A few months back at a party in New York, I met the wife of a prominent liberal journalist and mentioned that I had lately been in Hebron, in Palestine. This woman said that she had close relatives in the settlement in Hebron. They had made aliyah to Israel some years ago; indeed many of the extremists in the West Bank are transplanted Americans. We talked about it for a while, and bewailed the settlement, which has fostered apartheid conditions in the center of the second largest city in the West Bank. The woman said that she speaks to her relatives, sees them, they visit her; but they agree to disagree about the legitimacy of Israeli colonization of the West Bank.
A couple of weeks ago, I emailed the journalist, whom I know as an acquaintance, and said that I wanted to mention his personal connection to the settlement in the West Bank. He asked me not to. He said that this was party talk, and he preferred that it remain off the record.
I'm honoring his request, inasmuch as I'm not giving his name. But I need to write about it all the same. For this is frequently the character of liberal American Jewish connection to Israel and to the colonization there. Yes, this journalist has been to Israel, unlike so many other Jews. And of course, like so many other American Jews, he laments the Occupation and wishes there was a Palestinian state. And yet, on the simple question of being open about his own connection to the illegal settlement program that has so corrupted Israel, he cannot be honest with me or his own readers. His discretion is understandable; we are talking about his relations. And this is the cultural question I have repeatedly visited here: American Jews feel different levels of intimate connection to the Jewish state. Some of them are hawkish supporters, some are liberal demurrers. But to renounce or repudiate the colonization scheme--in which Israelis destroy Palestinian ways of life and humiliate them? That is hard to do. After all, family is involved.
Why should we be honest with a society which refused to bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz?
Sword of Gideon – how do you explain that while all those hundreds of thousands of american goys gave their life to stop Hitler from killing the Jews, practically no jews fought for the US?
It's fine for goys to die for jews, but jews won't even fight to stop Hitler. Pathetic.
You Nazi pile of shit Joshua. Jews are WAY over represented in the US army!
Phil's comments are important on this question, and should not be distracted opportunistically.
I have the liberal Jew's dilemma. I have acquaintences (liberal Jews) that live in settlements in the settlement bloc. I speak to them ever few years, not frequently. One is an activist, a neighbor and colleague of the kibbutz that routinely defends Palestinian olive growers from the more rancorous neo-zionists.
The other lives in one of the more conservative settlements, who was attracted by a combination of spiritual/religious sentiment in which is committedly applied in environmental efforts (optimal water use, organic farming methods even for commercial farming, rotation and companion cropping and fallowing, solar and renewable energy – his settlement is a net zero energy consumption community, innovators). But, their politics is that the land is Jewish, not Palestinian and that Palestinians live there by the permission of the "rightful" owners, Jews.
I support both individuals in critical ways. Both have a genuine prayer life and participate in genuinely joyful community, not an easy task itself.
Neither are followers of the secular expansionist approaches (Jabotinksy for example). And, both regard religious approaches as a personal commitment, not an external imposition, and I expect would NEVER overtly steal others' land, nor harrass.
I don't know how they do or would react in conflict. That is often the test of the weight of one's personal moral commitment, the extent that they avoid harm beyond genuinely defending themselves and community, and how they accomplish that.
The settlers that are good and accepting neighbors ENHANCE Palestinians' life by their presence. Even though they are prospectively part of a strategic effort to humiliate, they do not appear to do so.
It certainly could happen very close to home to you Phil. I would hope that you cared about me or my cousins enough that you would extend a compassionate hand to any of our children or selves that chose to make aliyah for example, and respect their experience and reasoning.
Phil's comments are important on this question, and should not be distracted opportunistically.
I have the liberal Jew's dilemma. I have acquaintences (liberal Jews) that live in settlements in the settlement bloc. I speak to them ever few years, not frequently. One is an activist, a neighbor and colleague of the kibbutz that routinely defends Palestinian olive growers from the more rancorous neo-zionists.
The other lives in one of the more conservative settlements, who was attracted by a combination of spiritual/religious sentiment in which is committedly applied in environmental efforts (optimal water use, organic farming methods even for commercial farming, rotation and companion cropping and fallowing, solar and renewable energy – his settlement is a net zero energy consumption community, innovators). But, their politics is that the land is Jewish, not Palestinian and that Palestinians live there by the permission of the "rightful" owners, Jews.
I support both individuals in critical ways. Both have a genuine prayer life and participate in genuinely joyful community, not an easy task itself.
Neither are followers of the secular expansionist approaches (Jabotinksy for example). And, both regard religious approaches as a personal commitment, not an external imposition, and I expect would NEVER overtly steal others' land, nor harrass.
