On January 11, an Ohio volunteer for the interventionist group Christian Peacemaker Teams visited grazing lands of a Palestinian village in the South Hebron Hills where settlers from an illegal "outpost" settlement called Havot Maon had stopped Palestinians from grazing their sheep. The settlers were being aided by Israeli soldiers, who were forcing the shepherds off their lands, and who approached the volunteer. A shocking video provided by CPT shows a group of Israeli soldiers dismissing the Ohio volunteer's complaint that the lands are Palestinian, according to Israeli maps. The 3-minute video is shocking because it shows two of the soldiers dropping their pants to baremoon the Palestinian shepherd. They do so with calm deliberation.
These are settlements that even George Bush said "ought to go" a week before this video was made. Obviously, the U.S. government does not care about the landgrab.
My appeal is to American Jews to try and save our religion and people from this disaster. You say it is an aberration, it's not--this type of behavior has been licensed again and again by the occupation; and Breaking the Silence, an Israeli veterans' group which has worked with CPT, has amply documented the moral degradation. The occupation has claimed Israel; and once-noble Commentary Magazine runs articles speaking of the settlements' "achievement." Messianic colonialism, crude racist behavior, contempt for civil norms--this is how Zionism is working itself out. Sixty years past the Holocaust, 100 years past Herzl, 110 years past Dreyfus and the Russian pogroms, and 60 years past the ethnic cleansing, this is how Zionism has formed itself in modern history.
Phil,
You had me until you generalized, "this is how Zionism has formed itself in modern history".
It would be better just to document it, and urge that the shepherd's rights be affirmed.
The "Breaking the Silence" group are also Zionist.
Your audience here is NOT on-the-fence Jews, but some opinionated "activists" and some opinionated fascists, largely.
I checked out the video. What a couple of arrogant IDF war criminal…ass holes. Where is an anti-tank weapon when you need one. Mondo White Boy
Will the oppression never end! Innocent Christians having to see Jews' bare assess! Truly this IS worse than anything Nazis ever did!
Will the oppression never end! Innocent Christians having to see Jews' bare assess! Truly this IS worse than anything Nazis ever did!
I finally figured out what makes Israel's settlements so hard to recognizing as an obvious invasion of a neighboring state: it is the fact that they are settlements. Twenty-first century folks can hardly imagine a fellow first-world nation simply moving in on a nation next door: there must be an rational explanation.
There are many unique conditions that support must-not-be rationalizing.
Israel's foremost invasion camouflage may be that the Palestinians did not have an independent government of their own in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before Israel took over from Jordan. Then there is the "seamless" aspect of Israel seeming to do "more of the same" when adding the last 22% of Palestinian homeland to their 60 year old conquest: nobody complained the first time; si there any reason to start now?
The holocaust excuse still works for many as long as they don't think about it. If you think about it the settlements are MORE likely to bring on another (nuclear) holocaust (or new diaspora now that other Mid-Eastern nations are getting in range of possession of nuclear arms): leaving lebensraum (living space) for 10% of Israel's people at the expense of 100% of Palestinians the only possible motive left for Israelis asserting eminent domain over the historic real estate of helpless Palestinians.
Let's hope "Big Brother" figures all this out and starts to pressure little sister to vacate the rightful Palestinian premises before he has to trade anymore skyscrapers for settlements over appearing to be little sister's chief backer.
AND HERE IS MY ANSWER IN ADVANCE TO THE USUAL HATE CHARGE as posted to such elsewhere:
Did you ever hear of self-destructive behavior?
Just from the self-interested (wholly immoral) viewpoint: 1930's Germany was short farm land (when that was more important) and very short minerals (iron, etc.): giving Germany an important strategic interest in moving in next door.
Israel has what (decent morals aside) strategic interest in moving in next door: real estate on which to prop spacious housing developments, swimming pools and all? For, which Israel risks the wrath of the entire globe (what are you going to do when the people of the USA finally find out — are you going to call them all anti-semitic if they don't play along — see what that gets Israel: it wont be more F-16s).
About the only strategic resource Israel — steals — from the Palestinians is half their water supply (while forbidding drilling new wells when old dry up for over 2 years now — via the old permit refusal dodge, of course). Head up: it would be cheaper to desalinate the Mediterranean than to maintain twice the US Army's tank numbers on 2% of the population base (you could even — buy — water from Palestinians).
Why tell me about the Arabs supposed will to destroy Israel no matter what? Let suppose that against evidence that convinces most informed observers otherwise that this were every bit true. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ROLLING OUT HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS ON OTHER PEOPLE'S SOIL, MAN?
Think — use your brain. One moment the nicest people in the world (me) are stone anti-Semites; the next, the world is expected to leniently forgive Israel anything (short of genocide of course): two sides of a very warped (if DESPERATELY self-serving) motivational equation.
