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Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

haaretz.com

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Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#81
post #75
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep that pretty much sums it up. I guess I am, since I'm taking time from work to write this stuff.

This is a free piece of advice: try not to display your allegiance so clearly and so early (especially not before any bashing comment has even appeared!) A better approach to educate is to calmly correct each factually wrong statement, ideally with references. This way you'd avoid being classified early as a(n overreacting) shill, as that can only hamper your educational efforts.

Yeah, you're right.

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#82
post #80
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I need to ask for clarification of your numbers. Where do you get the "99% of the violence" number? Is it a real number, or one that you believe is correct but have not verified? For me, that number does not seem believable. For example, in 2007 there were 2,796 calls to the Rape Crisis Hotline concerning "Rape, attempted rape, Statutory rape", 386 for "Gang rape and sexual attacks", and 1,630 for inces…

Yes, I made it up. Wasn't it obvious? What I meant was that the vast majority of terror attacks in Israel are committed by Arabs. That's really indisputable. Why are you going off on a tangent to talk about rape? What does that have to do with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Domestic violence is a horrible problem everywhere, but I don't see why you're bringing it up here. Yes, there are Palestinians civilians kill…

You said "99% of the violence committed against Israelis is done by Arabs." I brought up domestic violence because I thought the topic was on violence against Israelis, and that was a relatively easy topic to research.

Now you say that 1) you made up the number, and 2) you're talking specifically about terrorism. Okay, that's fine, but that's a different topic than "violence" and different than the "lived under constant threat to your life" which you started off with. You did say that profiling reduced terror attacks, but didn't say that it reduced the amount of violence. These two are not necessarily coupled.

South Africa, for example, has complex history of people divided by race, and where ethnic tensions and hatreds still run strong. In my 6 months or so in that country I met many people who "lived under constant threat to [their] life", for being outside at night, or in the wrong part of town, or while being carjacked or during a break-in while they slept at night. So no, it's not apparent to me that you are saying that all violent attacks, or that all threats to life in Israel are due to terrorism.

(It appears even that there are more homicides per year in Israel than deaths by terrorist attacks, but then as is often pointed out, every year over 10 times more people die in car accidents than died in 9/11 - some things we just get desensitized to.)

It looks like you are restricting 'terrorism' to state-sponsored terrorism. Surely al-Qaeda is the premier example of a stateless terrorist organization. Why can't the terrorist appellation also describe organized groups of settlers who, in violation of the law and counter to government policy, attack Palestinians?

I am not defending Hamas. I am attacking your rhetoric. You use absolutist statements, and you change your definitions somewhat when it serves your goals. I highlighted some of those changes. That annoyed me, and I do not believe it helps you achieve your goal of explaining your views to others like me.

If it helps, the statistics from btselem.org are quite clear that a large majority of the civilian Israeli deaths by Palestinians are done by people affiliated with the political organizations of the Occupied Territories, Lebanon, and elsewhere, and done in such a way that I have no problems calling it terrorism. But - and to get back to the topic I once thought you were making - based on those and other numbers, it seems significantly more likely that an Israeli will die of violence inflicted by another Israeli than by a non-Israeli.

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#83
post #82
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I made it up. Wasn't it obvious? What I meant was that the vast majority of terror attacks in Israel are committed by Arabs. That's really indisputable. Why are you going off on a tangent to talk about rape? What does that have to do with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Domestic violence is a horrible problem everywhere, but I don't see why you're bringing it up here. Yes, there are Palestinians civilians kill…

You said "99% of the violence committed against Israelis is done by Arabs." I brought up domestic violence because I thought the topic was on violence against Israelis, and that was a relatively easy topic to research. Now you say that 1) you made up the number, and 2) you're talking specifically about terrorism. Okay, that's fine, but that's a different topic than "violence" and different than the "lived under const…

I didn't change my definitions at all, you've just been overly pedantic. I wrote these things in break time between working. It wasn't an end-all be-all.

I'm sorry that I was not clear, but I thought it was obvious that I was talking about terrorism, as that is the main violent issue in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Re: Israel airport security demands access to tourists' private email accounts

#84
post #83
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said "99% of the violence committed against Israelis is done by Arabs." I brought up domestic violence because I thought the topic was on violence against Israelis, and that was a relatively easy topic to research. Now you say that 1) you made up the number, and 2) you're talking specifically about terrorism. Okay, that's fine, but that's a different topic than "violence" and different than the "lived under const…

I didn't change my definitions at all, you've just been overly pedantic. I wrote these things in break time between working. It wasn't an end-all be-all. I'm sorry that I was not clear, but I thought it was obvious that I was talking about terrorism, as that is the main violent issue in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

It was not clear that you were talking about terrorism. The quote again is "99% of the violence committed against Israelis is done by Arabs." I now understand that you mean "terrorism" instead of "violence".

With that meaning, then yes, obviously there is little state-sponsored terrorism against Israelis by the government of Israel. But that seems rather a trivial statement, and I did not consider that that was your intent.

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