I don't know how they do or would react in conflict. That is often the test of the weight of one's personal moral commitment, the extent that they avoid harm beyond genuinely defending themselves and community, and how they accomplish that.
The settlers that are good and accepting neighbors ENHANCE Palestinians' life by their presence. Even though they are prospectively part of a strategic effort to humiliate, they do not appear to do so.
It certainly could happen very close to home to you Phil. I would hope that you cared about me or my cousins enough that you would extend a compassionate hand to any of our children or selves that chose to make aliyah for example, and respect their experience and reasoning.
"Why should we be honest with a society which refused to bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz?"
Gideon's comments illustrate how too many Jewish-American Zionists actually think. They quite literally HATE all non-Jews, and blame them for the Holocaust. Apparently they even hate WWII veterans for not making even more sacrifices on behalf of Judaism than they did. Never enough.
Of course, this hatred is conditioned into them by Talmudic Judaic culture, which recognizes that the gentile "other" has to be viciously demonized in order for Talmudic Judaism to carry on; it can never survive on its own merits, due to its innate loathsomeness, and so must scare its adherents into staying in the tribe by creating an institutionally xenophobic culture that perpetually spotlights the gentile boogey man.
This is why Jewish Zionists can't be assimilated into America, and pose an existential threat to all Americans (as most graphically illustrated by Jewish Zionist Marc Grossman's apparent dealing of US nuclear secrets to Pakistanis and Turks: link to counterpunch.org
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They are indoctrinated in a culture of hate, and always will be so long as Talmudic Judaism has its hooks in America. It really explains so much about why America has fallen so far since Jews rose to the status of "elite" in this country. A significant percentage of them (consciously or unconsciously) are actually working towards America's demise. Hollywood sleaze, Wall Street sleaze, media sleaze, Iraq war lies, corrupt big government …how much of it all can be traced back to America-hating Jewish Zionists? I would wager: the majority.
Richard Witty is right, as usual.
The settlers who grow their vegetables organically and see the Palestinians as intruders are making life better for the Palestinians, if you think about it.
If it weren't for those organic vegetable farms, who knows how many goats could graze, and without a proper state to issue regulations, thousands and thousands would be herded, leading to goat over-population, population crash, ecological destruction, and economic ruin to follow. No one would ever forget the day the Goat Bubble burst.
If the settlers were not there watering their organic vegetables and keeping their swimming pools nice and fresh, would the little Palestinian boy who fell down the well have even a fighting chance at survival? No, the water table would be much too high, and he would drown. Settlers are the reason that little boy will not die at 9 years old (but probably more like 16).
Ethnic cleansing does not HAVE to be humiliating for the land's former occupants, either. They can be proud that their old land was fertile enough (from all the goats) to produce a bounty of organic vegetables for their Jewish neighbors.
Perhaps, one day, when bygones are bygones, the Jewish settlers can send their Arab refugee neighbors a gift basket of organic fruits and vegetables, with a kind message attached. Just best not to include any olives though, let's not be insensitive.
So it is up to those who consider themselves humanists to carefully evaluate the actions of each and every settler, BEFORE arriving at any premature conclusions about expansionist Zionism. If there is anything that can be considered positive, anything at all, we humanists should focus on these things disproportionately, so as to avoid those slightly problematic aspects of racial supremacism, which will go away if Israelis and Palestinians come together to ignore them.
Too bad for America that Americans also don't side with their own in any life-saving way: By "their own" I mean the 1% of Americans and their families who are paying the price for USA policy in Iraq. Not a problem? True, which is why the suicide rate among "volunteers" keeps going up. Yeah, go ahead and vote for the "top-tier" of donkeys or elephants. I hope China pulls the rug out from indentured America. Now, there's the real "sub-prime mortgage" problem.
During George Bush's recent visit to Yad Vashem, he said we should have bombed Auschwitz itself. Rice later informed that he meant the railway tracks. I guess we will have to take her word for it, but I am quite sure that Prescott Bush who was Director of IG Farber in 1942 was laughing from his grave.
The US did not have the knowledge nor opportunity to bomb Auschwitz until the summer of 1944. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops in January of 1945, thus at the time the US could have bombed, the vast majority of the 1.1 to 1.5 million internees had already been killed.
Aerial Bombings in 1944 were very inaccurate, to the point that bombing only parts of the camp while sparing others would have been almost impossible. Bombing rail lines was also not something the US was capable of doing effectively and therefore the option wasn't even strongly considered.
But, of course, if bombing had been possible then the Nazis would have just thrown up their hands and given the project up. A bombed track is a devastating and insurmountable setback.
