The New York Jewish Week says that Democrats have failed so far in their efforts to pin Rev. Hagee on McCain, in the way that the rightwing has pinned Rev. Wright on Obama.
Don’t give up! Americans need to understand that Hagee’s views on the West Bank are more intolerant and dangerous than Rev. Wright’s views, and that they are shared by the neoconservatives, who don’t want to give up land for peace. The sooner this divide is explained and announced to Americans, the better for everyone.
The real news is that a left-center Jewish leadership that is allied with Obama’s broader progressive movement has emerged. Daniel Levy, IPF, and Ambassador
Kurtzer have
made an alliance across ethnic lines to try and save the two-state
solution. I’m not a Zionist myself, but as as a newsman I understand that IPF’s M.J. Rosenberg is an important voice in political Jewry/leadership right now. His piece yesterday is titled "Remember These Digits: 78-22," an obvious reference to the unfair division of historical Palestine (which is being chewed down further every day), and he writes:
It is
amazing that right-wing Israelis and their American enablers have
managed to convince even a single person that West Bank settlements are
not at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict….
The very existence of Israel, Rosenberg concludes, is in jeopardy
because politicians in Jerusalem are intimidated by
fringe elements—not to mention the politicians here who are even more
intimidated by the status quo lobby in Washington, DC. [emphases mine]
A year back at Yivo, neocon Bill Kristol, a McCain pal, said presciently that Israel’s rightwing supporters have to link arms with new constituencies in the U.S. because of political changes in the U.S. He anticipated Hagee, the isolation of the neocons, and the emergence of the center-left. Hagee is the wedge.
Some day soon this issue will be on Chris Matthews…
78-22 is statistics, statistics for a propagandistic purpose.
But other statistics include the distribution of arable or settlable land in 1949, which was closer to 50-50. (The Negev is 40% of the land).
I'll take Rev. Wright over Rev. Hagee anyday.
Why God Doth Thou Make Christian Zionists So God Damn Stupid?
West Bank: arable land: 16.9%
permanent crops: 18.97%
other: 64.13% (2001)
Irrigated land:
150 sq km; note – includes Gaza Strip (2003)
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html
On 29 November 1947 the General Assembly adopted Resolution 181(II) calling for the division of Palestine into two states, against the wishes of the majority of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs. They wanted an independent and democratic state based on the rule of law….The proposed Jewish state had 498,000 Jews and 497,000 Palestinian Arabs, in effect, a bi-national state. The proposed Arab state had 725,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews. Jerusalem, designated an international zone, had 105,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews. The Jewish state had 56 percent of the territory of Palestine and most of the arable land but Arabs held ownership rights to approximately 90 percent of this land.
http://www.badil.org/Publications/Bulletins/Bulletin-17.htm
.
How can a person of such evident good will as M.J. Rosenberg get it so drastically wrong? He writes (in the linked article):
"The conflict is about who will control the occupied territories. A final status deal must include full security for Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and everyone knows it."
That's the conventional wisdom, and it's flat-out wrong. "78-22" is not a fair division of land, with or without settlements. Economic geography, an obscure discipline which deserves more attention than it gets, virtually guarantees that the two-state solution is a dysfunctional non-starter.
In fact the conflict, Mr. Rosenberg, is about who will control the future unified state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. Your ephemeral "occupied territories" and "East Jerusalem" will be anachronistic footnotes to history, like "Nyasaland" and "East Berlin."
But wait! Now Rosenberg flicks his Bic, imitates Amy Winehouse taking a monster toke on the crack pipe, and after huffing a couple of whippets for good measure, falls over backward, and, lying prone, stoned and naked on the floor like Zuckerman in "The Anatomy Lesson," delivers himself of this fantastic hallucinatory rant:
"Israel is the fourth strongest military power in the world. It successfully defends itself and, in a real sense, defends Jews everywhere. Almost seven million Israelis live good, safe lives in a dynamic modern state."
