Dismantling The Cliche Network
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JoeUser Forums
There is no conflict in the world which generates as much verbal diarrhoea as the Israel/Palestinian one. Biased, blatantly pro-Zionist phrases such as "period of calm", "no partner", and "window of opportunity" masquerade as neutral discourse. In fact these cliches serve to reinforce an Israel-centric view of the conflict.
For example, there is a "period of calm" when Palestinians are being killed but when there are casualties on both sides it is a "cycle of violence". Dead Arabs makes for calm but, add some dead Israelis and all of a sudden it's violent.
When Arafat was alive there was "no partner" with whom the Israelis could negotiate because the old man was "an obstacle to peace". Surely the Palestinians, confronted by an adversary who went on building settlements after signing a peace treaty, had a better claim to Bridget Jones status.
Following Arafat's demise there was then excited chatter about a "window of opportunity" as if the conflict was his fault, rather than the inevitable result of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Should Israel's evacuation of Gaza go according to plan then we may witness the revival of the hoariest and oldest chestnut of the lot, the "crackdown on terror". It is possible that Israel's disengagement will be followed by a conflagration on the Gaza border. Israel will launch an "incursion" into the Strip and Hamas will reply by firing rockets on Sderot. Or maybe it will be the other way round. I don't know, but I do know that if this happens, it will be labeled a "cycle of violence".
In any case, having ended its latest invasion, Israel will then call on Mahmoud Abbas to "crack down on terror", closely followed by a demand to "dismantle the network of terror", as if Hamas was an item of furniture purchased from Ikea. I would not die of shock if I heard senior politicians in the US parroting this absurd line.
Like the previous cliches, the "crackdown" one is pro-Zionist in character since it assumes that Abbas' first responsibility is to Israel's security rather than to that of his own people. As ever, a Palestinian leader will be expected to act like a prison governor.
Furthermore, to expect the feeble Palestinian Authoruty (PA) to be able to put the Islamists out of business is ludicrous. Israel, with the Middle East's mightiest army, has been hammering away at Hamas for half a decade. Yet the group remains very much "un-dismantled", its capacity to inflict pain still intact and its appeal growing each time Israel kills one of its leaders.
Any rational person would conclude from this that the conflict is political and that the solution must therefore also be political. In such a context military force only serves to make a bad situation much worse. But even if one refuses to accept this point (which seems to me to be blindingly obvious) the crackdown on terror tendency are still left with a huge iceberg-shaped rip in the hull of their argument.
If Israel, with all its helicopters and tanks, can't destroy Hamas, then how can the PA do it with nothing more than land rovers and AK-47s?
For example, there is a "period of calm" when Palestinians are being killed but when there are casualties on both sides it is a "cycle of violence". Dead Arabs makes for calm but, add some dead Israelis and all of a sudden it's violent.
When Arafat was alive there was "no partner" with whom the Israelis could negotiate because the old man was "an obstacle to peace". Surely the Palestinians, confronted by an adversary who went on building settlements after signing a peace treaty, had a better claim to Bridget Jones status.
Following Arafat's demise there was then excited chatter about a "window of opportunity" as if the conflict was his fault, rather than the inevitable result of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Should Israel's evacuation of Gaza go according to plan then we may witness the revival of the hoariest and oldest chestnut of the lot, the "crackdown on terror". It is possible that Israel's disengagement will be followed by a conflagration on the Gaza border. Israel will launch an "incursion" into the Strip and Hamas will reply by firing rockets on Sderot. Or maybe it will be the other way round. I don't know, but I do know that if this happens, it will be labeled a "cycle of violence".
In any case, having ended its latest invasion, Israel will then call on Mahmoud Abbas to "crack down on terror", closely followed by a demand to "dismantle the network of terror", as if Hamas was an item of furniture purchased from Ikea. I would not die of shock if I heard senior politicians in the US parroting this absurd line.
Like the previous cliches, the "crackdown" one is pro-Zionist in character since it assumes that Abbas' first responsibility is to Israel's security rather than to that of his own people. As ever, a Palestinian leader will be expected to act like a prison governor.
Furthermore, to expect the feeble Palestinian Authoruty (PA) to be able to put the Islamists out of business is ludicrous. Israel, with the Middle East's mightiest army, has been hammering away at Hamas for half a decade. Yet the group remains very much "un-dismantled", its capacity to inflict pain still intact and its appeal growing each time Israel kills one of its leaders.
Any rational person would conclude from this that the conflict is political and that the solution must therefore also be political. In such a context military force only serves to make a bad situation much worse. But even if one refuses to accept this point (which seems to me to be blindingly obvious) the crackdown on terror tendency are still left with a huge iceberg-shaped rip in the hull of their argument.
If Israel, with all its helicopters and tanks, can't destroy Hamas, then how can the PA do it with nothing more than land rovers and AK-47s?