"The settlers that are good and accepting neighbors ENHANCE Palestinians' life by their presence."
Witty had me going there, until he blurted out this enormity. That's like justifying slavery by pointing out that slave families received food, housing, clothing and educational opportunities in America, which never would have been available to them in Africa. (What a shame that plantation owners couldn't instruct them in organic farming and zero net energy use.) Despite the unfortunate appearance of coercion, our forebears actually were engaged in a magnanimous project of uplifting and bettering these primitive but noble savages.
It takes a remarkable degree of self-delusory narcissism to characterize such musings as "the liberal Jew's dilemma." There's nothing liberal about this patronizing, racist cant, except perhaps in the insular, self-referential world of zionist theology.
Chris Moore continues to do an excellent job of demonizing all jews in the hope that we can finish the job that Hitler started. Round 'em up Chrissy boy. Maybe you'll get to rape of few of them jewish girls when we get 'em in the camps. And we know you'll enjoy killing the little jewish kids. You should really do a better job of concealing your enthusiasm for a final solution Chris. It's really not becoming.
Now remember to post your defense that you are simply a good patriot and not interested in killing any Jews. You're just working to keep them from killing us.
"the Goat Bubble burst."
Damn, the sarmatian is always ruining my efforts to stay completely bad-humoured after the daily wittyan ziophemism: "Even though they are prospectively part of a strategic effort to humiliate, they do not appear to do so."
Needed: witty eating goats.
"when we get 'em in the camps"
Who do you mean by we? Are you one of those Jewish Zionists who collaborated with the Nazis in order to make the creation of Israel an imperative?
http://www.the7thfire.com/new_world_order/zionism/zionist_collaboration_with_the_nazis.htm
Or maybe you're a Christian Zionist cheering for the End Times and an Israel- centered WWIII in collaboration with the Neocon fascists who are getting rich off the entire enterprise.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4630
Given your poor English skills ("them jewish girls") my guess would be you're a stiff-knecked, white cracker Christian Zionist dwelling in the deep south who feels a kinship with stiff-knecked Jewish cracker Zionists stomping Palestinians in the "Holy Land." They set a useful precedent, don't they, cracker? Why, you and the old-boy lynch mob might even soon be able to dust off your nooses and start hunting "them brown-skinned terr'ists livin’ right over yonder."
Is it possible that, given the USA was fighting the German extended Empire and the Japanese extended Empire (and Italy's originally), maybe Auschwitz et all had lower priority in the total American effort? Especially consideringthe lack of concrete information at the time in question? Jeez, talk about ethnic myopia! Of course, now the tables have been reversed and, judging by the USA's top-tier candidates, they will stay so.
Not to worry settlers. It's not even an issue for bankrupt USA:
"But to renounce or repudiate the colonization scheme–in which Israelis destroy Palestinian ways of life and humiliate them? That is hard to do. After all, family is involved."
I don't think it's that simple. While I was raised Jewish, I don't have any close relations in Israel, and even among liberal American Jews I'd stand out as critical of Israel. And yet I often deliberately try to post as anonymously as possible on the topic of Israel and the Palestinians, because of fear of being blackballed, given how contentious the issue is and given what I've seen happen to publically visible critics of Israel in the US (Finkelstein, Meersheimer/Walt, etc).
So I myself think there's a "be careful of touching the live rail" effect going on in these cases.
Richard Witty wrote:
"It certainly could happen very close to home to you Phil. I would hope that you cared about me or my cousins enough that you would extend a compassionate hand to any of our children or selves that chose to make aliyah for example, and respect their experience and reasoning."
This is prototypical Jewish-opportunist seduction. This is how Jewish Zionists operate in the Beltway, on Main street and in the media: they make sappy, personal appeals to each other based on tribal ties and to gentiles based on tragic history. They create a melodramatic sense of urgency that somehow if one doesn't acquiesce to their pleadings, horrible, tragic consequences will ensue. This is how the Jewish Zionists have been able to get away with their blatant fascism for so long. And they've laughed all the way to Land Title office and to the bank.
I hope Phil is profoundly affected by your appeal, Witty. He should be profoundly pissed at your insult to his intelligence and your transparent attempts to intellectually seduce, manipulate and emotionally blackmail him, all to advance your own personal position.
You people are disgusting.
Mmmm, let me check out what Michael Savage has to say…
Is this post so surprising? It's no secret that most American Jews give Israel a moral pass.
It's more like the Palestinian town of Yasuf that had no electricity or running water until the Jews came and built Tapuach 25 years ago and delivered running water and electricity to Yasuf.