The reason for having international volunteers accompany Palestinians is to restrain the behavior of Israeli soldiers. It doesn't always work, and some international observers have been shot. In the CPT video, the Israeli soldiers restrained themselves to mooning rather than shooting, which might be considered a small victory, despite the rudeness.
In a Dec. 31st article, Haaretz reported that PM Olmert ordered that no West Bank construction (i.e., settlements) is to be authorized without his approval.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/940166.html
This is one of the rare instances when Israel has offered even a gesture of cooperation toward U.S. policy. But unfortunately and characteristically, the announcement was undermined by the fine print:
"However, government spokesman Mark Regev said that 'these orders do not apply to construction that already has been approved. They do not apply to East Jerusalem either, because from the Israeli perspective, the West Bank is not Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is not the West Bank.'"
The international character of Jerusalem, including traditionally Palestinian East Jerusalem, has been a bedrock principle of UN policy for decades.
Philip Weiss has got it right: Judaism is going to have to divorce itself from the secular heresy of zionism. Apartheid is just as incompatible with Judaism as it is with Christianity. The denunciations of religious leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were instrumental in dismantling U.S. and South African apartheid.
Today, many individual Jews have realized that zionist apartheid is doing incalculable damage to the moral standing of Judaism. A few sects such as Neturei Karta are willing to say so. But where are the rabbinical voices from mainstream Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed Judaism, dissociating themselves from the brutality of Israeli behavior in the occupied territories? The lack of dissent is very, very surprising and distressing, at this late hour. But I do not think, ultimately, that Judaism is going to continue to tolerate being dragged into a cesspool by the inhuman excesses of secular zionism. DECISION TIME!
Richard Witty wrote: "You had me until you generalized, "this is how Zionism has formed itself in modern history"."
Richard, how many details must accumulate before you allow yourself to draw a conclusion? You are stuck in a fantasy world of an imagined Zionism which may or may not be possible one day, but definitely has no relationship to the Zionism that the world is stuck with today. Finkelstein was right, Israel is just a stage for you to play out your perverse fantasies.
Don't you ever ask yourself why it is you have never made "aliyah"?
The "conclusion" to generalize, to demonize, I hope I never draw.
Drew. Israel didn't take most of the partitioned land–that was Jordan.
Do you seriously think Germany was short on farmland in the Interwar? Do give me your source for that bit of radical revision!
Let's not hold our breath about the end to Israeli-American military cooperation–Israel is the innovator in this relationship and the US would likely be finished by such a proposal.
By the way, there are millions of Jews in Israel who came there from Morocco, Algeria, Iraq, Yemen, etc. I wonder if Jim and David and Drew ever ask themselves how they got there?
Can't our Zionist guests stop posting under other people's names? Are their arguments so weak that they have to try to confuse the discussion?
Or are they just children, banging away on their parents' keyboard from Crown Heights?
Many Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews emigrated to Israel because Arab governments expelled them, and even confiscated their property. That was wrong and disgraceful. But does it imply that Israel is entitled to payback today, by making Palestinian Arabs stateless and seizing their property?
Just as Palestinians did not build the concentration camps in Europe, they also did not expel Jews from Egypt, Morocco and Yemen.
What about your generalizations, Richard?
And what please is the difference between an "opinionated" fascists and a fascist? I'd like to know since to a large extend (all or largely all) I belong to one of the two groups.
So I'd be pleased if you could define it a bit more closely.
Obviously you consider yourself fair-minded and impartial; I guess that's why you read something into my response a couple of month ago at The Realistic Dove, that plainly wasn't there. But that is a longer and more complicated story. Be assured it's not so funny to be put into your mental boxes, like
opinionated activist
opinionated fascist.
Klaus,
I don't recall Jordan moving its own people unto partitioned land via chasing the original inhabitants into bantustans, nor do I see Jordan building a Jordanian-only road system which the original inhabitants may not travel on or even cross over — can you imagine the reaction of the US media if Jordan did?
My source for Germany being short on land interwar is Adam Tooze's 2007 book The Wages of Destruction which is an 800 page economic history (700 of text, 100 of notes — pretty deep source).
You know what this shows?
The absolute decline of the professionalism of the IDF.
Pre '67, heck, pre '82, IDF was THE elite, most motivated, most professional, best professional fighting force in the world.
See what decades of occupation do to a professional army?!
IDF most elite army?!!
give me a break…they were merely slaughtering 3rd world armies……put the best IDF division up against the best Wehrmacht and it is plain who would win….
"give me a break…they were merely slaughtering 3rd world armies……put the best IDF division up against the best Wehrmacht and it is plain who would win…."
And Aquaman would beat Spiderman . . .
Why the Wehrmacht? Why not the US Army? I guess it goes to show who you admire, as if there were any doubt.
Havat Maon Why does this ring a bell? Oh yea, these are the folks who were poisoning livestock back in March of 05. Really cute. And I have to pay for the troops walking around protecting these merry pranksters.
err David psst the Wehrmacht is different from the SS.
