"..which was totally justified after a few Israeli
soldiers were kidnapped into Lebanon territory .."
Errr...I think you'll find a lot of people standing on
the outside looking in will say that the Israeli
response was massively out of proportion and way over
the top.
Not that this is the kind of thing we should discuss on
here though.
Wim: Not that we should, but if you mention that, it's
important to remember that the kidnapping was
accompanied by a non stopping firing of rockets into the
state of Israel, without provocation, just after another
soldier was kidnapped on the other side of Israel (which
has also not yet been recovered).
Israel was literally under attack. Those rockets have
killed people from north all the way to the center of
Israel.
Would you have reacted differently? I'm sure you can't
say until this happens to you.
Ah wait- maybe you'll say "I wouldn't have bombed
innocent people's buildings"
which I'd answer: What if the rockets were being fired
from within housed buildings, mosques and hospitals?
Easy to judge "from the outside looking in", as you say.
Roy.
Why is that such a big deal? USA restaurants stop buying
french wine when France refused to go to war against
Iraq.
It's their business and they can do whatever they want,
even burn some cash.
Thin ice is when you fire rockets from heavily populated
areas on innocent civilians, kidnap soldiers without
provocation and show to the world community "hey, we're
being attacked!".
Thin ice is getting women and children to bomb
themselves for 25,000$ of money you got from the U.N for
food, water and electricity.
On the technological side, Wim will have to see to it
that his company not use anything built by Israelis (or
else they are making money off of him, aren't they?) -
which is quite impossible.
There's quite a distance between not agreeing with
tactics of remote places of which you aren't part of the
conflict, and shutting down business with people in
those places.
I have no problem with Wim making that decision - but he
shoudl have no problem of people knowing about it - free
world, right?
One thing that came up: Belgium itself can teach a thing
or two about abuse:
Its rule on the Kongo was one of the bloodiest ever.
Your post was very even handed and treated all sides
with respect. It's such a passionate issue and I commend
your ability to write in such a way that does not draw a
line in the sand.
Israel has a right to defend itself. There's no question
that the recent war was a reaction by Israel to
aggression from others. I suppose one could make an
argument about Israel's faults but to claim that the
recent war with Hezbollah was unjust indicates
partisianship and not reason or logic.
U2U is justified.
Israel is just an invader
Good on them I say! Israel gets away with to much
because of the support from the US. This type of
behaviour would never be acepted anywhere else in the
world!
Gratulations to U2U atleat to have the guts to show a
very unpopular point of view and stand to it - that type
of courage is not seen often today outside of terrorist
circles.
That, though, does not mean that I conform with their
view. Though it is hard to say that Israel, with their
behavior, does not match the defintion of a terrorist
state pretty much down to the last digit. Sadly. As do a
lot more of the civilized states (like, for example, the
united states, today, sadly). It is not like he is
making any difference.
Post Deleted (impersonating a post from another blogger)
I think you'll find the opinions abroad as to the
justification of the levels of action will vary.
I think it important to note that Belgium has not taken
a stance against Israel, a company in Belgium has.
Good on them I say. I think the way the Palestinians
have been treated is appauling, and the action against
Lebanon was way over the top.
Has anybody who posted here thought of the continent
that is responsible for eliminating Jews and thus
creating the "problem" Israel ??
Everybody here forgets this suddenly, especiallly..
Europeans themselves...strange.
Belgium and U2U is part of that continent.Oww the
stupidity of Wim.
Do i see a safe sovereign Jewish state in Europe? No..
Do i see a wall of Europeans protecting Israeli's after
the holocaust ? Yet again, nope.
Europeans have the audacy too create a problem and even
openly distance themselves from it.I bet the upcoming
bicultural holocaust against islam in Europe will be
Israel's fault too,just as WW 4 and 5 and..
I guess the hypocrits at U2U should ban themselves from
the worldstage too,and rather quickly.
Worst of all,they know that themselves all too well.
