but as an industrial economy and focused around massive immigration. Don't ignore this and don't imply that Israelis are, genetically or whatever, different homo sapiens from their neighbours. Israel was inserted, right from the beginning, as an industrial economy. Its people weren't operating, ever, as peasant farmers in villages; they came from industrial nations that were already democratic.

Democracy is the ONLY political system viable for populations in the millions. Israel was democratic from the start because it was set up as industrial, as a large population..and industrialism functions in a large population.

The correct analogy would be for a foreign gov't to set up an industrial city in farming land, let's say PEI, taking away the farms from the old timers who had held those farms for generations, and saying that they were 'undeveloped' and rejecting local governance.

"Israel ... focused around massive immigration."

Exactly. Israel took in about 1 million Jews from the surrounding states of Iraq, Iran, Syria, (Saudi) Arabia, et al. So anyone who claims that they are johnnies-come-lately to the area is disingenuous at the very least.

What existed before was a mixed population of Arabs and Jews. The Jews got a tiny parcel of land - in fact only a portion of their historical home - in comparison to what the Arabs got. And yet that's not good enough for most Muslims and their supporters. The Muslims plainly state that they wish to eradicate Israel, and that the Jews live under them in a state of dhimmitude.

How anyone can support this is beyond me.

I don't understand your point, Mississauga Mat. My point was about the difference in economic and political structure between a non-industrial peasant horticulture and an industrial economy. The former will be politically tribal rather than democratic; the latter will be democratic. The difference in political structure is due to the size of the population and the size is related to the economic mode.

Israel began as a nation as a large-scale industrial economy, capable of supporting millions in population. Its people most certainly did not come just from the surrounding Arab territories but from Europe. You may be aware, or not, that there was a certain disdain of the European Jews for these 'Arab-Jews'..e.g., Yemenites, etc.

As I pointed out, the Israeli population was made up of people who were already industrial in their economic mode and already democratic. They had dispensed with a tribal hereditary governance and a peasant agriculture long before.

It is important not to ignore the economic mode and to be aware that the political mode is directly linked to that economic system.

Try to imagine someone showing up on your turf, saying "This is OUR land now, because GOD gave it to us", and then stuffing YOU into a refugee camp for a couple of generations! (If you were a Canukistani, you'd probably put up with it.)

Diane Francis, (writing for the Financial Post), has claimed on two occasions, that the Chechens sold ten 'suitcase nukes' to Al Quaida for the sum of one million dollars and one ton of Heroin, each! (apparently, her source is Mossad).

"Suitcase nukes" would be better described as "beer keg nukes". This is the smallest I ever saw when I was in the army (tho I suppose it's possible the CIA or some such had a smaller design, but I doubt it):

http://johnmtaylor.com/foe/sadm.htm

We can quibble over Israel, but the fact is, Israel won every war that the Arabs threw at them. Several nations in the middle east could have taken in the palestinian refugees with little difficulty (to replace the Jews they expelled, for instance, as well as to develop farm land, etc.). It is the arab nations, who refuse to allow palestinians to immigrate to their countries that keep the refugee camps running.
I don't like what has happened to the palestinians, but we've had multiple wars on the matter, and Israel won all of them. They've earned their right to exist. If the various arab nations really cared about the occupants of the refugee camps, they would have taken them in after the last war. Instead they've created a decrepit cesspot of desperation and nihilsm, where murder-suicide is an ideal and where racism against Jews runs more rampant than racism against blacks did in the U.S. south.

Give the nukes to Israel, and make it known to the head hackers that they're aimed right at them and the hairtrigger launch button still has some bugs in it.
Also let it be known that we back democracies like Israel and their right to protect themselves from mulla fanatic cleptocracies and in no uncertain terms would lend a hand to them if they want to get off their inbred cousin marryin asses and drag themselves out of the freekin uncivilized 8th century.

Half Canadian - your thesis is that 'might makes right'. Because Israel won its wars, then, it is in the right and the Palestinians can live in the camps. I disagree with that axiom.

I also don't think that it should be an accepted norm that IF a new country is developed, that this should be done without regard for the current inhabitants. We cannot consider that the Middle East territory was vacant land; it was inhabited for many centuries by people engaged in a peasant horticultural economy. The answer should not be that the current inhabitants should be 'absorbed' by the neighbouring countries. Why? Why can that be considered a viable answer...even considering that these other countries (ie. Jordan) might not have the economic infrastructure to do so. Are you saying that 'an Arab should live with an Arab' and therefore, the other Arab countries should 'absorb them'? Why? Why such an insistence on homogeneity of ethnicity?

The answer, as I see it, is that a Palestinian state has to be created: the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinians may be Arab but that doesn't mean that they want to live in Jordan or Syria or Lebanon or..
After all, a Dutchman may be European but that doesn't mean he wants to live in France or German or Belgium.

Might doesn't make right; and ethnicity is not a criterion for the definition of a nation.

