Reply #48: In The History Of This Question, Mr. Chrom

[The Magistrate]

We employ standards that differ somewhat from each other's, which goes a long way to explain the occassions where we reach differing conclusions.

Life has taught me to employ a narrow definition of violence, for if one does not, if one begins to react to things, however painful, that do not actually involve physical blows "as if they were violence", the range of difficulties that can be encountered only begins with the police. It is child's play for an agile mind to demonstrate that a fellow who sells snacks in the parking lot of a company manufacturing widgets for trucks that are leased to a concern that moves parts from one plant to another where they are put into sub-assemblies for the manufacture of the charges for ejector-seats in a warplane that is used to drop a bomb on some unfortunate town that lands near a shool and kills several children has engaged in an unspeakable act of violence and really ought to pay for it at the point of a pistol.

The purchase of land by Jews in Palestine early in the last century was not violence. The political success of the Zionist leadership during the Great War in gaining English patronage was not violence. The riots employed by Arab Nationalist leaders beginning in 1920, aimed at getting England to change its mind, and at frightening Jews into departing Palestine, were violence, and mark the beginning of violence on any scale in this particular question. It was a most unfortunant judgement by that leadership, that continues down to the present day to cause difficulties for the people of Arab Palestine.

That is particularly unfortunate because much of what you say is true, and does not deserve in any wise to be quibbled with. The people of Arab Palestine have come out on a damned short end of the stick, and deserve it no more than any other people who must pay the forfiets earned by an incompetent leadership, and that has to be acknowledged regardless of what side one takes up in this matter.