A field guide to fuckwits in the Israeli-Palestinian debate


The Fan "Can't Tell Your Players Without a Program"

This fuckwit doesn't care a whit for the sorrow of the war's victims
and is outright hostile to discussion of the motives of the combatants.
Instead, he will interfere in a discussion by waving scorecards that
show twice as many Palestinian deaths as Israeli deaths, and from this
will claim that the Israelis are therefore exactly twice as evil as the
Palestinians. This point will invariably be completely unrelated to
the subject of the parent discussion, but this fuckwit will continue
repeating contextless statistics until he has found (or made up) one 
which none of the other debaters knew about and cannot debate, at which
time the fuckwit will declare himself the victor of the debate.



Unclear on the Concept (of Combatants)

This fuckwit has managed to invent his own personal definition of "civilian"
which includes all terrorists and armed Palestinians, often including the
official Palestinian army/security force, while excluding Israeli victims
of terrorist attacks. To this fuckwit it is inarguable that the 16-year-old
HAMAS member with a molotov cocktail and an AK-47 is a civilian and that
the pregnant Israeli restaurant bomb victim is a combatant because the
former is not part of any country's standing army and is also a child
who therefore cannot be a combatant under any circumstance, and the latter
was called up as a typist for the IDF when she was 18 and is therefore
fair game. Israeli children are also considered fair game because they'll
grow up to be drafted by the IDF, and immigrants who have never served for
the IDF are fair game because they pay taxes to the Israeli government
which supports the IDF. Many of these fuckwits are, inconceivably, heads
of state who had better hope that their countries never get into a war
during their term of service or else they'd be wiped out in a week if they
follow their own ridiculous set of rules.



Ignoramus Extraordinaire

This fuckwit is maliciously ignorant of the history of the region. According
to this fuckwit, an independent state called Palestine which had existed
for anywhere from 1500 to 3000 years was suddenly invaded in 1948 or 1967
by a horde of Jews who came from the distant overseas Jewish homeland of
New York to invade the peaceful and enlighented land of Palestine which
Jews had never set foot in, and Jews had still never set foot there when
they invaded again in 1967. The persistence of these fuckwits is incredible
and amazes most discussion participants who will chalk it up either to
Islamic-world propoganda (where this stuff is taught to schoolchildren) or
to the backing these fuckwits' ideas get from the United Nations.



The Anti-Semite

The first thing this Jew-hating fuckwit will say is that he can't possibly 
be an anti-Semite because the Palestinians are Semites and he supports
them, so he usually gives himself away fairly quickly. The next thing he
will say is that he doesn't hate Jews, only "Zionists". As debate continues
he will repeatedly hold Israel to a separate set of standards than that
which he holds the Palestinians, himself, his own country, and the rest
of the world to. Examples are claims that Jews should not be allowed to
visit the Temple Mount because it is a Muslim holy site while the same
place's being a Jewish holy site must not prevent Muslims from visiting,
or that Ariel Sharon bears responsibility for ignoring Phalangist massacres
of Palestinians but that Arafat doesn't bear any responisibility for ignoring
Palestinian massacres of Israelis, or that the Palestinians have a right
to self-rule on their own land but the Jews do not, or that it is not an
act of war when shots are fired at Israeli troops from across the border
but it is an act of war when Israel fires back, or that Palestinians have
a right to return to homes in Israel that they left in '48 but Jews don't
have a right to return to homes in the West Bank that they left in '48
and Israel would still be obliged to provide the Palestinians with
land and housing inside pre-'67 Israel after the creation of a separate
Palestinian homeland in the West Bank.



Fundamentalist Amentalist

All the examples of fuckwits have so far been pro-Palestinian fuckwits. This
is because 99% of the fuckwits in the Israeli-Palestinian debates take
the pro-Palestinian side. However, there are also pro-Israeli fuckwits, and
many of these are fundamentalist bible-humpers whose argument goes as
follows: A two thousand year old book says God gave Israel to the Jews,
therefore the case is closed despite the facts that the author of the
book was conveniently the Jews and that God's omnipotent will was paradoxially
ignored by the Greeks, Assyrians, Romans, Arabs, Catholics, Arabs again,
British, Arabs again...



The Absent-Minded Professor

This is another common pro-Israeli fuckwit. This one uses ancient history
to claim that the Jews are the oldest remaining ethnic group with claims
to the land, conveniently ignoring the earlier claim of the Egyptians
not to mention the immediate claim of the Palestinian people.



The Revisionist

As the pro-Palestinian version of the Absent-Minded Professor, this fuckwit
finds that history doesn't give his side any support whatsoever so he makes
stuff up. Chief among his false claims is that Arabs are Philistines
who were native to the region, an assertion that manages to be 200% wrong.
He will also say that Jews have never lived in Jerusalem or the West Bank,
that Ashkenazi Jews aren't relly Jews (which supposedly also invalidates the
Sephardics' rights to residence), that there was once an independent
state called Palestine, that no Arab leaders have ever called for the deaths
of all Jews, or that there was no Arab opposition to Jewish immigration
prior to Israel's declaration of independence. These fuckwits are usually
the reason for the prevalence of Ignoramus Extraordinaire, above.



The AntiNazi NeoNazi 

This curious fuckwit will attempt to show that some aspect of Israel's
existence or actions is somehow similar to an aspect of Nazi Germany.
They will fail, but will continue to repeat their unfounded claim that
Israel is a "Nazi" country, and that therefore you must agree that all Jews
must be eliminated or else you are a Nazi supporter. Huh?
 


The Immoral Equivocator

This fuckwit will attempt to assign the same moral value to two things
which are on opposite ends of the morality scale. The most common type
is the pro-Palestinian who will say that blowing up a dozen terrorist
masterminds across the West Bank is as morally wrong as pulling aside
the entire male population of Srebrenica and executing them. This fuckwit
even uses the word "genocide" to describe the targeting of specific
terrorists. There is a less common pro-Israeli type which will call
attacks directed at uniformed IDF troops "terrorism", thereby giving
real terrorism the same legitimacy as conventional combat.



The Eternal Optimist (added by Mal-3)

This particular fuckwit is of the opinion that the conflict can be solved
through reason and the judicious use of minimal force. Even when considering
the incredible amounts of ill will both sides feel towards each other,
this fuckwit will insist that there is a rational solution that all parties
will agree to. Variants of this fuckwit are found to call for the assassination
of key players in the conflict, as if this would reduce tension in any
way, shape, or form.