Comments on: Mumbai and Jewish Jihadis

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:40:55 +0000

@J.R.: Typically, you’ll see that J.R. is obsessed by Jew-hatred, but has no awareness or acknowledgement that Jews & Israelis are no less infected with this disease. And to say it is irrational is foolish. It may appear pathological or insane or whatever. But it has a basis in reality. There are concrete, real ways to diminish such hatred which I’ve mentioned repetitively here. I am not in any way justifying terror or hatred. But there are rational ways of draining the swamp so that the infestation will end.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:24:56 +0000

@J.R.: Really, this is beyond stupid. You found one Muslim source which purports to support yr notion that jihad cannot be used in Islam to denote physical struggle. Big deal. I can point to 20 that confirm my interpretation. What does this prove?

This argument over the meaning of jihad is over. Get off this topic. Any further posting on this will not be published.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:16:40 +0000

@J.R.: I agree with yr GENERAL comments about terror. But you are completely & unsurprisingly myopic in refusing to concede that Jews can be & are terrorists as well. This in effect cancels any insight you might have into the general issues surrounding terror.

I deeply resent your calling my naming of Jews as terrorist as hillul hashem & if you use that term again in this context you will no longer be welcome here. That is a deeply hateful calumny against me. Jews are terrorists. Not all Jews. But some are. Yr refusal to acknowledge this renders you a rather pathetic apologist rather than a dispassionate observer of terror.

By: Peter D

Peter D — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:33:38 +0000

Re: your first point, I’ll clarify: “taking fuel from the flame” would be a nice side-effect but should never be the primary motivation in this case. That’s what I meant.
Re: your second point, I don’t think RS would argue with that either. Nor would I. But while we have little influence on Palestinian internal politics, our main influence and responsibility lies with our own and that’s why RS doesn’t spend hours promoting peaceful ideas on Islamist forums or whatever.

By: Alex Stein

Alex Stein — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:51:57 +0000

You argue that solving Israel-Palestine will take some of the fuel from the flame (I agree), yet you also say you reject the notion that we need to solve Israel-Palestine in order to solve anything “but the abomination of the situation in Israel-Palestine itself.” Which is it?
Just because I use the shorthand Islamic terrorism, it doesn’t mean I accept that Hamas and Lashkar-e-Taiba, for example, are the same. I’ve never made that claim. But I’d also say it’s naive – as Richard seems to do on some occasions – to reduce Hamas to a movements with purely political demands, or demands that have only been forged in the fires of a nationalist conflict. Again, no doubt Israel bears some responsibility for all this, but that doesn’t alter its current reality, nor does it make Israel the only party capable of dealing with it now.

By: Peter D

Peter D — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:32:38 +0000

I don’t remember reading Richard saying we will “solve the problem of Islamic terrorism by solving Israel-Palestine” – if anything, he says – and I concur – is that it (a) will take some of the fuel from the flame and (b) that the phrase “Islamic terrorism” itself is largely a chimera – a convenient image to scare us into believing that Hamas and Mumbai terrorists, for example, are all the same, while in reality each case is to its own, its own unique motivations. You say you don’t subscribe to the notion of the “clash of civilizations” but the catch-all phrase of “Islamic terrorism” comes from basically the same book.
Finally, I reject the notion that we need to “solve Israel-Palestine” in order to solve anything but the abomination of the situation in Israel-Palestine itself. (It is like saying that we need to fight poverty so that poor people have less motivation to steal and not because poverty is a bad thing in itself.) All the rest is distraction, equivocation, rationalization etc.

By: Alex Stein

Alex Stein — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:01:09 +0000

Well – for one thing, it means that we can’t just solve the problem of Islamic terrorism by solving Israel-Palestine (although obviously we should endeavour to solve that in any case, regardless of the externals).

By: Peter D

Peter D — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:58:32 +0000

Alex, maybe. Again, the situation is such a hypothetical one that I right now can’t find the mental resource to care one way or another. So, suppose we agree that Mumbai terrorists were anti-Semites, racists, whatever. How does that change anything? Same question to you, Richard. So what if their hatred of Jews is inspired by Israel’s actions? Should we be scoring any point from that? I mean, the same Israel’s actions are wrong regardless of whether some lunatics decide to kill people “because of them”, just as these killings are indefensible regardless of whatever twisted motivation.