Reply #29: OK, just one ...

[bemildred]

"If Israelis are such monsters why should the Arabs or Palestinians make peace with them?"

That is a hypothetical, an if .. then ... statement. It is true if and only if the premise "Israelis are such monsters" is false or the conclusion "why should the Arabs or Palestinians make peace with them?" is true. The conclusion presents itself as a question too, but it isn't, it is a statement, "the Arabs don't want to make peace". Since the premise is false, i.e. Israelis are not such monsters, it does not matter what the conclusion is, the hypothetical, his claim, is always true no matter what. That is what a false hypothetical is, an inference in which the premise is false, hence which is true no matter what the conclusion, and it is a favored rhetorical ploy to smuggle in ideas that one does not want to defend directly: "the Arabs don't want to make peace." Rubin himself does not believe the premise, and he really just wants to assert that "the Arabs" don't really want to make peace, as though they were some sort of monolithic group in which everyone thinks the same. Nobody would tolerate anyone talking about "the Jews" is such stereotypes. There is not even one direct assertion of fact in it, and the rhetorical form is inconsistent with what he is actually saying, something along the lines of: Israelis are not such monsters (a claim Goldstone does not make) and "the Arabs" don't want to make peace, a claim that is demonstrably false for at least some Arabs, probably most Arabs, and that Rubin really wants to refute, but cannot defend directly, and he knows it.