posted
Talking to a friend of my yesterday, we got to USA's external policy. After overcoming the surprize that I actually AGREE with what Bush is doing, my friend tells me about some things she has seen in a documentary about Palestine. At one point she states that 'the US have lost around 1000 soldiers in Palestine'... Hmm... I never heard about it, and since the number's close to what they're losing in Irak I was wondering if she didn't mix the two. She swears she hasn't though... So, my question is: is there any US military presence in Palestine? I'm really, really confused...
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posted
None that I know of, and be very surprised if it were true. Seems to me someone would have tried to use it in the campaign - I can't imagine it staying secret.
Of course, I don't know what she means by "Palestine." Does she mean the West Bank and the Gaza strip?
posted
I'm with Dag--no military presence that I know of. Given that 240 Marines dying in Lebanon more than 15 years ago is still part of the national memory, 1000 troops dying in Palestine would surely register.
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posted
Dag, we were interrupted just when we got to this part and forgot about it afterwards, so I don't know what exactly was meant by Palestine. And the things they presented were shown as if it's common knowledge - at least that's what she says - and not something secret. That's why I was wondering about it, since nothing like that would stay out of Hatrack talk for so long...
I'll try to see if I can find what the name of that documentary is - she has it somewhere - and then look for some quotes from it or any web review.
Edit: After what you and Morbo said, I'm starting to feel quite sure about her mixing the two situations - the one in Israel and the one in Irak.
posted
Approximately 1000 Israelis have died from violence during current Intifada, but only a few Americans have died. The only ones that I'm aware of is the girl who was crushed by a bulldozer after she ran in front of it to protest the demolishing of Palestinian homes and an American who died in a suicide bombing of a university.
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posted
No, she stood in front of a bulldozer, and the operator ran the bulldozer over her.
And there were several Americans killed at the university bombing; I believe Americans were the majority of those injured&killed in that particular incident.
posted
Sorry, I only remembered those two incidents, but there were obviously others where Americans got caught in the "crossfire."
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posted
I would like to hear her sources - to the best of my knowledge, the US has not deployed ground troops to any Palestinian area or indeed any Israelie territory.
The "Palestinian issue" is an internal matter for Israel who is highly unlikely to welcome an outside military presence and given our tenuous relations with the rest of the Arab world, the US would be reluctant to offer such overt military support.
Overt military support doesn't count money or weapons - rather a formal deployment of US military forces.
posted
Ok, so the name of the documentary is "Ecrivains des Frontieres" and it was released only in France. My friend saw it at a special showing here in Montreal. This is the website: http://indy.servaux.org/ecrivains/ (all in French). It doesn't say anything about US so I can't verify what my friend said.
posted
I hate to make such a broad statement, but statistics have shown that France has one of the highest rates of anti-semitism in the world, so you want to be careful about believing an only-French documentary that is anti-Israel without double-checking all the facts for yourself.
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reader: I'm very much aware of what you're saying, there IS indeed anti-semitism in France, mostly from the very large Muslim community. I haven't checked the statistics to see 'how much', but I read about some pretty important incidents a while ago. But I also saw that the writers in the documentary weren't all French, so it doesn't really apply... And I haven't seen the documetary myself, only my friend did, and, as you can see from this thread, I'm far from believing everything she said she saw in it. I'll try to see the film, but don't quite know where or when I could do that...
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posted
It definitely still applies because a film geared to an anti-Israel audience is far more likely to be heavily biased. Likewise, I would expect a documentary concerned with the horrors of suicide bombings to be skewed the other way.
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newfoundlogic: Yeah, of course they have their very, very clear agenda, even if they're not all French. But please, don't confuse the fact that people may be against Israel's policy with anti-semitism. They might present things in a bad light for Israel, but you can still take the facts, check them, and discard (or disagree with) the purely ideological part of it. Again, I don't know how much of it is only opinions and how much is facts, so we're talking kind of hypothetically here... I wish they would make an international release, so more people could see it, but I don't think it will happen. (imdb.com gives a release date only for France)
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posted
I did say "anti-Israel" as opposed to anti-Semitic. In the "Anti-Semitism in America" thread I already explained the difference and connection between anti-Semitism and being opposed to Israel.
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posted
Ok, sorry, my bad... Got a little mixed up in terms there. I think I was impressing the 'anti-semitism' reader talked about onto your post.
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Got a little mixed up in terms there. I think I was impressing the 'anti-semitism' reader talked about onto your post.