To draw a contemporary analogy: an anti Zionist Jew who does not have dual loyalty is certainly different from an Israel-firster Jew.
Distinctions matter, lad.
btw the Wehrmacht was the best army in WW2. They lost becuase of Hitler's insane orders and lack of resources. The truth is still true even Zionists want to suppress it. Do you need quotes from historians to support my point re the Wehrmacht? let me know….
How did this turn into a WW2 debate?
[Mental note - must blog Rezun's WW2 Soviet Union first strike theory. Yanks will dig it!]
Anyway, professional soldiers around the world were virtually school-girl-over-a-boy-band impressed by the IDF in the previous decades.
Now, not so much.
My point was that precisely BECAUSE of occupation duties in Palestine, the IDF turned into a 3rd rate force.
Compare the performance in the '82 incursion vs the recent incursion.
A prolonged occupation saps an Army's morale, lowers its training, lowers its preparedness, boisters overconfidence.
[Hot damn! Topic number 2].
That was my point.
And for the record, IDF in the 1970's and 1980's would wipe the floor with the pitiful Wehrmacht – IMHO.
In the 1973 war — where anti-tank and anti-air missiles were used en masse for the the first time — the three Arab Armies had the advantage of surprise as well as being the only armies with the missiles. Israel still won.
Now, Israel faces Syria alone and has all the advanced (American quality) weapons (see the late Saddam). My point: Israel would reduce Syria's army to scrap metal within hours — meaning Israel has no strategic justification to hold on to the West Bank or even the Golan Heights anymore.
Even such a strategic justification would not justify building real estate developments on other people's land of course (a distinction which supporters of the occupation manage to blur).
To all zionist…Plezzzzzzzzz learn about your history would you.
I don't whether you people just read zionist myth or whether you don't like real facts or what, but the ignorance and lack of knowledge about your own history is astounding.
I suggest you spend some money and order these bound editions of documents from the British National Archives because some of you are making total utter fools of yourselves with those of us who deal in actual historical fact. I recommend you start with these two.
http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/titledetails.asp?tid=65
Near & Middle East Titles:
Minorities In The Middle East: Jewish Communities In Arab Countries 1841–1974
http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/titledetails.asp?tid=124
Near & Middle East Titles:
Zionist Movement And The Foundation Of Israel 1839–1972,
[8.44] January 1946, British Consul, New York reporting a mass demonstration for Jewish freedom put on by the New Zionist Organization of America. "It was constantly patrolled by the Betarim, the new Jewish Youth Army, attired in a Hebrew version of the old Nazi Bund uniform." "Great Britain was public enemy no. 1 of the Jewish people, more dangerous and shrewder than the Nazis…"
[8.65] February 1946, formation of B´rith Trumpeldor of America or Betar, affiliated with the NZO. "there is noticeable similarity in the organisation´s character, structure and aims to those of the Hitler Youth…", reported by British Embassy, Washington"
Needless to say the actual facts aren't very flattering to the zionist. Drop the myths and stick to the facts.
I have watched IDF soldiers expose themselves to 10-12 year olds at a local girls' parochial school in el-Khalil/Hebron and then threaten them with rape and murder.
When I complained, I was detained, interrogated for four hours, and threatened with expulsion.
Such crude and lewd behavior is fairly normal for the IDF in dealing with Arabs, and in truth is hardly the worst that I have observed.
RE: "Your audience here is NOT on-the-fence Jews, but some opinionated "activists" and some opinionated fascists, largely."
In what sense is the audience portion as so defined here "fascist?"
Ref:
Denis, Adam Tooze seems to have fallen into a a Nazi myth trap. That happens occasionally. I am not surprised anymore.
As Klaus already wrote, Germany wasn't short of farm land.
But I have no doubt that many "scientist" during the Nazi reign wrote about or repeated one of the central Nazi myth: "Volk ohne Raum" (=people without space) in its diverse proverbial dresses.
I wrote a screen play a few years ago. It recounts some of the humiliation and abuse to which I saw Palestinians subjected in the Occupied Territories.
The script is called "Two Weeks in September or Not a Dream but a Nightmare."
It is readable at link to members.aol.com
.
In real life the outcome was much tragic than the ending I wrote.
A people without land for a land without people. With such leaders, who needs Madaleine Albright?
LeaNder,
In any case, Zionists ought to wake up to the idea that "people without all the land they want (not need) to roll out upper middle class housing developments" is not a smart reason for a little country to piss off the entire earth (assuming the USA ever wakes up) — leaving aside the moral turpitude of a first-world nation just moving in on and displacing a poor nation.
Another foolish notion is using the Holocaust to excuse the only (above unnecessary, stupid) thing (moving in on a poor Islamic state) that could bring on another holocaust (nuclear this time?).
"A people without land for a land without people."