Move over Disney, Martyr Mouse is here!Follow

A kids show that urges kids to take up arms? How can Disney hope to compete?

www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/10/mideast.mouse

My god I suck at making links..

Edited, May 10th 2007 5:16pm by FFATMA

Hmm, good idea. I'll try again:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/10/mideast.mouse/

Okies, apparently one does not need to use the URL function to make a link work. Silly me..

Edited, May 10th 2007 5:24pm by FFATMA

Anyone else find it funny they hate the U.S. so much but have to use an American Icon ripoff to get their point across to their children.

i wouldnt be surprised if similar thing was shown here in Serbia,since we know all of the world hates us

You do know that there is a difference between 'Jewish', and 'Zionist', don't you?

Oh! You didn't? Well now you do.

To be fair, he could be referring to *just* the Jews occupying the land Israel "won" in that war a few decades ago, not all Jews.

If you ask the average Iraqi on the streets of Baghdad if he hates 'Americans', the answer would be 'no'.

If you asked him if he hated the Americans who were occupying his country, he would say 'yes'.

Same thing.

The palestinians as a whole dont hate 'jews'. The people of the ME as a whole don't 'hate the jews'. They do 'hate' the occupation and the expulsion of the palestinians that led to it.

IMO.

Absolutely.

Wonder if anyone in the media will bother to tell us....

Which would be relevant if the stir caused by this cartoon wasn't specific to the nation of Israel in the first place. Saying "we don't hate Jews, only the Jews living in Israel" is either irrelevant or contradictory. He's playing semantic games in order to avoid the issue at hand (that he's in fact teaching children to hate the Israelis).

I don't think your US analogy works either. Because in the case of hating Americans in Iraq for example, "Americans" isn't a specific ethnic or religious group. The hatred is specific to the action taken. In the case of Israel, it's not its existence as a nation that upsets the Palestinians, but its existence as a "Jewish" nation that does. It's the Jewish component that is the underlying cause of the hatred.

Some folks in Iraq may hate Americans in Iraq, but not because they are Americans. They'd be equally upset regardless of the nationality involved. The Palestinians are specifically hateful of the Israelis because of their religion. If they weren't Jewish, there likely would never have been any conflict regarding the creation of the nation in the first place and therefore no expulsion, no shuffling of people from one country to another, no loss of land and homes, etc...


At it's very core the conflict is over the fact that the nation of Isreal is a Jewish state. You really can't separate the "jew" from that.

Huh!? When did I do that. I quoted one person. I said that *his* statements were contradictory "doublethink". I never once said or implied that his statement was indicative of Palestinians as a whole, merely that *his* statement belied his own hatreds.



Certainly. Hence the point here. He (Hamas actually) is attempting to create hatred by programming small children to adopt the same views that he has. I thought that was the whole point of this?



Well. If that was vaguely like what happened, you'd have a point. The actual history is that the British Mandate split up the region into sections, one of which was to be controlled by Jews (called Israel). It was in fact the *smallest* of the sections of what was then known as Palestine. Larger sections were split into Jordan and Syria, with a largish section left in what is now Israel as a Palestinian state. What happened was that the Jordanians and the Syrians incited the Arabs living in the two remaining sections to rise up against the Jews (notably purely because they were Jewish since that was the only difference between that section and any other in the region).

Literally on the day the British Mandate ended and the various regions became separate nations, Jordanian and Syrian forces attacked, aided by Arab Palestinians. Isreal was able to hold them off and captured the region that was supposed to be a Palestinian state. Note, this was *after* being attacked. They didn't start it.

Then they came to an agreement with Syria and Jordan. The Jews in Syria and Jordan who wanted to leave would give up their lands and come to Isreal. The Arab Palestinians in what was now Israel who wanted to leave would give up their lands and move to Syria and/or Jordan. The idea was to have a straight swap. What happened screwed over the Palestinians but was *again* not Israel's fault. The Jews left their lands, carried what they could and traveled to Israel. They were given equivalent land there. The Arab Palestinians left their lands in Israel and traveled to Jordan or Syria depending on their choice. Instead of giving them the lands the Jews had given up, those two countries dumped them into camps right along the border of Israel, denying them that which they were promised and making them second class citizens. When they complained and tried to return to Israel, Israel refused to give them their land back (why should they?). Thus began the current day refugee status of many Palestinians.

The bordering nations used those camps as points of contention, stiring up the Palestinians so that they could use them to try to destabilize Israel by handing them arms and kinda pointing them in that direction. Sometime later, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt attacked Israel yet again. Israel was again able to beat them back (with the US's aid). This time, they kept the various bordering territories which had been used against them time and again (those with the Palestinian camps in them, notably the Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and West Bank). Israel's thinking was that this way at least they could somewhat control the weapons and movements within those areas so that they could not use them to stage attacks against Israel so easily (we can debate the correctness of that assumption of course!).