Christ sh*t howdy, M.J., you're scarin' me, buddy. Back on Earth, when you come down and put your clothes back on, you ought to read what Northeastern University professor Shahid Alam wrote about the changing balance of military power:
"The Hizbollah offers Israel a new kind of asymmetric warfare: it combines low-tech guerilla tactics with sophisticated missile and communications technology. Understandably, the Israelis find these Hizbollah achievements hard to digest. What the world witnessed in Lebanon in July 2006 were events that contain the potential for shifting the balance of power in the Middle East. Earlier, the Iraqi insurgents had demonstrated that they can make an occupation – even by the world’s greatest power – very costly. Now, the Hizbollah had shown that a disciplined guerilla force, with access to advanced missiles, can repel the most powerful invading army. Once anti-tank, anti-ship and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles can be bought on the world’s illicit arms markets as readily as AK-47s, this will begin to alter the fortunes of resistance movements battling great powers."
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/6398
The clock is ticking on Israel's colonial dream. I will be mildly surprised if Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary as an apartheid state. And I'd give you five-to-one odds that it won't see its hundredth.
Five to one, baby, one in five … as Jim M. used to sing.
I don't think that most Americans who reject Jeremiah Wright do so because of his views on Palestine. Wright is rejected because he is viewed by many as a racial extremist.
Also, I'm not very hopeful that the Jewish left will save us from the Jewish right.
If the future of Israel is up for grabs, can the same be said for Jewish power in the U.S.? If the eonomy really stalls, can Jews really hold sway over a balkanized nation of haves and have-nots with multiple cultures and no common history?
.
Never mind the right wing; Obama still has a Democratic opponent. And boy, is she mean:
————
At a fundraiser in San Francisco last Sunday, [Obama] explained his troubles winning over working class voters, saying they have become frustrated with economic conditions:
"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date.
"Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080412/ap_on_el_pr/obama_clinton
————
BWA HA HA HA. Gotta love these intra-Ivy teapot tempests. The 109 million-dollah woman blasts Obama, who probably doesn't have a tenth of her net worth, as an "elitist." If he weren't a Senator, he might be her caterer.
Show me the noblessse oblige!
They are both right. The whites you don't see on tv as talking heads are well aware that Hillary and Obama represent affirmitive action with bells on. PA is a litmus test. Who will the average white male vote for? For democratic minority hegemony? Or for republican dying in Iraq and having their jobs shipped overseas while they get cold-shouldered by minority set-asides? Of course, they deserve it; all their granddaddys owned slaves, or at least got to drink from the Whites Only fountain.
Ok Haygood, surely a Hezbollah partisan such has yourself should have more faith in your guys, 5-1 doesn't sound too certain to me. But I digress, no the war in Lebanon didn't go to my liking. ( south Beirut a total smoking ruin and Nasralllah sleeping with the fish would have been the way to go ) But here is the thing. Israel, even with the corruption, is a country that has a western outlook. When mistakes are made, they are corrected, and that's already going on. The qualitative edge has been widening need declining between the IDF and respective Arab armies. When your boys were wiping out sedars attended by holocaust survivors and teenage girls in night clubs Israel launched operation defensive shield and build the fence. Who won that one. Israel will win the next one because there is no choice. If the Arabs win one it's a second holocaust. ∑hen Israel wins the UN goes nuts and a cease fire is imposed.
C'mon, only a fool believes that Israel could hang on forever with only conventional weapons. I really don't care what happens to Israel as long as we don't fund Israel, fight for Israel, provide political cover for Israel, or take the refugees when Israel gets the beating it so richly deserves.
And having spent time in Israel, I can say that Israelis are not Westerners! If they are, I'll turn in my Westerner card tomorrow. What a scam! Israelis claim that they belong in the region, and then claim that they are Westerners at the same time. That's about like the minority/white shell game many Jews play in the U.S..
How about letting Israel take the gloves off, get rid of the Palestinians and take the oil fields of the gulf. You ok with that Todd. And I didn't say that Israel's were westerners, I said that they have a dynamic western outlook. Has opposed to the Arabs who without oil would be back riding their camels, using their left hands instead of toilet paper, and screwing their 11 yr old multiple wifes. Ok, maybe that part hasn't changed.
Oh yeah. The goys have two options. Both will sink them. Cool.
