Burnt Orange Report

I'm not going to defend Arafat - he did a lot I disagree with; but what the fuck is the point of this semi-literate rant? All it shows is that you can write totally substanceless propaganda and that you write about things you clearly know nothing about. Okay, you've made it very clear to everyone that on the issues, you are a Republican. Yes, you write for a pathetic, barely coherent right-wing campus rag. You are a loser, Andrew. Let me give you a hint - quit your bitching about "the wishy-washy left" and get your puckered lips off the ass of the GOP for long enough to read a book.

What a fucking joke.

re--seriously.

After that display, you have some nerve referring to Dobbs comments as a rant! Is it your opinion that one must be an Arafat lover to be a Democrat?

If so, why?

What have the Palestinians done to earn your loyalty and admiration? They brought murder to the 72 Olympics, got themselves kicked out of Jordan for being murderers and thugs, took their murdering and thuggishness to Lebanon, hijacked airliners, supported Sadaam Hussein during the first Gulf War celebrating every American setback, strapped explosives on young people in suicide bombing missions, and celebrated in the streets when they saw the twin towers fall.

From all of this, it should be clear even to the dimmest observers that the Palestinians have chosen to be enemies of the United States. It escapes me why any American leader should lift a finger on their behalf or why anyone who loves America can also be for Arafat.

Good riddance!

Well, Marvin, congratulations - you are a bigger tool than Andrew.

"Is it your opinion that one must be an Arafat lover to be a Democrat?"

That is a moronic question and unworthy of response.

The rest of your post betrays your utter ignorance of history and your latent racism. Congratulations, really, on being a complete fucking idiot. Go fuck yourself.

How about people for fucking people?

Where is the LOVE??

It's not often that I agree with you guys, but you are right on. Arafat was a thug and a murderer, and the peace process could not go forward while he was still living.

It is sad that, because he cannot seriously argue the points presented, seriously must resort to name calling and attacking the source. I doubt that anyone who regularly post on this site would consider themselves GOPers. You, Seriously, show how closed minded you are with your violent and ridiculous rant.

Kudos to Andrew for saying what needs to be said. Andrew a Republican? Hardly. Since when is taking a stand against genocide (where is Bush on Sudan?), denouncing a REAL terrorist (Saddam was a murderous scum bag, but not a terrorist in the conventional sense), sticking up for a democracy (not a monarchy like the Saudis), NOT the democratic thing to do.

Arafat was an evil man. Not only did he reject an genuine offer of a two-state solution for peace, but his bretheren has rejected such a solution at least 6 times over the last 120 years: The Balfour Declaration of 1917, The Peel Plan for Partition in 1938, the UN Proposal for the Division of Palestine in 1948, the Israeli offer in 1967 to fully implement UN resolution 242 and exchange the West Bank for Peace [rejected by the Palestinians], the Oslo Peace Process of the 1990s, the Camp David Accord of 2000. In each instance, the Palestinians were offered statehood in exchange for peace, and each time the Palestinians responded with violence. The Palestinians, and Arafat, have never wanted Peace, and still do not want it, but rather have desired nothing more than to drive the Israelis into the sea.

As long as elements of the radical left hold onto this propoganda that the Israelis are anything but victims of the situation, they are doomed to be the laughing stock in the marketplace of ideas.

For once, I agree with you 100%. The New York Times today had a glowing portrait of Arafat, and a damning report on the Ashcroft Justice Department. It's nice to know that there are some reasonable liberals out there who don't make this equivocation. Bravo.

I might be on the fence, but it's nice to see some debate here, though we can do without the name calling, Seriously. Arafat was a terrorist, but he supported a worthy cause. Palestinians deserve to have some land to call their own and govern on their own. However, they do not have the right to kill Israeli (or any other) civilians to acheive that goal. As I noted however, Arafat was a terrorist. The ends do not justify the means. Had he decided to take on the Israeli army and government, I might have a different opinion of him. In that case he would be fighting a war of independence against soldiers who knew what they were getting into. But this is not the route he chose. Nothing excuses killing civilians. Period.

There was never, and will never be a right of return for Palestinians. Their leaders will not admit this, but at some point they must. Israel must cede back some of the territories, but not back to pre-1967 or even further. Palenstinian leaders need to take what is offered now because it is only going to get smaller. They need to refocus their energies on problems within, because Israel is not going away.

