The Washington Times today prints a letter from James J. David, a retired general in Georgia, eloquently calling for sanctions against Israel in light of the unending violence in Gaza/Jerusalem:
It seems that this seesaw retaliation will never end, not as long as Israel continues its brutal and illegal occupation... Mr. Bush promised in his State of the Union address that he will end the spending of taxpayer money on "wasteful or bloated" programs. Not only is this additional foreign aid to Israel a "wasteful and bloated" program, but it also is illegal and immoral. It's illegal because Israel uses this military aid in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and Foreign Assistance Act to violate the human rights of Palestinians through its brutal military occupation and siege of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. It's immoral...
A good thing that the Washington Times prints this sort of thing. I hope soon that the New York Times will start printing more of such letters, which it surely gets in buckets. Some time ago the otherwise-emulable Tony Karon wrote that there are "tropes" in American political life supportive of Israel quite apart from the lobby. I'm genuinely curious about those tropes, what they are? General David is invoking an American trope: fairness.
You have it wrong, once again. The problem is NOT that Israel must end its occupation, the problem RESULTS from Israel ending its occupation. As soon as it left Gaza, the rockets, the terror, the violent coup by Hamas, all began.
The violence in Gaza, as well as the second intifada and the Lebanon war, all resulted from the same thing: Israel's naive belief that it would get peace for land. It has given up much land but gotten no peace.
Land for peace cannot work when the Arab side's version of peace does not mean peace with Israel, it means peace without Israel.
That is why, instead of giving up another inch of land claimed by phony "Palestinian" squatters, Israel should concentrate on winning the 60 years war. Every member of Hamas, high or low, must be executed. The same goes for Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the other murder groups. If the remaining people wish to have peace WITH Israel, it will then be possible.
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"I hope soon that the New York Times will start printing more of such letters, which it surely gets in buckets."
* sigh *
Right, Phil. And I hope that the Jerusalem Post will start printing more thoughtful letters from its Arab readers.
Repeat after me, buddy: IT DOESN'T MATTER.
The Revolution will not be televised. Nor will it be covered in the New York Slimes. LOL!
Aw, any Gentile wailing about morality should be seen for what it is: False moral analogy. The goy job is to just support the truth, with body, with money. Most are doing so, thank G-D–not that they don't need an economic whip and continual marketing plan. Democracy is really bad, but better than its competitors. Thank G-D, we have money.
Re Ed
Why buggarise around?
Every Palestinian, high or low, must be executed.
i.e. the Final Solution.
The IDF are just a bunch of pissants.
ej
Don't confuse killing the murderer with killing the victim. The true notion of the "final solution", which you abuse so easily, was about killing innocents. Hamas and the other murder groups are not innocents, but are themselves imbued with the desire for the same final solution that you, like Hitler, falsely transfer to their victims.
Phil, I'm not sure I made myself sufficiently clear when talking about the pro-Israel "trope" in American mainstream politics. I was commenting in the context of discussion about the Israel lobby, and trying to make the point that the lobby has been so successful in enforcing and policing a hopelessly biased pro-Israel policy as a bipartisan consensus in Washington that it no longer needs to fight and hustle for every pro-Israel statement and resolution in the way that it might once have had to. In other words, the AIPAC default settings have become mainstream Washington's default settings on Israel, and there's now a kind of catechism of pro-Israel bias that every mainstream U.S. political candidate is expected to recite as a matter of course when running for national office. The irony, of course, is that the AIPAC crowd have been so successful in establishing their hegemony over the discourse on Israel in Washington that they no longer regard its mere recitation as sufficient grounds for trusting that a candidate is "good for Israel" – that's exactly what's happened with Obama, where many Israel-firsters are saying yes, he talks the talk, but we're not sure that he really means it, that he's not just repeating canned rhetoric. (Rhetoric canned by whom, I wonder?)
That's really what I'm getting at by my use of "tropes" — I'm no literary criticism scholar though, so may well be misapplying the term (which, of course, I remember more as the term we used to describe the tunes for Torah passages when I was learning my Barmitzvah portion!)
Cheers
Tony
Tony Karon = Jew
Pill Weiss = Jew
Why should we believe all you Jews? Your commenters keep explaining to us what an evil group of people you are.
You think there is a pro-Israel bias in Washington? Is that why Israel was pressured to end the Lebanon War while leaving Hezbollah in tact and allowing them to rebuild in southern Lebanon? Is that why the "roadmap" is still in place despite that fact that the first obligation of the Palestinian side, to end terror attacks, has been violated from the first day? Is that why Israel has been pressured to return to talks despite the continued rocket attacks aimed at civilians?
The Bush administration, as friendly to Israel as it may be, is still asking of Israel what we would never allow for ourselves: to show continued restraint in the face of continued attacks. I think the so-called "lobby", if it actually exists, is doing a lousy job based on those standards.