"I really don't care what happens to Israel as long as we don't fund Israel, fight for Israel, provide political cover for Israel, or take the refugees when Israel gets the beating it so richly deserves."
Not exactly a benevolent approach.
This approach is exactly what gives the right-wing in Israel its backbone, and sense of isolation.
For what its worth, stopping funding of Israel removes ANY leverage that ANY American leadership has, short of threatening to invade ourselves.
How about Israel gets no economic, military, political or any other type of aid? How about that? Talk about little stormtroopers! Is it not enough that Israel is on stolen land? You would take their oil also? It must be nice to be entitled to so much!
Who can stop the Arab? He has a bunch of prepubescent virgins
waiting for him in the afterlife. Who can stop the Hebrew? He has a good Jewish wife and kids, and his shiksa(s) on the side, or a shiksa wife who raises the kids as Jewish first, and does it in the name of secular Christianian principles. Give up?
Israel or Jewishness isn't a concern to me. Yes, it would be great if the middle east situation would work out in a peaceful way, but it isn't going to. I'm more concerned with getting rid of the foreign and destructive influences in the United States.
A sense of entitlement to other people's money and material, political cover and a general free ride morally is what gives Israelis of all stripes their backbone.
Speaking of which, The Accidental Shiksa
Curb Your Enthusiam‘s Cheryl Hines. Check it out.
.
"Has opposed …" — the characteristic "Bill Pearlman tic" which Sword of Gidget has mysteriously inherited. Has studying Hebrew made you type that way, or is it some kind of Ladino thing to preposition silent aitches?
"Stopping funding of Israel removes ANY leverage that ANY American leadership has." — a classic Witty non sequitur: the only leverage we've got is no leverage at all, if we use it. We've got to keep paying, so Israel can keep on sassing us — this is the masochistic lacuna of the untreated passive-aggressive personality. Help is available, Richard, even in your remote village.
Okay, Charles, I give up. Who can stop the Arab and the Hebrew?
Actually Todd it is a concern of yours. At least be intellectually honest like Haygood and Ed, and Keating. They make no bones about their overt hatred of jews.
Israel and Jewishness are forced on the rest of us. I don't care about either. Your comments about hatred mean nothing, as I have seen no mention of hatred from anyone.
Absence of acceptance is hatred, Todd.
Israel is self-defined as a Jewish state, the only one on the planet where it has never and will never be a crime to be Jewish as a peer.
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=1ccfcfa43e7b58c7df84b714455e672b76da6429
An interesting, if short discussion.
In the New York Time no less. (I'm joking. I believe that debate does occur in the conventional publications, but maybe this is new? I don't think so.)
Richard, in his book The Much Too Promised Land, Aaron David Miller says that American politicans routinely speak of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle east and this is true, "despite some limitations that are also familiar to Americans (discrimination against more than a million Israeli Arabs)". I dont think thats familiar to Americans, but more important it would seem to lessen Israel's achievement as a place where as you say it's no crime to be a Jew. I dont think it's a crime to be a Jew in the U.S., or an Arab.
"Absence of acceptance is hatred, Todd."
That statement makes no sense. Not accepting zionism and foreign influence in my nation is rational. Call it whatever you want, Richard. Just make sure that you apply the same logic to those that you sympathize with.
Phil,
You're right on!! It isn't a crime to be a Jew in the US, and Witty's statement is part of his sickness. If he really thinks it's a crime to be a Jew in America, what is he doing there?:
"Israel is self-defined as a Jewish state, the only one on the planet where it has never and will never be a crime to be Jewish as a peer."
And although remote Rich doesn't like to face the facts, here's a fact that must really upset him:
Israel is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Jew.
PM
Don't worry about it Todd, the Moslems are on the march and when your start hearing the muzzein 5 times a day and sharia law starts to insinuate it's way into our system remember what you wished for. It's actually kind of ironic that in Europe all you had were Jews that were desperate to be a part of their respective countries and were net contributors to society. And the Europeans couldn't wait to kill them. Now it's a tidal wave of Moslems. In this country there is no question, the demographics are against us, Soon, the Moslems are going to reach critical mass. See how you enjoy that one.
