Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
News
Original poster

Interesting how we've only just discovered Arab despotism

35 replies

granted · 04/02/2011 21:06

In the interests of balance, re the 'rabbis' thread, I thought this shed an interestig light on the fact that whilst stories about Israeli abuses are published almost non-stop, we in the west, have apparently only just discovered, along with the recent protests, that actually the govts in Egypt, Jordan, etc weren't very nice either - to their own people.

Food for thought:

www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/how-the-hard-left-by-focu_b_817506.html

OP posts:
Original poster
granted · 05/02/2011 10:32

Kurkum- waiting to hear your comments on this thread.

Or is your attitude as one-sided as your thread title would suggest?

OP posts:
backwash · 05/02/2011 11:22

granted - i just mentioned the same thing on another thread but i also added lebanon, they haven't been nice to the poor sods (palestinians) either....

ZZZenAgain · 05/02/2011 11:26

I've lived in a couple of Arab countries so I didn't have to discover it. I remember that it felt very controlled

BadgersPaws · 05/02/2011 13:30

We've been funding Arab and Persian Despots for years and continue to do so, it's not a recent discovery.

Rhadegunde · 05/02/2011 13:33

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

begonyabampot · 05/02/2011 14:57

I must admit I was surprised - i admit I wasn't that educated about Egyptian politics but Egypt did seem to be one of the arab/ME countries that gave off an air of having it more together, secular, open, religious freedom etc. Quite hypocritical that our governments who are supposed to be for Democracy was happy to collude in this dictatorship. I can see why for some control and stability in the region but still hypocritical.

donnie · 05/02/2011 22:41

what do you mean, 'we'?

speak for yourself, OP.

Original poster
granted · 06/02/2011 10:53

No, donnie, I think I've known it for a long while - I was generously speaking for the likes of kurkum, to whom all the evils in the Middle East can be laid entirely at Israel's door.

Of course, the reality is - as reality tends to be - rather more complex.

OP posts:
donnie · 06/02/2011 20:03

I am sure the poster in question is able to speak for him/herself. Also, starting threads to have a dig at someone on a different thread is a bit weird IMO.

Rhadegunde · 06/02/2011 20:12

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

HerBeX · 06/02/2011 20:16

What d'you mean we've only just discovered it?

We discover it every time we want a war with one of them

donnie · 06/02/2011 20:31

Rhadegunde: The OP started this thread to get at Kirkum. God knows why but it's boring anyhow.

Original poster
granted · 07/02/2011 21:21

Why don't you let kurkun speak for themselves?

I'm sure s/he is capable of that without any help from you, donnie.

I started the thread in order to get a bit of balance on the Middle East in this forum,as kurkun's thread seemed deliberately misleading. I you see that as 'weird', then that's your problem. I see it as fair.

Still waiting for kurkun to reply - I replied on his/her thread, and I'd be interested to see his/her views here.

OP posts:
Original poster
granted · 07/02/2011 21:22

Should be 'If you see that as weird' - damn sticky keyboard...

OP posts:
scaryteacher · 08/02/2011 10:25

Seems to me that if the countries surrounding Israel had wanted to solve the Palestinian problem they could have done a long time ago, by taking in the Palestinians and integrating them or each country granting them a place to settle.

AlpinePony · 08/02/2011 20:11

Only an idiot would think these countries have been led by anything else. Although, I am continuously amazed by how little people (on mn) know of what's going on outside the M25. :(

littleducks · 08/02/2011 20:19

'Seems to me that if the countries surrounding Israel had wanted to solve the Palestinian problem they could have done a long time ago, by taking in the Palestinians and integrating them or each country granting them a place to settle.'

Then they would have let the israelis who stole the land win and the whole world will have forgotten their crime. Why should the palestinians give up their claim to the land, their heritage, their birth rite?

Kurkum · 08/02/2011 21:12

"I was generously speaking for the likes of kurkum" -- granted

?!? What is that supposed to mean? When have I ever defended the Middle East's puppet leaders? When have I ever suggested that I am ignorant of their horrific abuses against their own people?

The fact is that Israel and the USA have been propping up these puppet leaders for decades, so I'm not sure what point you were trying to make.

Original poster
granted · 09/02/2011 10:53

Glad to hear you agree that the wrongs in the Middle East are not only committed by Israel, as your other thread seemed to suggest.

What do you think about the point that others have made in this thread, that the plight of the Palestinians could have been massively improved by their Arab neighbours, had they chosen to, but who instead chose to let the Palestinians suffer, for reasons unstated?

OP posts:
scaryteacher · 09/02/2011 14:00

I thought that Israel was created post WWII by the allied powers/UN as reparation for the Holocaust? So, they committed a crime, not the Israelis surely?.

I also think that it suits the US and Europe to have a 'friendly' nation right where Israel is as a defence against militant Islam and a distraction for those countries around it.

Of course, if the nations surrounding Israel had taken in and sheltered and integrated the Palestinians, they wouldn't have had a stick to beat Israel with now would they?

Kurkum · 09/02/2011 16:22

SO you are arguing that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionists was perfectly acceptable? Nothing wrong with brutally murdering babies with sticks and driving out 700,000 innocent Palestinians from their homeland? The blame lies with the Jordanians and the Lebanese for not making room for them, does it?

Have you read about the Jewish witness testimony to the 1948 Nakbah? By the way, are you Jewish yourselves? I ask only because I notice the usual Israeli-Jewish Zionist propaganda rearing its head on this thread.

AlpinePony · 09/02/2011 16:32

I am Jewish.

You seem to be making a schoolboy error in confusing being Jewish with being Zionist.

daisyj · 09/02/2011 16:39

I am Jewish too, and I am really saddened that it's only taken about 20 posts for this to descend into the usual tit-for-tat. Shades of grey, people, shades of grey. It's the black-and-white laying of all the fault at the door of each side by the other that has the region in the mess that it is

Kurkum · 09/02/2011 17:07

AlpinePony:
I don't confuse being Jewish with being Zionist. But most non-Jews can see through official Israeli propaganda.

As a matter of fact, I first learnt about the horrific conditions imposed on the Palestinians from Jewish Israelis, some of them Zionist, some not.

daisyj:
So what exactly is grey about ethnic cleansing? And what do you expect from a thread whose very title is sarcastic?

daisyj · 09/02/2011 17:33

It's not the fact that you refer to what any sane person would agree was an horrific and shamefully brutal episode in Israel's past that I object to, it's the deliberately inflammatory reference to 'the usual Israeli-Jewish Zionist propaganda' that I find hateful. Why can't people say what they have to say without resorting to insult and generalisation?

Swipe left for the next trending thread