What does Israel have against scholars and those seeking a better life?

Question

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/30/mideast/gaza.php

Condi Rice is trying to pressure Israel on releasing the student hostages but that is like talking to their wall of woe, Woe to you who ain't Jewish!

Answer 1

It's not that they want to prevent others from a better life, but prevent their lives from being worsened by the potential threat posed to them by allowing these people to get an education.

It's not complex; keep your enemies stupid, uneducated, and out of communication with each other. Israel has been fighting a war of self preservation not seen by any other country. What other country is continuously acting to not only protect it self, but is also constantly being threatened with complete annihilation? Drastic times call for drastic measures.

Personally, I do not think we should accept students from the middle east. We have a tendency to teach them skills which they take back to their own country rather than for our benefit. Academia is a limited resource which should not be wasted, especially on foreigners h**l bent on killing us.

Answer 2

There is no guarantee they will take that knowledge to better their own communities.

Did you know that 9/11 attackers studied how to fly the planes in an American school? They weren't too concerned about landing, the instructor said in hindsight. Did you know that after the truck was driven into Embassy with explosives they found another suicidal/homocidal maniac going to truck driving school in America? He told his instructor "I don't need to learn how to back up." Red flag, red flag.

I think Americans are sick of enabling terrorists, in any shape or form. We don't have to help anyone and they don't need a degree to help themselves.  Condi worries me sometimes what she thinks she's doing?

America enjoys relations with peace loving people. She should try to help Palestinians in this matter then sure we would welcome anyone to come visit in our schools.

Also regarding blockades, the western world has long considered it a legitimate defense in times of war. Many nations have used blockades against one another, including the Arab blockade of Jerusalem in 1948. It is the most peaceful approach to war and the alternative to bombs.

I have compassion for the poor young scholars who can't come to America but they have their whole life to learn. First, they can take this hard lesson and apply it towards the reasons why their travel is restricted. If they mean well, they would and should and have it in their power with the other Palestinians to make peace. It is much more important than a diploma.

They can start with educating the children in their own country, as education is sorely lacking there; right now they're all being taught to martyr themselves:  http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1679.htm

Answer 3

Education like religion is simply a matter of geography and who controls the gold gets to pick the textbooks.

Sorry folks, a truly liberal education requires travel and exposure to other culture and ideas. That is why the student held hostage to politics for Zion is so telling about the dark souls of the current Iraseli leadership. PS :: Zion is not about people its an ideology and extremist worldview

Answer 4

The claim that the educated people reject totalitarianism is false.

The university graduates were among the leaders of the n**i Party in Germany.

Condi is trying to become the dictator of Israel.

Palestinian nationality is an entity defined by its opposition to Zionism, and not its national aspirations.  What unites Palestinians has been their opposition to Jewish nationalism and the desire to stamp it out, not aspirations for their own state.  Local patriotic feelings are generated only when a non-Islamic entity takes charge -- such as Israel did after the 1967 Six-Day War.  It dissipates under Arab rule, no matter how distant or despotic.

A Palestinian identity did not exist until an opposing force created it -- primarily anti-Zionism.  Opposition to a non-Muslim nationalism on what local Arabs, and the entire Arab world, view as their own turf, was the only expression of 'Palestinian peoplehood.'

The Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a charismatic religious leader and radical anti-Zionist was the moving force behind opposition to Jewish immigration in the 1920s and 1930s.  The two-pronged approach of the "Diplomacy of Rejection" (of Zionism) and the violence the Mufti incited occurred at the same time Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq became countries in the post-Ottoman reshuffling of territories established by the British and the French under the League of Nation's mandate system.

The tiny educated class among the Arabs of Palestine was more politically aware than the rest of Arab society, with the inklings of a separate national identity.  However, for decades, the primary frame of reference for most local Arabs was the clan or tribe, religion and sect, and village of origin.  If Arabs in Palestine defined themselves politically, it was as "southern Syrians." Under Ottoman rule, Syria referred to a region much larger than the Syrian Arab Republic of today, with borders established by France and England in 1920.

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Answer 5

Israel believes that completely isolating Gaza will bring about the fall of Hamas. Regarding Palestinians who wish to study in the United States, I believe this is a foolish policy, since the more educated the person, the less likely he or she is to support Hamas's fundamentalism.