Phil,
There is anti-semitism in the US. I'm amazed that you haven't encountered it in your research and travels.
The post-war generation of Jews has been largely immune from the waves of institutionalized anti-semitism. We don't experience quotas in professions, in admissions to universities, etc.
And, one can hope that that remains.
Its a fantasy to presume that it has always been that way though, or that that condition is yet permanently confident.
I'm sorry that you didn't feel kinship mixed in with your disgust, when you visited Israel.
As I've told you a dozen times, my identity of being a Jew changed radically when I got to know my wife's family, all holocaust survivors (though almost all of her father's family did not survive).
Their witness included the reality of their neighbors' taunting them when the Germans finally took over Hungary and started shipping the Jews out of their homes to slave and death camps. Even in enlightened Budapest. Even my wife's grandfathers' actual patients taunted them.
It wasn't my personal experience, but it broke the fantasy that my own experience, or even those like me, was general.
Its not an invocation for propaganda purposes. Its an explanation of attitude.
Jews are out of most places where they were persecuted, thankfully. That Israel existed, gave them a place to go, as imperfect as it is.
That the existence of Israel stimulated the majority of Arab states to ethnically cleanse their communities of Jews, is not a great statement of confidence in the depth of commitment to civil rights in the world.
"Israel is self-defined as a Jewish state, the only one on the planet where it has never and will never be a crime to be Jewish as a peer."–Richard Witty
True. Just a crime by default to be anything else. Institutionalized
And the USA? Limousine liberal rule; take your pick, Feminist or Black variety. Otherwise, Likud-neocon-evangelical feudal white males. The middle ages, or minority power, your choice.
And the 22 countries in the Arab Leauge? What of them Keating. Your way better off being a Christian or Moslem in Israel than you are being a Christian of Jew in Saudi Arabia, of Gaza for that matter. Or Jordan, or Syria. OhI forgot there aren't any.
"Israel is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Jew."
No! Say it ain't so!
But but but … what about those 25,000 Jews living in Iran, paul… it must be really dangerous for them…
I bet they would make aliyah if they just had the means.
http://www.jewishagency.org/JewishAgency/English/Home/About/Press+Room/Jewish+Agency+In+The+News/2007/3/dec27jp.htm
"Israel's decision to publicize the arrival of a group of 40 Iranian immigrants Tuesday was intended to send a message to Iranian Jewry that they are wanted here, and that if emigration from Iran were one day prohibited, no one could say they did not have a chance to come to Israel, The Jerusalem Post has learned….
A large Israeli press contingent – including radio, Internet and TV, as well as the major international wire services – were "tipped off" to the planned event 24 hours before it took place. All reports were required to go to the military censor.
The story attracted much attention in the Arab media on Wednesday, with much of the focus on trying to figure out the identity of the third country through which the immigrants passed on their way to Israel.
Israel Radio's Farsi language broadcast did not report the group's arrival at all, not wanting to create any problems for the remaining Iranian Jewish community, according to Israel Radio sources."
–
Ah yes, the going to "the military censor", or as it's known in the U.S., "an editor"…
Claims by zionists that Jews are only safe in Israel are like a huckster saying you can't get by without one of these things he's selling.
Jewish colonization of Palestine is a huge industry, and now that its name is in the mud, will rebranding save the day? More nuanced public relations, that is the answer?
RE: "(To Phil) I'm sorry that you didn't feel kinship mixed in with your disgust, when you visited Israel."–WItty
I'm sorry that you don't feel kinship mixed in with your disgust all these years you have lived in the USA. Summer camp days of yore must have left a deep impact.
"Absence of acceptance is hatred, Todd."–Witty
Damn, talk about projection…. so Witty is SOG in talmudic dress?
I had a great time in summer camp Keating. How were your days in the kkk summer retreats.
"I didn't say that Israel's were westerners, I said that they have a dynamic western outlook."–SOG
Ah, subprime mortgages and Wall St bailouts. Now we're cooking with steam.
I had a great time in the US Army. You don't know what you missed.