Matt:

"You mean like the arbitrary creation of Iraq, Iran, Syria, (Saudi) Arabia, et al by the French and English?"

Thanks, Matt.

You beat me to it. I always love the way "Israel" gets treated as a "contrived" country while we ignore all the Arab "nations" carved out of former Ottoman territory following the First World War.

"Israel began as a nation as a large-scale industrial economy, capable of supporting millions in population."

Absolutely wrong. Isrel began as nothing - just the Jewish portions of the British Palestinian mandate.

Next to Jordan and Egypt, it looked pretty puny in 1949.

Richfisher, these aren't nukes, they're just smart bombs, laser guided (maybe you saw the video of that one that went into a ventilator shaft during Gulf 1?).

They're not even actually "bunker busters" like the article says - Busters are just very, very large (think small school bus) conventional bombs that are very cleverly designed to penetrate a certain amount before detonating.

Tho smart bombs would no doubt be a lot more effective than plain old drop gravity type bombs.

Oops, I take part of that back - bunker busters are indeed (also) missiles nowadays. I should've googled first. Still not nuke tho.

"We cannot consider that the Middle East territory was vacant land; it was inhabited for many centuries ..."

Yes, and some of them were Jews, hence the 1 million living in surrounding countries. Not a majority, but not insignificant either, and to my mind worthy of a piece of land of their own, given that their co-habitants would not allow for a peaceful existence (See the pogroms visited on the Jews by the Arabs. See the Muslim belief in dhimmitude for all non-Muslims).

"Why such an insistence on homogeneity of ethnicity?"

10% of Israel is Arab.

Any Jew living in Egypt, Syria, Jordan or any of those other despotic surrounding countries... well good luck to them.

It is the Mulims - worldwide, in fact - who seem to be insisting on homogeneity in the Middle East, if along religious rather than ethnic lines. I think you should file your complaint with them.

"Might doesn't make right"

I look forward to the Romans, Angles/Saxons/Jutes, Vikings, Norse, Norman French, etc all getting the hell out of Britain so that the Britons can have their land back.

I also look forward to Californian, New Mexico, Texas and all the other south-western U.S. states being given back to Mexico.

Heck, while we're at it, let's undo the Plains of Abraham; Quebec seems to be running the country anyway. Let's make it official.

dave wrote, "and then stuffing YOU into a refugee camp for a couple of generations"

When Israel came into being in 1948, the surrounding Arab countries declared war on Israel.

The Arabs living in Israel were told by the Arab countries to get out the way until they, the Arabs, wiped Israel off the map. Israel told the Arabs living within their borders that unless they were going to aid the Arab armies, they were welcome to stay and comtinue life as usual. Some Arabs were expelled.

The Arabs who fled gambled and lost. They were put into refugee camps by Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and left to rot. The ones who stayed still live in Israel and are Israeli citizens. (Today, one in five Israelis is Arab.)

The West Bank, Gaza and the Sinai were taken in wars that the Arab countries started again and lost again. Sinai, largely empty, was returned to Egypt in exchange for signing a truce. Jordan and Egypt may want the West Bank and Gaza back but they do not want the people in them. Yet it is all Israel's fault.

The Jordyptians (there never was a people called the Palestinians; the name came into use after another of the lost wars and the Arab world decided they made better proganda tools than citizens) could make a state any time they wanted to. Oslo gave them 95% of the disputed terrotories if they would once and for all renounce terrorism and accept Israel's right to existence. This was too much to ask. Arafat went home and started the intifada.

To this day, Arafat and now his successor Abbas have never made even the tiniest step to act like national leaders. There is no constitution, criminal or civil code, even in draft form. There is no crackdown on those who aid and abet terrorism. There are no consequences for those who torture and murder suspected collaborators with Israel. There is no end to the whining and seething of those more than willing to blame Israel for any and all problems rather than accept the fact that they have neighbours they don't like and go about building a civil society.

I'll save my sympathy for people who deserve it.

The Palestinians are the Jews of the Arab world. Cannon fodder. Any sympathy for their "cause" is misplaced and inhumane.

Jay
My mistake thanks for the info.
So WTF are we waitng for.
Thursday is "Be Kind to Jews Day" here at Crazy Rich's Arms Depot.
Order ten bunker busters or more and we're so crazy we'll GIVE you not one but TWO nukes of your choice at NO additional cost.
Offer prohibited in all wacko head hacker states.

If I order ten buynker busters can I have my free nukes delivered to another address? I'm thinking DNC headquarters for one, I might let Kate decide where she'd like the other delivered.

Sure jay come on down we have pancakes and bulldozer rides for the kids.
We're so CRAZY we can't be undersold.
Offer void where prohibition exists.

Bulldozer rides? Would that be like the one Sainte Pancake got over in the middle east?

No way jay these rides are for customers not the looney competition.
We'll show you how to get into the cockpit and fill in those giant CRAZY holes we're gonna be bustin open
We're not looney we're CRAZY!!
Bombs Away!

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