"…Yasuf that had no electricity or running water until the Jews came…"
Ah yes, the old "made the desert bloom" canard. It's a miracle! Hallelujah!
Hey, I've got an idea: Why don't Americans give the Palestinians tens of billions a year in monetary and technological aid and I bet they can make the desert bloom, too. In fact, I bet they could set up a pretty close approximation of the Jewish state.
But then, that wouldn't be a validation of biblical prophecy that pea-brained Christian Zionists could get behind, would it? In fact, they might even start getting insecure about the half-assed, counterfeit version of Christianity that they practice if the hated Muslims were to actually succeed at something.
Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists really all ought to get together and start their own religion. They can call themselves the Stiff Necked Bloodsuckers.
The contempt is odd.
Aionists and even settlers are human beings, especially the ones that are trying to do good work in real life.
The Palestinians are human beings.
I am proud that the individuals that I know chose to associate with a settlement that earnestly pursues REAL environmental efforts. I was very surprised that the individual chose to join a religious settlement deep in the West Bank. We argued about it for a couple months, until I realized that his commitment was not to political expansion but to his sense of spiritual calling associated with the land.
I asked if he would accept living in the same locale if it was sovereign Palestine. He said that politically he didn't care as he didn't regard Zionism as the religious commitment, but that he would be worried for his safety there under Palestinian rule, especially if Hamas took control.
It amazes me that Americans, of all people, can assert that people don't have a right to live where they chose. For many, really very many, settlers, living on Biblical land is what matters. At some point they and the arabs in that area will stop killing each other, and I imagine most of the settlers will stay.
"Why don't Americans give the Palestinians tens of billions a year in monetary and technological aid and I bet they can make the desert bloom, too. In fact, I bet they could set up a pretty close approximation of the Jewish state."
1. The Europeans give the Palestinians billions.
2. It's the other way around- the US gets technological aid from Israel.
3. Israel spends all of the aid money on defense equipment from US suppliers.
You must not have visited Israel or an Arab country to make such uninformed comments
Jim Haygood reveals demonizing and racializing tendencies by insinuating that slaves didn't grow their masters' cotton and tobacco organic. When does he think chemical fertilizers and pesticides were invented, 1682?
Africans brought to America were extremely successful agricultural laborers, who climbed the social ladder from slave to sharecropper in a brief 400 years. How irresponsible and small to smear their successful organic accomplishments.
This is simply an attempt to discredit calm, rational Zionist humanist thinking aimed at BETTERING the Palestinian experience through presenting total acquiesence as the only legitimate response to their dispossession. We are just looking out for the Palestinians here. We don't want any more of them to die, to starve, or to get eaten by over-populated goats on some kind of freak carnivorous rampage.
And what is the problem with settlers considering their land part of Israel? The Israeli army controls it. Isn't that pretty much how wars and borders are settled?
Jim Haygood and other "activist" agitators are the ones clamoring for more war. Israel is ready to quit, and accept victory. Israel wants its conquest to be a peaceful one, and aren't intentions everything? The world community should be trying to convince the Palestinians to accept defeat, if they truly care about them.
Then we can get around to giving the Palestinians some civil rights, maybe a slightly lower unemployment rate. Maybe one day a few decades from now, the rich ones will even be able to buy land in Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile, good settlers projecting good vibes with good solid organic techniques, that's what's going to save Palestinians from these delusional desires to have their homes back.
1. The Europeans give the Palestinians billions.
– the Europeans promise the Palestinians billions of dollars for projects supervised by EU contractors and spent mostly in the US and Europe.
2. It's the other way around- the US gets technological aid from Israel.
– Usually as part of scams where Americans are cheated of jobs and the money ends up in the pockets of wealthy American or Israeli Jews.
3. Israel spends all of the aid money on defense equipment from US suppliers.
– You mean American corporations set up by Israeli and American Jews so that the money can go into the pockets of wealthy Israeli and American Jews.
—————–
Israel also gets pure cash aid.
A lot of the cash comes back to the USA through a network of business and familty connections. The money is then used to subvert the American political system once again to the benefit of wealthy Israeli and American Jews.
"It's more like the Palestinian town of Yasuf that had no electricity or running water until the Jews came and built Tapuach 25 years ago and delivered running water and electricity to Yasuf."