Dumb post and dumb discussion for a tech blog. Get a
life and respect someone’s choice. Your post gives me
the feeling that you’re frustrated about the whole
situation and that you’re unable to discuss it with
other people.
This is/was a tech blog, please use a other blog for
political discussions!
My god these comments are so funny. Can someone please
explain me why a company should be punished by decisions
made by their government?
I live in Belgium and I know Wim from U2U, he is always
been a special case. Imho in this case I do believe that
he is wrong.
How would he feel when he starts to loose business in
other countries when on the elections of next month (8th
October) "Vlaams Belang" will get a lot of votes. This
would be ridiculous no Wim?
Hi Roy - can you please remove the post above saying:
"Aha - so you agree that it's the bloody colonial abuse
of native people. Sweet."
Posted by someone "vim" (obviously mistyping my name)
and using my blog URL.
Cheers,
Wim
i really thankfull to the Belgian company who refuse to
do business with baby killers and land grabber
Wim Uyttersprot's correspondence seems very childish and
uninformed. Looks like he has believed the propoganda
that we seem to have in the media nowadays.
DaveB:
It was during Sharon's rule that one of the most painful
things Israel have done was started: start evacuating
the settlements
Israel was torn up and divided on this issue, ands
still, two years later - it continues.
That's one big stride Israel has done for peace from the
man that you had describe.
Yes - to say that he didn't seek peace when we elected
him is just wrong.
I am surprised with the comments. Is it a left-wing
blog, or european population is so much brain-washed?
And what and why can we discuss with people like these?
Hi - poster above.
Just because my name is Wim, doesn't mean I'm the
Belgian Wim that Roy is referring to in his blog post.
So don't put a link to my blog and make it out that I'm
Wim Uyttersprot or whatever his name is.
Thanks,
Wim Hollebrandse
I guess this will put it all in perspective the next
time I see someone firing up holy wars about the Evil
Empire and the poor downtrodden co-operative who only
want to bring good to the planet.
Sure - it's difficult to keep perspective when your own
people are getting killed. Anyone who manages to do so
deserves respect for the courage that it takes to
receive incoming fire and then not over-react.
Sorry Roy but I'm gonna have to agree with Wim's right
to not do business with a country he doesn't want to
politically support. I don't know much about the "Israel
problem" and as I'm not even remotely close to the area
geographically, I don't want to know any more about it.
However when I see things in the paper about the number
of cluster bombs dropped by Israel on Lebanon, the
Israeli cause instantly loses all of my sympathy.
Cluster bombs are a sick pseudo-legal way of making
large tracts of land uninhabitable. Only Israel and the
USA still use them as far as I'm aware as every other
country has recognised what a terrible type of munition
they are. There's numerous other things that I didn't
like about the war and I know hundreds of people with a
similar mindset to me and to Wim. You obivously have a
political opinion on this and so does Wim and you're
both standing by them. That's the point of free speech.
To: Yankee
Is it unreasonable to expect you to make a point or
critique someone elses position?
Feel free not to take part in the discussion, but
submitting a post that lets us know that you don't feel
like taking part is just a waste of everyone's time.
Cheers,
Dave
DaveB: I'm not going to start a full on political
debates about every facet of israel's actions - right or
wrong as you think israel is, it is a hypocricy to
"breaK' relations with israeli companies and keep
relations to other countries which seem to be drawing
just as much heat (like my previous comment).
Roy, I appreciate your point about not broadening the
debate to cover every perceived or actual shortcoming of
a particular country and I think we're in total
agreement about the charge of hypocrisy.
Cheers,
Dave
I'm not going to waste to much words on this one Roy
(like you did), but this is a very lame post. I know
lots of U2U employees and they are very tolerant and I'm
sure Wim just tried to avoid getting connected to an
Israeli company. I was reading your blog for the
technical content and so far I ignored your childish
bursts of anger but now you've gone too far. You are a
famous technical blogger, if I want to read politics I
will go somewhere else. [Unsubscribed]
I'm not really see why you'd be offended by Wims
comments especially as it seems like they have been sent
in a private correspondence.
