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The Mahatma or the Machine Gun?

Murder of one kind cannot necessarily be resolved through murders of another kind. An eye for eye and the entire world goes blind as the Mahatma put it. The concept of diminishing returns does apply to armed struggles of various kinds and it is important to recognize the turning point when it comes turning through any movement and its soul.

And that is precisely the stage we are at after more than half a century of the Palestinian struggle for independence from Israeli occupation. There is so much of hatred and venom on both sides now that neither can hope for any kind of ‘victory’ that will give their people peace and happiness or even true independence treading the current path of action.

Satya Sagar examines the pros and cons of violence and non-violence in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

6 thoughts on “The Mahatma or the Machine Gun?

  1. “And that is precisely the stage we are at after more than half a century of the Palestinian struggle for independence from Israeli occupation.”
    Half a century??? Someone needs to remind ol’ Satya who exactly was in control of the Wes Bank and Gaza between 1948 and 1967….

  2. “An eye for an eye” may be one of the most misunderstood phrases on the planet. It was almost immediately interpreted to mean monetary compensation for an eye. To executed someone for murder according to Jewish law you needed three actual interest to the murder.
    Now that I’ve got that out of the way. The Palestinians did not need to resort to violence to get their own state. Arafat could have signed the Taba agreement. It seems that Arafat wanted a state obtained throught blood. I just finished Dennis Ross’s book and all the Palestinian negotiators agreed at Taba, but not Arafat.
    No one did more to get Arafat elected than Arafat. The violence that erupted in the face of Arafat’s rejection decimated the Israeli left and got Sharon elected. Israel is a democracy, but the Palestinians seems incapable of affecting public opinion.

  3. The suicide bombers are from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Theses two organizations are not trying to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They want to end Israel’s existence and replace it with an Islamic state either without Jews or the Jewish population subjected to dhimmi status. They have a virulent hatred of ALL Jews everywhere.
    Hamas and Islamic Jihad literature is full of classic Western anti-Semitism. They don’t seem to care that these ideas all originated in Western Christian Europe. The Hamas leadership believes that the Holocaust never happened. It was all a faked Zionist Conspiracy, according to them. They print and quote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery created by the Czar’s secret police force.

  4. Satya is wrong.
    Palestinian victory is only around the corner. Aliyah has dropped off, Israelis are leaving, a supposedly right-wing government is carrying out meretz left-wing policy, the supreme court cares more about Arab access to land than Jewish lives, the state attorney stops a high-speed rail-link to Jerusalem because it goes over the imaginary green-line, and the right-wing and religious are facing increased demonization about them being responsible for ‘incitement’ and death threats.
    On the other hand, Israeli victory is only one speech away. A speech that Sharon could have made after the dolphinarium, or any massacre thereafter. One speech and Israeli government finally discussing where we want to go, and how Israeli is not leaving one inch of land, ever. A speech where our leaders declare that we will not surrender to Arab terror and that they should stop killing us or we build more.

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