Of course, Tapuach was built on Yasuf land, but hey, what about that electricity? Here are some of the other benefits Yasuf receives, according to ARIJ,
"The citizens of Yasuf and nearby villages are continuously suffering from the presence of the Israeli colonies and colonists. The following are some examples:
1.Blocking all the agricultural roads with earth and rock mounds to prevent the village citizens from reaching their agricultural lands, particularly during the harvesting seasons;
2. Uprooting more than 1000 fruitful olive trees in the vicinity of Kfar Tapuah colony for the construction of Walls and fences;
3.Releasing of great numbers of wild pigs that attack and overgraze fields and trees;
4. Polluting agricultural land with sewage water and causing diseases to local people.
During the seventies of the last century, the Israeli occupation authorities confiscated about 50 dunums of land from the village of Yasuf to built a 3 km long by 16 m wide section of road No, 60.
Later, at the beginning of the nineties of the last century, the Israeli authorities confiscated another 32 dunums to build bypass road number 505 known as Samaria Highway in the northern parts of the village agricultural land. This process, also, led to the uprooting and devastation of more than 1200 olive trees.
In 2004, The Israeli occupation authorities confiscated an additional 300 dunums of agricultural land to expand the main checkpoint of Za'tara (Tapuoh) turning it into a huge crossing point between the northern and southern Palestinian West bank governorate.
All over, about 782 dunums of Yasuf village land have been seized by the occupation authorities for different purposes. This number represents more than 13 % of the total area of the village. More than 2000 olive trees have been uprooted in the process.
After the Israeli re-occupation of the Palestinian cities and villages in the West Bank in April 2002, the village of Yasuf, like other sisterly villages, was put under strict military siege. This siege was manifested in blocking all the local and agricultural roads with earth mounds, rocks, cement blocks, trenches and iron gates. In this context, an iron gate closed the main entrance to the village that connects it with the bypass road number 505, thus, cutting of the village from the outside world and causing severe economic, social and psychological problems to village inhabitants for almost two consecutive years before it was re-opened in December, 2004.""
http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/view.php?recordID=1103
And of course now several homes in Yasuf are under threat of demoltion, because they were built without the permission that Israel never grants to Palestinians but has no difficulty granting to Israeli Jews.
What a lucky village Yasuf is, now that the truly wonderful and magnanimous Israelis live next door and have brought them the joys of modern "civilization"
Bare assing is nothing in comparison with stealing a young boys donkey Phil.
http://homo-sapien-underground.blogspot.com/2007/12/west-bank-jackasses-steal-boys-donkey.html
"Pakistani Taliban Emir By'atullah Mahsoud: We Will Destroy America and Britain, But Won't Use Nuclear Bombs,":
Following are excerpts from an interview with By'atullah Mahsoud, the Emir of the Pakistani Taliban, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on January 25, 2008. Throughout the interview, the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was not mentioned, and it seems the interview was recorded earlier.
To view this clip, visit
what's the difference between non-Jewish populations moving into property owned by Jewish families carted off to the camps and aliyah?
One is opportunist and one is principled. This makes the second the more odious.
Aliyah is "principled"? How so? "Non-Jewish populations moving into property owned by Jewish families" is "opportunist"? How so? Quite speaking in tongues and start speaking American. Or is that inconvenient to your shyster position?
"2. It's the other way around- the US gets technological aid from Israel."
They give us this aid for free? Or we pay them for it? If we pay them, it's a clean slate. There's no debt owed either way. On the other hand, when the US taxpayer gives Israel $15 million to buy and F-16, the taxpayers are still out $15 million.
"Aliyah is "principled"? How so? "Non-Jewish populations moving into property owned by Jewish families" is "opportunist"? How so? Quite speaking in tongues and start speaking American. Or is that inconvenient to your shyster position?"
Not through your particular political lens obviously.
In many cases (who can say most or all), it is driven by a desire to be part of community, a community committed to the Jewish spiritual process.
The nut of it is joy and service. Too often rejected for the role of just the shell, as you only see and react to the protective shell.
Ah, a shell game…
Chris Moore is so clueless, he doesn't even get ej's joke.
Chris, Sweetie, let me spell it out for you. EJ hates jews as much as you do. You've got a natural ally here, except that deep down you hate Arabs as well as Jews, so it's a problem for you. EJ by the way is an A-R-A-B.
Good thing he knows how to speak AMERICAN.
I interpreted his last sentence as ironic. So much sarcasm flies from Zionists mouths, its sometimes hard to keep track of who means what, which is their intent.
(But let me spell something out for you, HaHa: speaking "American" means straight talk–in the non McCain sense).
ej, if you are indeed a fellow enemy of my enemies, I apologize. But HaHa is partly right; I'm not really enamored with Islam, yet I recognize that Arabs have legitimate grievances against Judeofascists, as do, for example, Russian Christians persecuted by them in the Soviet Union. The Judeofascists are very sick people, and shouldn't be allowed to take charge of any non-Jews, because all they really want to do is kill them.