He doesn't want to be associated with Israel because, I
presume, he's worried about the implications of being
associated with a regime that a lot of people (and the
UN) believe behave in a highly questionable manner.
You are of course right, other countries also behave
poorly and personally I amn't overly impressed with the
foreign policy of my own country. For that reason I
could fully understand if companies from other countries
didn't want to be associated with the UK either.
Message to the Israeli Businessman:
I am ashamed as a belgian by the merely scandalous
discriminating response from U2U. This will be a company
that I will NEVER work with and I also recomended my
colleagues in the IT sector against working with these
far-left extremists.
However, since we too are int IT sector with 15 years of
experience, I would appreciate if you inform this
Israeli business man that he can contact us whenever he
is interested.
I did NOT mention the URL of my IT site since such would
be suicidal for my company. Far Left which is active in
our country cannot be faught without risk. If they knew
my real IT company they would immediately do everyting
to put mu out of business.
Nevertheless, the URL given contains my contact data as
well without linking to our IT business.
I apologize in U2U's place for their discriminating
behavior!
Kind regards
Lawrence
Wim,
Congratulation for being able to consider your ethic in
your business position. Would the mankind be able to
follow your example, then good solutions to real
problems could become possible. The problems of our
societies require long term vision & processes, no
dogmatic position of thruth owner or opportunism of
people with money but no ethic. That the readers guess
who are the best propmotor of these 2 approaches.
Why don't you publish the name of the company in Israël?
It seems they are not at all behaving ethically correct
either .. making a private conversation between two
companies into a flaming war. Where are we going if
private mails and conversations are published and used
for propaganda like this.
Dandy - I would but the company name was not published
in the original article, so I don't know it's name.
As for propoganda, the minute U2U decided to make a
business decistion in high tech based on a policial
issue, I think they made it fair game. Especially, since
they were contacted before going public on that
newspaper and chose to not respond.
Fair enough but if the company name was not published in
the original article, I am very sceptical about your
accusations. Seen this happening to a company in
Australia here too, mosquitos turning into elephants,
blogs picking it up, blowing the whole story up, and
yes, everybody is getting pretty excited about all of
this.
It is obvious that most of the people expressing their
sympathy and understanding for Mr. Wim Uyttersprot's
(and the so called Palestinian and Arab cause) do so out
of complete ignorance of past and present history and
the facts on the ground. In my opinion, there must even
be more to it, like some latent, long suppressed
anti-Jewish feelings which can all of a sudden be openly
expressed using Israel as sort of "moral" fig leaf! The
combination of ignorance and hatred is devastating as
shown by the Nazi regime and indeed by the nowadays
version of it, namely Islamo-fascism. I am so outraged
by European's misplaced and despicable attitude towards
Israel that I invite anyone to a debate on the subject.
simba11@bezeqint.net
The people calling Israel an Apartheid state do not know
the meaning of the word and/or what it means or are
ignorant liars.
Roy,
I love your blog posts, but indeed you are going 2 far
on this point. Leave the politics as is, stay at the
subject of your blog.
War is always wrong, and who started it is out of the
question, you always need 2 parties to have a war.
U2U is right, even more : they don't have to/or
shouldn't give an explaination why they dont' want to
work together with this company.
The whole thing around racism is now a days exploited by
a lot of people. They abuse the word racism, just to get
what they want.
Roy, your only mistake is to engage in discussion with
the anti-semites and hatemongers. Zealots don't respond
to reason, they only seek evidence to support their
bias. Stay strong...
Roy, I immensely enjoyed your blog - until this post.
Whether Wims decisions was justified or not I have my
opinion, but I might be wrong. But anyway:
Wims letter has more profesisonalism than this blog
entry, and many war crimes would have been avoided if
more companies showed the "unprofessionalism" of U2U.