Actually Stanley Fischer has Israels economy humming. And you can't blame us for Alan Greenspan, He's has much a Jew has Phil Weiss is, which means no Jew at all. And Angelo Mozzillo isn't Jewish, he's a wop. BTW, I was too young for Vietnam, too old for Iraq. What unit and years were you in Vietnam. Where was your base camp? Just curious.
'Five to one, baby, one in five…'
No-one here gets out alive…
"I really don't care what happens to Israel as long as we don't fund Israel, fight for Israel, provide political cover for Israel, or take the refugees when Israel gets the beating it so richly deserves."
Witty – Not exactly a benevolent approach.'
How come that statement offended your sense of decorum, but this one didn't?
'How about letting Israel take the gloves off, get rid of the Palestinians and take the oil fields of the gulf'
It's a sensitive instrument, that radar of yours Richard, but it only operates in one direction.
'For what its worth, stopping funding of Israel removes ANY leverage that ANY American leadership has, short of threatening to invade ourselves.'
You excel yourself there Richard. Take a bow.
'They make no bones about their overt hatred of jews'
That's very debatable indeed, but your Arab-hatred isn't is it Butter Knife?
'Absence of acceptance is hatred, Todd.'
Another aphorism. You could make T-shirts or put out a calendar of them or something.
'That the existence of Israel stimulated the majority of Arab states to ethnically cleanse their communities of Jews, is not a great statement of confidence in the depth of commitment to civil rights in the world.'
'the existence of Israel' did the trick, did it? I can almost admire the relentlessly biased mindset that can make such a statement without acknowledging the ethnic cleansing that had to occur before Israel could exist – but not quite.
'Actually Stanley Fischer has Israels economy humming.'
I suppose it has nothing to do with all the military/security/intel contracts Israel has gouged out of American taxpayers, on top of the annual tithes of course. And nothing to do with the string of such contracts (weapons, cattle prods, night air survelliance, water cannon, etc) Israel has with the world's worst regimes, Robert Mugabe's amongst them.
Richard, I pointed you in the direction of Ramzy Baroud's lament (in Counterpunch) for his father who died alone in Gaza last week. Did you read it? You sorely need perspective and the simple sadness of his piece might provide some.
'Five to one, baby, one in five…'
No-one here gets out alive…
"I really don't care what happens to Israel as long as we don't fund Israel, fight for Israel, provide political cover for Israel, or take the refugees when Israel gets the beating it so richly deserves."
Witty – Not exactly a benevolent approach.'
How come that statement offended your sense of decorum, but this one didn't?
'How about letting Israel take the gloves off, get rid of the Palestinians and take the oil fields of the gulf'
It's a sensitive instrument, that radar of yours Richard, but it only operates in one direction.
'For what its worth, stopping funding of Israel removes ANY leverage that ANY American leadership has, short of threatening to invade ourselves.'
You excel yourself there Richard. Take a bow.
'They make no bones about their overt hatred of jews'
That's very debatable indeed, but your Arab-hatred isn't is it Butter Knife?
'Absence of acceptance is hatred, Todd.'
Another aphorism. You could make T-shirts or put out a calendar of them or something.
'That the existence of Israel stimulated the majority of Arab states to ethnically cleanse their communities of Jews, is not a great statement of confidence in the depth of commitment to civil rights in the world.'
'the existence of Israel' did the trick, did it? I can almost admire the relentlessly biased mindset that can make such a statement without acknowledging the ethnic cleansing that had to occur before Israel could exist – but not quite.
'Actually Stanley Fischer has Israels economy humming.'
I suppose it has nothing to do with all the military/security/intel contracts Israel has gouged out of American taxpayers, on top of the annual tithes of course. And nothing to do with the string of such contracts (weapons, cattle prods, night air survelliance, water cannon, etc) Israel has with the world's worst regimes, Robert Mugabe's amongst them.
Richard, I pointed you in the direction of Ramzy Baroud's lament (in Counterpunch) for his father who died alone in Gaza last week. Did you read it? You sorely need perspective and the simple sadness of his piece might provide some.
Glenn,
You also need perspective.
I don't read much that is referred here. I need some indication of respect for my perspective (even if we differ in conclusion and goal), before inclined to read what too often has been just polemic.
