"And with some Europeans, too (cf. the French commando sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the atrocities perpetuated in the former
Yugoslavia."
I must admit that, like many others, I have fallen into the habit of using Europe to denote a political, rather than a geographical entity, in which case Yugoslavia is a different matter (though the point is well made). Such statements are, of course, generalisations but there is nonetheless a very long list of international treaties that European states have signed and that the United States has not which would seem to a tolerable indicator of the respective attitudes.
"The only such Islamic state that exists is Turkey. "
Almost certainly due to the fact that it is politically secular. The recent advances made by Turkey as part of an increasingly serious bid for EU membership are very welcome, though the prospect of a new government in Istanbul, legal challenges to these reforms, and a possible second Irish rejection of the Treaty of Nice (upon which the first wave of EU expansion depends) makes matters still very precarious.
"No they are not; the many Palestinian pronouncements on this issue
are conclusive, as well as the PLO charter which called explicitly for the
destruction of Israel."
I seem to recall that the PLO did recognise the right of Israel to exist (clearly a great many Palestinian organisations did not, and clearly over half the Palestinian public do not).
---- This message was posted by kharin to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25957>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sun Sep 22 2002 - 05:06:18 MDT