I wish Israel had conducted itself better during this struggle, but they have acted like terrorists and butchers at times as well. They too have killed innocent civilians in the name of safety.

The truth of the matter is that both sides have behaved horribly, and there should be an acknowledgement of that. If that can be agreed upon and then moved past, maybe some progress can be made. As long as each side focuses on what the other side did in the past, the peace progress will go nowhere.

Good job Andrew. Yasser Arafat was only a hindrance to a long delayed peace process. To the person who posts as Seriously: if you're going to use such offensive and inflamatory language on this blog, you should identify yourself. You look like an ass when you rip into Andrew anonymously.

Oh, and BOR isn't a right- wing rag. Quite to the contrary its a left wing rag...

utlaw guy weighs in with intelligent, rational points. No name calling for you.

BOR is absolutely not a right-wing rag. It's not really a left-wing rag, either - more of a center rag. And that's just fine. The right-wing rag I was referring to, though, is the other publication Andrew writes for.

Glad to see the debate. As for the Arafat debate, I'm not quite as anti-Arafat as Andrew. I think that Arafat had the opportunity in the late 1990s to redeem himself for his past misdeeds in the peace talks with Clinton and Barak, but he took the best deal the Palestinian people had received in decades, and said it wasn't enough. That's where he loses all respect in my book. He ended the process, was responsible for (or did nothing to stop) the violence over the past years leading to the election of a right-winger in Israel (Sharon).

Some will argue that Arafat was perhaps the most moderate of a leader that the Palestinians could have hoped for, but over the past 4-5 years he's been completely useless, so while I'm skeptical as always, it's good that someone else will have a chance to possibly restart the peace process.

As for Andrew... he WORKS for the Texas Democratic Party, so its hard to call to see how you can call him a Republican.

Overall, we're definitely a Democratic blog. On most issues we lean left, but on some we're probably more conflicted about. I agree with Andrew that I think that the Palestinian sympathizers on the left are bad for the image of the left. Yes, I support a Palestinian state, but not untill they have reasonable leadership that can control their people and their terrorist organizations like Hamas.

Byron hit the nail on the head. A Palestinian state is a viable and attainable solution to the current crisis. However, while Arafat was in the picture, there was NO way that the peace process was going forward. This is a man who was given 95% of what he wanted, and he walked away and escalated the violence. There would be no peace with Israel while he was alive.

utlawguy makes the point that both sides have committed atrocities, killing innocent civilians. It is true that there is blood on both sides' hands. However, to me, the difference lies in the fact that the Israeli government did not deliberately target civilians. They did not walk into a pizza shop or a nightclub with bombs strapped to themselves. Once the PLO and the other Palestinian freedom organizations began deliberately targeting civilians in their attacks, they lost all credibility with me.

A lot of you are missing the point I made. From the mid 70s until the early 1980s, Arafat was the dictator over much of Lebanon. During this time, his police/military/terrorist forces murdered more than 100,000 people. Some accounts describe men being dragged into the street and forced to watch as their wives and daughters were raped before being shot. He ordered these sorts of things, he orchestrated a massive genocide. That puts him in the ranks of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Milosevic. No ammount of peace negotiations (which he sabotaged), no ammount of good behavior can forgive and make up for genocide. I am sorry if I am mad, but anger is just about the only feeling one can have towards this butcher.

Mr. Keene, good to see you again. Email me at my work email- adobbs@txdemocrats.org sometime. I'd like to hear from you.

OK, Arafat is a terrorist murderer. But "Adolf" Ariel Sharon is murdering war criminal that ought to be rotting in a jail cell in the Hague. Folks there is NO high road in this conflict. Arafat-bashing without bashing Israel for their policies on the Palestinians since their inception is hypocrisy as is the reverse. While I believe Israel has more than just a right to exist, that right does not give them the right to genocide of another set of people.

