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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Zionism != Terrorism
Message-ID: <1387@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 6-Nov-83 14:00:53 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1387
Posted: Sun Nov  6 14:00:53 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Nov-83 11:04:46 EST
References: <3665@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 47

Mike Hodge,
	Do you know many Zionists? I know a *lot* of people who claim
to be Zionists, but then I grew up in a Jewish neighbourhood. Either you
have a very different idea of terrorism than I do, or Zionists are very
different where you are than where I am, or you really shouldn't have
said:

	A semantic person is a Jew,a Zionist is a radical terrorist using
	all of the tools of terror to try to achieve the goals of the Jews.

I personally see very little relationship between terrorism and Zionism.
Terrorism happens to be the way of war in the Middle East. I have read
more than one account which says that it is the Geography of the region
that makes it so conducive for terrorism. I do not know whether this is
so. One thing that I do know -- once terrorism has started, it is very
difficult to fight any other kind of war. This is because the relationship
between the leader of a terrorist band and the government he is supposed
to be fighting for (if he is supposed to be fighting for someone) is very
strange. A popular fighting group may indeed have more popular support than
the official leaders, or there may be huge differences between the 2 ...
in any case the balance of power is terrible. 

The situation of alliances makes it worse. Let us assume, for the moment,
that you want to fight a war with Arafat. How are you going to get him
to agree to a conventional war? Read war reports from Syria. It's real
hard. If you are not going to have a conventional war, and if terrorism
persists despite "negotiations", do you have the right to launch
counter-terrorism? Remember the outrage that was felt when the American
Embassy was captured, or more recently when the Marines were killed while
they sleep. Remember that the American marines who survive can go home
where getting bombed in your sleep is not an ever-present possibility --
if you live in the Mid East, you can't.

Terrorism is a knotty problem, then.

Actually, the one thing that I have noticed that all Zionists I have met
have in common is that they want Isreal to be a Religious State. As such,
I am opposed to them, as I am opposed to all Official Religuous States,
but that does not blind me to the problems which they are facing.

And the ones I know will not condone all of the tactics used by Israel.
They talk about shame a good bit as well, which I believe has more significance
for them than you might expect -- for the shame that they feel is a shame
agaisnt both God and Man, not just Man alone.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura