Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site utcsri.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsri!vassos
From: vassos@utcsri.UUCP (Vassos Hadzilacos)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Terrorism
Message-ID: <1656@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Nov-85 08:24:59 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.1656
Posted: Thu Nov 21 08:24:59 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Nov-85 14:39:50 EST
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 35

> [...] And it is a little
> presumptuous to assume that the "Palestinians" will wait for
> 2000 years. [...] Palestinians Arabs have no significant culture
> which can hold them together for 2000 years.  Many peoples came
> and went in those 2000 years, but aside from the dominant culture,
> ONLY the Jews survived.
> And going back some 3500 years, Jewish culture is the only survivor
> in the world.  I know that other peoples have been around that long,
> but NOT their culture, unchanged. [...] 
 
- Leaving aside the thinly veiled attempt to deny the Palestinians their
  national identity (by putting quotes around the word)
- Leaving aside the chauvinism implicit in the lie that Palestinians
  "have no significant culture"
- Leaving aside the historical ignorance displayed in the assertion
  that dominant cultures aside (whatever that means) "ONLY the Jews
  survived" as a people the past 2000 years
- Leaving aside the total confusion of culture and religion in the
  above quoted passage
- Leaving aside the ludicrous statement that Jewish culture has remained
  "unchanged" for 3500 years (an insult on Jewish culture, for sure)

Leaving all these aside, the argument put forth in the above quoted
passage is still nonesense.

Jewish people have every right to be proud, very proud of their
culture and their contributions to human civilisation. But this
gives no right to the state of Israel to inflict injustice upon
other people. Mind you, the same type of argument was advanced
by colonial powers to exhonorate the atrocities they committed
during colonisation. Somehow the "superior" Western culture made
the enslaving of Africans and the extermination of native people
in America a justifiable act.

--Vassos Hadzilacos.