Look. There's a lot of bad blood in this situation. However, it's incredibly simplistic to simply state that Isreal took the land from the Palestinians and tossed them out in the desert. Their current condition is almost entirely the result of their own actions and the actions of the bordering nations of Syria and Jordan. And those actions had 100% to do with the fact that Israel was (and is) a Jewish state.



Absolutely. Again though, the situation and it's history is far more complext then you're implying.



Absolutely not. Several of my co-workers are Palestinian. I'm well aware of their plight and condition. Probably moreso then you. Again though, I was simply pointing out this one man's hatred of Jews, not the Palestinians as a whole.




Of course there are. But that's no reason to excuse hateful statements. I honestly wasn't trying to make any sort of broad statement about the whole Palestinian/Israeli situation in my original post. I was simply pointing out what I saw as an amusing bit of doublespeek on the part of the one guy I quoted. It was such an obvious rationalization for hatred that it just struck me.

Don't read any more into my statement then that. While I'm more then willing to discuss the history of Palestine (and I may have even gotten a couple things misordered in my quick synopsis above), I really wasn't trying to do more then just point out his statement. If you want to discuss the Palestinian situation, I'm game. Just don't assume my position based on an extension of that one statement. You'd be wrong.

I'm sure he would. But he's not running a children's show with a cartoon animal teaching kids to hate Jordanians now is he?



Yes. But the only reason Israel is viewed as an occupying power is *because* they are Jewish. When Israel consisted of less then half the land it has now, it was called an illegal occupying force and attacked. When it defended itself and took a larger chunk it was again called an occupying force and attacked. When it won that war and took yet a few more chunks of land it's *still* called an occupying force.

My suggestion is that even if the borders of Israel consisted of a 1 block square you'd still have people like this guy calling them occupiers and calling for their destruction. At some point you have to acknowledge that the underlying reason why they are called that has very little to do with their actions and everything to do with their religion.

The same British Mandate that gave land to the Jews to form the nation of Israel also gave much large chunks of land to Syria and Jordan. Oddly, you don't see Palestinians attacking those two nations for being occupiers, do you?

They were attacked for being Jewish and having a nation in the Middle East. Period. We can argue about what's happened since then, but the initial start of the conflict had everything to do with the religion of the people involved. Today, Israel is occupying lands that were originally given to Arab Palestinians during that Mandate, but only after they were attacked twice by those same Arab Palestinians. I would also note that the three regions most often complained about (Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza Strip) were *not* originally part of the Palestinian holdings, but were territories from Syria, Jordan, and Eqypt that were taken by Isreal after those nations attacked them. So those areas are occupied, but were not taken from those currently living there, but from those three nations.


Arguably, the plight of the Palestinians is more the result of the actions of Syria and Jordan then those of Israel. Those nations deliberately left them out in crappy border regions so that they could be used as instigators against Israel. That wasn't because of anything Isreal had done, but out of a desire to wipe the Jewish nation from the map and "drive them into the sea". I'm not saying I agree with every action that Isreal has taken, but refusing to acknowledge the overwhelming goal of the Muslim nations to utterly destroy Israel if they can will never help you understand the situation. The Palestinians are pawns in that battle. The sooner you understand that, the sooner the whole conflict will make sense and the sooner you'll realize that simplistic solutions like "give them back their land" wont work. Because Isreal could give every inch of land back, but will still be viewed as an occupier simply because it exists.

When their borders consisted of nothing more then what the British Mandate gave them (which was by far the smallest section btw), they were attacked anyway. For the sake of argument, do you believe that if Israel's borders were changed to match those original borders (every single inch given back to the Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians, and Eqyptians) that this would prevent them from coming under attack?

It didn't before. Why assume that they'd not still come under attack? Thus, the claims that Isreal is an "occupier" are irrelevant. They'll be called that no matter how small their borders are. If there's no point at which they wont be called an occupier and attacked, then why should they give up land as a result of that claim? Show me that there's a point at which the Palestinians will drop their claims on Isreal and stop attacking it, and *then* there's a reson for Isreal to make a deal. Until then, Isreal stands nothing to win by giving anything back.


Is that "nice" of Isreal? Of course not! But they literally cannot afford to be nice here. I think a lot of westerners simply don't understand the do-or-die situation Israel is in. We like to assume that people have a goal to live peacefully with their neighbors. But there are some situations in which that simply does not work. Isreal may very well be "occupiers", but the Palestinians are the "aggressors" here. Until that changes, Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands is their only way to ensure a modicrum of defense against that aggression.