Let's look at this conflict removed from the context of Israel vs Palestine and put it into the context of something closer to home. Suppose the Mexico decided it wished to reassert its ownership of Texas and attacks the US to reclaim their rightful land. The US counterinvades, driving Mexico back out of Texas and decides to have a reunification of Coahuila y Tejas, occupies the Mexican State of Coahuila, destroys Mexican cities in the region forcing refugees out into other areas of the state to live in exposure until they can build earthen homes and later more permenant structures for themselves. America occupies the region with troops that harass Mexican children into throwing rocks at them, an act the American forces respond to with live and rubber bullets. The World is virtually unainmous in it condemnation of the US's actions. The US responds to the rest of the world with "fuck you." After 25 years, the US declares it has unilaterally annexed Coahuila as part of Texas, an act the world once again condemns and no one recognizes. The US maintains the people of Coahuila in this barely sustainable refugee state for 60 years, heavily restricts the movement and travel of the refugees to extremely disjoint areas while moving in thousands on thousands of American settlers assuming ownership of the best land in the region, land that once and properly belongs to the refugees. The Americans also arm the settlers with automatic weapons available only to the military in the rest of the US and begin to fracture the refugee areas further with a separating wall. The world comdemns the move and the World Court declares the wall a violation of international law. The US responds "fuck you." In the above, would you blame Mexicans for committing terrorist acts to regain what they see as their land? Wouldn't you think the US is acting badly, and in clear violation of international law?

Israel is committing what is tantomount to genocide. They are stealing land, displacing the inhabitants, resettling the land with their own people. Israel regularly attacks civilian areas just to kill one or two terrorists and if a few civilians die, who cares. They were Palestinians after all. They fire rockets from helicopter gunships at old men in wheelchairs. They use automatic weapons against teenagers throwing rocks. As much as Arafat was the scum of the earth, Israel has not been any better. Were it not for the Holocaust, Israel would be viewed as yet another Nazi Germany.

A solution was nearly found that would have allowed both sides to start up the high rode and toward a genuine peace. Arafat didn't railroad that process as much as the rise of religious extremism on both sides did. Yitzak Rabin's assassination by a Jewish extremist and the rise of Islamic extremism prevented a middle ground. Extremists in Israel only made the problem worse when they rewarded Sharon for causing the latest intifada (by committing the cultural equivalent of Yasser Arafat knocking the Pope to the ground and urinating on him) by voting in the fundamentalist Likuds which prompted even more extremist reaction from the fundamentalist elements among the Palestinians. In the long term, Peace in the region is benefitted by Arafat's death, but only if it is accompanied by Israel getting rid of Sharon. Otherwise extremism will remain and the short term struggle to replace Arafat will only create another terrorist leader for the Palestinians committed to extremist views. Rabin's death sent us down this road, Arafat's offers a detour, but only is Israel is willing to take it.

First off, Israel exists. It exists because the British screwed up during the Holocaust by not letting Jews flee to Palestine and thousands died because they couldn't find any place that would take them. After the war the Brits handed the area over to the UN, who tried to bring all parties to the table to negotiate a fair partition of the land. Jews had lived in this area for centuries, and a large population had emigrated there in the 19th century- even with the consent of the Arabs. The UN drew maps very favorable to the Palestinians- unifying the already predominantly Jewish areas and letting Palestinians live where they always had. The Arabs refused to do any negotiating, they refused to have any Jewish authority in the region simply because they were Jewish. As a result, the UN drew the lines without their input, but still kept the partition relatively favorable to the Palestinians, and granted the land to a new government- the State of Israel. This is a completely legitimate way to create a government and the Israelis have an absolute right to be there. Arabs feared retaliation and also feared being in the way of an invasion by neighboring Arab states, so they fled their homes of their own accord. Now they seek to take back the land they abandoned because they hate Jews more than they love their own homeland.

But even if you don't agree with that, the state has existed for 56 years now. The people there were born there, raised there and now they have a legitimate claim to the land- even if you hold the ludicrous position that they didn't in the first place. Now, various groups of radical, anti-Democratic, fascistic Palestinian terrorists seek to kill Jews and take their land back by force. Ariel Sharon and the Israeli government have an absolute and sacred right to defend their own people by any means necessary. When a government or group supported by a governing body attacks and kills your people, you have a right to retaliate. The Israelis are doing just that by retaliating against suicide bombers, killing terrorist leaders and keeping potential suicide bombers and terrorists out of their country. A nation has a right to decide who comes into their country and to retaliate against those who do it harm- even to the point of invasion and occupation of the offending party. Israel is exercising this right in its actions.

And you still haven't acknowledged that in 2000, Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton offered Arafat everything he ever wanted- the basic borders of a Palestinian homeland he had demanded for 12 years at that point, control of much of Jerusalem and shared control of the Temple Mount and reparations for Palestinian refugees. And don't bring up "did you see the borders???", as this was the starting point- he could negotiate the details within this framework. He rejected all of this- he didn't want a Palestinian state, he wanted the end of Israel.