"Don't worry about it Todd, the Moslems are on the march and when your start hearing the muzzein 5 times a day and sharia law starts to insinuate it's way into our system remember what you wished for."
And I guess that only the Jews can save us from the Muslims, huh? And only the left-wing Jews can save us from the right-wing Jews! I guess we are in a pickle. Is it really the non-Jews who overestimate Jewish power?
You know what, SOG, I'd like live in my own country and not have to worry about having other people hate me. A good way to do that would be to stay out of their affairs, not support their tormentors, an not allow them or their tormentors to become legal or illegal citizens.
And while we're at it, I wouldn't enjoy Muslim interference in my daily life any more than I enjoy the Jewish, or other foreign, interference. I'm not a multiculturalist, and I would enjoy minding my own business in my own country, living with the customs and traditions of those who came before me.
Now, In case I didn't get the gist of your statement, remind me once again of how you would kill and dispossess the marching Muslims. I wouldn't want to miss your point.
"I don't read much that is referred here." -Richard Witty
LOL! Our self-appointed mediator is building trust and confidence between the two sides by only listening to one of them.
I never heard of a mediator who didn't listen. Richard, don't you often post here without even reading the entirety of Phil's entries, much less the links?
Don't you think your own bias interferes a little with your role as mediator?
And, relatedly: Is the phrase, "conflict of interest," just another CANARD?
'Glenn, You also need perspective.'
For sure, I don’t think there’s anyone who couldn’t use more perspective, but I have to say that I don't feel your comments (which always seem to me reactive rather than proactive, a charge I must plead guilty to at times) have provided me with much, not yet anyway. Never say never I suppose.
'I don't read much that is referred here.'
No need to be reminded about those elephants that keep getting in the way of your rose-coloured view, eh? I can’t pretend to read as much Daniel Pipes or David Horowitz as perhaps I should either, but read them I do, nose-peg handy. Know your enemy, or rather ‘ensure you are aware of what the opposition wants, and why’.
'I need some indication of respect for my perspective (even if we differ in conclusion and goal), before inclined to read what too often has been just polemic.'
I have twice recommended you read Ramzy Baroud's piece on his late father, in Counterpunch. It is restrained, the anger more an ember than a flame, but it would make uncomfortable reading for anyone engaged in trying to rationalise or excuse Israel's conduct in the Occupied Territories. It is just what the doctor ordered for Zionists in need of some perspective.
I wonder if you would class it as 'polemic', a designation which appears to function for you as a sort of 'get out of jail free' card when applied to ideas you don't fancy grappling with. There is a natural sense in which outrage, anger, sadness et al are 'polemic' Richard, but that does not negate their value, or their power. Sometimes what is true and what is right are located in polemic Richard, especially when the massive pro-Israel bias in Western societies has shifted the far right of the debate into the centre. In this situation, any deviation to the ‘left’ looks far more polemical than it actually is.
Indeed, the mythically omniscient 'balance' you seem to strive for cannot be achieved by anyone with an emotional involvement in the issue. Polemic is unavoidable, and natural. Really, you need to consider both sides of a story before you can assay a centrist position in any case, so your admission that you close yourself off from divergent views means a tacit admission that you can never arrive at a properly balanced position. If people on the other side felt the same way, what a pretty pickle we’d be in, with neither side prepared even to read what the other has to say.
It reminds me of the US media’s stupidly obsessive quest for ‘balance’ when sometimes right is simply right, and wrong wrong, with the fealty to ‘balance’ acting as a brake on understanding things which are pretty clear cut. But then for some stakeholders, that opacity is preferable to the clarity of the awful truth.
Re: "Actually Stanley Fischer has Israels economy humming. And you can't blame us for Alan Greenspan, He's has much a Jew has Phil Weiss is, which means no Jew at all. And Angelo Mozzillo isn't Jewish, he's a wop. BTW, I was too young for Vietnam, too old for Iraq. What unit and years were you in Vietnam. Where was your base camp? Just curious."–the Sword of Gideon.
So, SOG, you never enlisted? Gee, what a surprise. Too bad you are missing out on the VA benefits I get (such as they are).
SOG lives everyday protected by US GIs, but he's ungrateful. What a surprise.