Making logical arguments

http://www.campus-watch.org/weblog/id/55

Spotted this link on Little Green Footballs.

These are the comments and learned arguments of Fawaz Gerges. Fawaz A. Gerges earned an M.Sci., London School of Economics and a D.Phil., Oxford University. He holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies.

“Look, you have tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed. You have hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed. Look at the history of colonialism. ‘How can the oppressed people,’ they say, ‘Jews, turn around and do injustice to the Palestinians?’ Why the Palestinians have to pay for the crimes committed by Europeans, after all?”

I have heard the above 'arguments' hundreds, if not thousands of times. Hearing this garbage from a professor though is astounding.

"... tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed." Possibly true, although the circumstances of those deaths would need to be examined to work out whether they could be classified reasonably as 'victims' (after all, we are comparing the Palestinians to Jewish holocaust victims here). Thousands died during wars with Israel, which is not 'oppressive', its war. And remember who the aggressors were in ALL of those wars. A Palestinian bloke with a Lee Enfield running at an Israeli machine gun nest is NOT the same as a Jew being transshipped by cattle car to an industrial scale killing factory.

"You have hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have been killed." By Israelis? Does this guy have an IQ in single digits? Not to mention the fact that 80-90% of all the Iraqis who have died have died at the hands of other Iraqis.

"Look at the history of colonialism." Eh? Where the **** are you off to? Israeli colonialism? When was that?? Or are you talking about the French empire or the Roman empire or the Aztec empire? Or most pertinently, the Ottoman empire? That one which killed the 1.5 million Christian Armenians? Yes, empires ARE terrible.

"‘How can the oppressed people,' they say, ‘Jews, turn around and do injustice to the Palestinians?'" Or, how can the Arab Palestinians ever lose a war? We are Arabs, and muslims, and you crappy Christians and Jews aren't allowed to win wars against us!!! We insist you return the fruits of your victory to us immediately!

"Why the Palestinians have to pay for the crimes committed by Europeans, after all?" So let me get this right: Israel was created by Germany to pay back the Jews for murdering six million of them? Or is that, created by 'Europe'? Does this guy know ANY history of the middle east AT ALL? Or has he just been sitting around the Student Union talking to all the other dimwit lefty 'can't be bothered to read history books cause they're all written by DWEMs anyway' layabouts?

OH MY GOD!!!! If thats the level of learning and erudition we can expect from a D.Phil from Oxford Uni, what are the Polytechnic/New Uni products going to be like?