So in the end, Israel had a right to exist in the first place. The Palestinians gave up their homes and left because of pervasive anti-Semitism fanned by neighboring Soviet client states. The Israelis have a right to defend themselves and retaliate against the offending parties and Arafat rejected the best peace offer ever made in this conflict. Arafat is clearly the worse of the two and there is no equivalence between Islamofascist terrorists killing innocent Israelis and Israel defending themselves against further attack.

I want to express my total agreement with Andrew postings here. Arafat was a terrorist who proved time and time again that he was not interested in peace and was not interested in his own people. He wasted every single opportunity he had to make peace and agree on a final settlement; not only that, every time that he rejected a deal, he resorted to more violence and terrorism.
Not only are there those stories that Andrew commented, but several ones of corruption and criminal associations.
It is really frustrating to listen to those 'enlightened' self described leftist intellectuals comparing Israel to Nazi Germany or any other tyrannical regime.
I don't agree with Craig's analogy of Mexico vs United States. It is simply a mischaracterization, since in that case, the United States survival would not be even in question. When Israel was born, it was attacked by six fully trained and equipped armies simultaneously. Israel has been attacked by other countries, with more powerful armies, several times in its short history. The official policy of most of these countries was the 'destruction' of the state of Israel, not just taking back some lands. This is still the official policy of Iran.
Israel was ready to give back those lands in exchange for permanent peace - Arafat rejected it. Israel has been in favor of the two state solution - Arafat blew it.
There is new hope now.

Andrew and LBJ, I'm not questioning Israel right to defend themselves and their territory. I'm questioning their free pass for genocide because of the Holocaust. Israel has made peace with Egypt and Jordan. It has the superior force to repeal a invasion by Syria or Lebanon. It has the air superiority to strike Iran should that be necessary. This isn't a question of Israel defending itself from sovereign neighbors with standing armies. This is a question of Israel continuing to not just occupy land that NO ONE IN THE WORLD RECOGNIZES AS ISRAELI TERRITORY, but also their settlement of their people onto the land so they can in a few generations time lay greater claim that it is their land.

Just as the Israelis have the right to defend themselves and their territory, the Palestinians have the right to defend themselves and their territory. The problem is there is an unresolved question as to the ownership of the territory. NO ONE RECOGNIZES ISRAEL'S ANNEXATION OF GAZA AND THE WEST BANK. Neither is part of Israel. Hence the name "occupied territory."

If some came to your homeland 60 years ago, kicking out your grandfather and his family, exiling you, forcing you to live in refugee camps for 40 years, don't you think their might be a little animosity? Don't you think that there is a case to be made (and I'm not necessarily making it, only playing devil's advocate here) that when these exiled refugees fight back against the occupying country, they are fighting for their freedom? All things being equal, Israel is in no position to be to be described as defending themselves except in attacks in Israel proper. Attacks on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza cannot be termed as such. Attacks on Israeli checkpoints and military installations in the West Bank and Gaza cannot be termed as such.

I am not condoning terrorism. I am not condoning attacks on innocent civilians. But the nasty fact remains that Israel has spent almost 40 years in the occupied territories make life a living hell for the Palestinians that lived there before and the Palestinians that were either driven from Israel or choose to leave because they were in a freaking war zone. Can you imagine some civilian thinking "The Israeli army is marching into my town killing every Arab in sight, but by golly I better stay put and not flee because if I leave, they will say I abandoned by home and have no right to return." Get serious.

Just look at the Arabs (Jewish, Muslim and Christian) that did stay. Some 20% of Israel's citizens are these Arab Israelis. Out of the 120 member Knesset, Arab Israelis have a grand total of 5 seats. That's a shade over 4% but far short of the 24 they would be expected to get. How is that possible? Aside from the possibility that there is some DeLayian gerrymandering, the most obvious is that a significant portion of those 20% can't vote, can't hold public office, can't own land and can't serve in the military. They are Israeli citizens, but I use that term loosely because some Israeli citizens are more equal than others. South Africa had a similiar system. We called it Apartheid and it was scorned the world over. The U.S. had a similiar de facto system. We called it segregation.

Yes Arafat blew it. But so did Sharon and to a lesser extent Barak, though like Rabin, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Barak. Sharon took a situation where we had a stall in the talk, but still a relatively peaceful coexistence between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and sparked this Intifada by quite purposfully stirring up controversy with his visit to the top of the Temple Mount.

Talk about over the top comments...