From: perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman)
Subject: Re: Arithmetic Error (was Re: It's no Use (was Re: ...))
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 17:50:59 GMT

In article <BxK4oK.4pA@newsflash.concordia.ca> ilyess@ECE.Concordia.CA (Ilyess Bdira) writes:
>In article <1992Nov10.193430.15467@colorado.edu> perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman) writes:
>>
>>My post concentrated only on refuting the completely wrong assumption
>>that Ilyess made.  Indeed, it's an assumption that numerous Palestinian
>
>The fact that I did not have the time to reply to your message yesterday
>does not mean that you were right..
>If you read my original post correctly, you would understand that

I made no such assumption about the course of events.  However, the
assumption I pointed out in my original message is necessary to your
conclusion, no matter how much you try to weasel around it.

>my main point was to show that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MAKE THAT ASSUMPTION.

Oh, yes you do.  See below.

>It is a result from another reasonable assumption:
>That there are more than 1000 spies within the Palestinians and that
>the Palestinians are successful in killing 50% of them..

Everything we know about the intifada suggests that the Palestinian
death squads in question are not even attempting to find out if their
targets are spies, otherwise guilty, or completely innocent.

For example, here are some of the quotes I mentioned from Steven Emerson's 
article in the November 23, 1992 edition of the New Republic.

(p. 29)
"An increasing number of Palestinians have begun to acknowledge that
only a minority of the victims are "collaborators".  Zuheir Daba'ai, a
pro-PLO activist, has publicly estimated that 60 percent of the
Palestinians who were killed were innocent.  In an interview cited in
Ma'ariv on August 7, 1992, Faisal Husseini acknowledged, "We know that
some of them were killed for reasons unconnected to our struggle -
family disputes, legal disputes, criminal disputes, and the mafia."

"The most extraordinary internal criticism of the intifadas tactics and
leaders was in May by Gazi Abu Jiab in the leading Palestinian
newspaper, Al-Quds.  A top member of Habash's PFLP, Abu Jiab served
sixteen years in an Israeli prison for terrorism.  In the last four
years he had been active in the United National Command of the intifada.
His critique was startling in its candor.  "We cannot ignore the daily
reality of the masked squads being out of control ... Today, every
ordinary criminal can don a mask, wield a weapon, take money, and commit
violent crimes against the residents under the guise of a masked
intifada activist. ... The intifada does not justify the collection of
protection money, donations, or threats.  It does not mean setting fire
to their shops or endangering the lives of the innocent.""

>Can you claim that there are less than 1000 agents within the 1million
>palestinians? can you claim that israel is successful in protecting
>more than 50% of them? That is the only way you can prove my assumption
>wrong.

No, it isn't.  First of all, it is no crime to work for peace.  Second
of all, you assume something about the death squads that just isn't the
case.  I have proved your assumption wrong twice now.

>>observers also repudiate, as illustrated in Steven Emerson's piece in
>>the latest New Republic (which I just got in yesterday's mail; it may
>>not have arrived in libraries yet.  If there is demand, I will post the
>>relevant quotes.).  Further, do you actually think that Israel *wants*
>>to kill Palestinians en masse?  If your answer is yes, I think you need
>>to do some serious re-reading, as that conclusion cannot be drawn from
>>historical facts.  Indeed, the number of Palestinians killed by IDF
>>personnel has *declined* steadily year by year during the intifada.
>
>Israel is not killing Palestinians en masse, they are only killing
>enough people to prevent Palestinians from acquiring a critical mass
>in their Intifadah. I would expect them to do so.

Balderdash.  Israel is trying to maintain order in the wake of an armed
uprising.  Israel's response may be too brutal, but it is fighting a
war, essentially.

>In the theory of peasant rebellion (Olsen and friends), the interest
>of the government is to crush the rebellion and make it look costly
>in the eyes of the peasants even if it isn't so, this prevents the
>less couragious from joining because of lack of critical mass.

And if you knew much about the intifada, you'd know that it ceased to be
a "peasant rebellion" about th<ree months after it started.  Nowadays
it is more a battle between Palestinian factions like Fatah and Hamas
than with the Israeli government, and the last 2 years, Palestinians
have killed more Palestinians than the IDF by a considerable margin.

>As I mentioned before
>the probability of being killed by IDF is  still very small right now, but still
>not many people are rebelling although they are opposed to the occupation.
>In their subconscious, they  have the impression that they will all be 
>slaughtered if they rebel.. This of course is wrong.
>This means that the IDF is so far successful in reducing the impact of the

Certainly the IDF wants to create negative feedback.  But they are not
trying to kill protesters en masse.

-- 
"How sad to see/A model of decorum and tranquillity/become like any other sport
A battleground for rival ideologies to slug it out with glee." -Tim Rice,"Chess"
     Eric S. Perlman 				 <perlman@qso.colorado.edu> 
  Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder