{"id":735,"date":"2005-03-01T05:15:15","date_gmt":"2005-03-01T05:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:02","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:02","slug":"they_pull_you_b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=735","title":{"rendered":"They Pull You Back In…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m a weak human being; I had walked away from ill-informed academic Juan Cole<\/a>, assuming that there was nothing he could say that would make me think any less of his views.<\/p>\n

In fact, this doesn’t really make me think less of him, but it does highlight the difference in our views of the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update: Al-Jazeerah is reporting that the Lebanese Opposition is now calling for the big demonstrations at Martyrs’ Square to continue until all Syrian troops leave Lebanese soil.<\/p>\n

\nYou wonder what would happen if the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza tried the same thing re: Ariel Sharon’s military occupation that they face. They’d be crushed by the jackboot (with convenient allegations that they were a front for terrorism).<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is just risible.
\nNo democratic government – no liberal government – since World War II has been able to withstand peaceful demonstrations for community or national rights. The will to oppress just isn’t deep enough.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t the North Vietnamese military that ended the war; it was the monks who killed themselves protesting the regime(s) in South Vietnam that we were supporting and inspired the demonstrations here in the US and in Europe.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t the violence of the Sepoy Revolt that freed India, but the Salt March. And in fact, had there been a reprise of the Sepoy Revolt and the slaughter of English colonial bureaucrats and their families, India’s freedom would doubtless have been delayed.<\/p>\n

I do not for a moment believe that a democratic Israel could have maintained the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in the face of a determined, pacifistic Palestinian movement.<\/p>\n

Among other things, the level of moral and political maturity necessary for the Palestinians to create and sustain such a movement suggests that there is some political readiness to actually govern in some way that does not involve a lot of murders in the dead of night.<\/p>\n

Cole is so convinced of the evil of the Israeli government and people that he can’t imagine that; to him, they stand as peers to the B’aath dictators who shelled Hama and executed the civilian population – Cole cites<\/a> 10,000 dead, but virtually all<\/a> the accounts<\/a> I have found<\/a> suggest that the number was between 20,000 and 40,000.<\/p>\n

And there’s the gap. Let’s do a thought experiment… <\/p>\n

Imagine if you would a Middle East in which, say, Syria enjoyed the military advantage currently enjoyed by Israel. Give them air superiority, a high-tech army, and heck, you can even toss in nuclear weapons. Ask yourself what the Middle East would look like?<\/p>\n

If you think it would look anything like it does today, you might want to go stand next to Professor Cole. I’ll be on the other side of the room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a weak human being; I had walked away from ill-informed academic Juan Cole, assuming that there was nothing he could say that would make me think any less of his views. In fact, this doesn’t really make me think less of him, but it does highlight the difference in our views of the world. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}