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From the department of understatement:
“As human beings, all of us wish to see a resolution,” he [Richard Branson] said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Because if you don’t have a resolution, I think something ghastly could happen one day…
One day? Try TODAY. Wake up Mr. B., the ‘ghastly’ happens every day. You just don’t have an opportunity to see it. Maybe you should try to spend a day in Gaza or waiting at a checkpoint.
But I should at least give Branson credit for traveling to Israel and the West Bank with the Elders (which includes Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter, and Mary Robinson among others) and for funding their efforts.
Tags: Mideast Peace
Intimate and brutal civil war (among Israeli and Palestinian homes, widely) is his horror.
Your point that it is already at/in many Palestinians’ homes is well taken.
Richard Witty, you really are some piece of work!
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What is WRONG with that guy? “Something ghastly” has been happening for more than six decades now, and it just keeps getting ghastlier and ghastlier.
“Your point that it is already at/in many Palestinians’ homes is well taken.”
You missed this line?
Why do you bother reading at all?
No, I did not miss that line. It is your insistence upon characterizing of a brutal and oppressive occupation and theft of land by one party over another as an “intimate civil war” that I was responding to.
Do you also characterize the Warsaw Ghetto conflict in that way?
By the way, “that guy” is not you, in case there was some misunderstanding.
Witty does this all the time Shirin.
Removing Jewish colonists from the OT = Ethnic cleansing.
The Qassam rockets which killed 12 people in 8 years up to the Gaza massacre = bombardment and shelling.
He constantly equates both sides (Palestinians and Israelis) while simultaneously focusing on Hamas’s crimes and whitewashing Israel’s.
Then to finish up he’ll resort to the typical obfuscations with abstract rhetoric. Nothing ever concrete.
If he DOES happen to cite a source or present facts, it’s almost always off-handedly. A one-liner here or there.
Nothing substantiated.
This is all due to HIS (and not anyone else’s, although they surely possess the same faults) ideological rigidity.
Witty point-scores – but since we’re so used to him, and he’s so unoriginal and incapable of introspection – he will never adapt (with the same goal of promoting Israel and diverting debate) or reconcile what he says w/ what we say.
LD, I basically agree with the content of your post and your assessment, but you let yourself get too worked up over Witty, it’s not worth the effort or grief. He is a good obfuscator, but I’ve come to the conclusion it really isn’t his fault. I think his mind just comes at things from a very removed, abstracted sort of space, the concrete on-the-ground reality of this “conflict” is totally lost on him.
The ofuscation and distraction work because people respond to him so much, excessively imo, so that even though he isn’t a troll (I agree w/Richard, and even think he is well-meaning), a troll-like diversionary effect happens.
I agree that Richard Witty is sincere and well-meaning, and is by no means a troll.
I view Witty as a whetting stone. He forces us to sharpen our arguments. He generally doesn’t present arguments that are terribly articulate or original (which is unfortunate), but he still manages to keep us on our toes.