Against Commentary Magazine, a reader has offered me this Jaffa blogger. Her name's Yudit, an artist. I want to believe she's Jewish. Oh my god, there are some beautiful Jews in the world! She says Jaffa, once "bride of the sea" to the Arab population, is now a slummy suburb of Tel Aviv. She resists continuing efforts to push Arabs out, and describes a demonstration the other night at the Etzel Museum, a museum of the Irgun, right in historic Jaffa:
At the etzel museum a small audience listens to a sound & light heroism performance,
We are kept at "a safe" distance, but using old pots and sticks as well as small flutes we raise a lot of noise. Banners tell the story of the naqbe in Jaffa, of the acts of terror carried out by Etzel against civilians. Sixty years ago, the naqbe.
Reuven Abergil tells the story of how that happened, while the Brits and the Hagana conveniently looked in the other direction. They controlled the road blocks on the way to Jaffa and the Etzel people dressed to look like local Arabs, passed through with their weapons and explosives. Bombs hidden inside a watermelon cart and a truck exploded in Jaffa's market. Children and women were murdered. The aim was to create terror and make the population want to flee away.
The American government, partnering with Israel, is still going after Germans, no matter where they fled, sixty plus years after one may have been a teen-age or early twenties camp guard in, say Poland.
I have no problem with that.
So, I'm suppose to have a problem with somebody bringing up
the Nakba, the Irgun progeny?
In the USA, the answer is: Shut Up.
Is this another example of the implementation of Affirmative Action?
Seems that principle has turned in on itself.
What am I missing?
Another related question for Americans who listen to talk radio:
Who would want Michael Medved in the trench next to them?
How about, we send one of your kids to crouch in the trench with Medved's?
I rather be in a trench with Phil. So would my kid. Even though we both know Phil doesn't know one end of an entrenching tool or a P-38 from the other.
MREs. They come in all kinds of packets.
Wasn't Jenna Bush's marriage affair nice?
She's a great person.
Her Mom's a librarian.
I haven't heard her Mom sticking up for the courageous librarians who defied the US secret services when they asked for all client data.
Good Germans. We have our own version. They don't even have to be pure Germans.
What exactly are we looking at here?
Propaganda.
It's time a couple of goys create a new Superman comix book. An update of Truth, Justice, and The American Way.
Do the Palestinians have their own version of MAUS?
Come on South Park, and Family Guy–let's cover all the bases.
Despite the considerable scholarship documenting the systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jewish paramilitary forces between 1947-1949, Nakba denial remains depressingly pervasive. Those interested in hearing a counterpoint to the Etzel museum's rendering of the history of 1948 should visit the Nakba Archive website (www.nakba-archive.org) where they can view interviews recorded with first-generation Palestinian refugees in Lebanon about their experiences in 1948.
The Nakba archive, which I have directed since 2002, now consists of around 500 filmed recordings with refugees from 135 villages and towns, mainly from the northern Galilee and the coastal cities. These eyewitness testimonies have overwhelmingly supported the consensus view of Israeli revisionist historians – from the ardently Zionist Benny Morris to the ardently anti-Zionist Ilan Pappe – that the displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 was not, as authors like Efraim Karsh suggest, the work of Arab leaders, but the result of an intense campaign by Jewish militias to intimidate the native Palestinian population, a campaign that included demolitions, civilian massacres, aerial bombardments, arson attacks, and rape.
The lack of formal acknowledgement of the historical crimes perpetrated against Palestinians in 1948 has raised the historical stakes. For generations born in Lebanon, their insistence on the right to return to the villages from which their parents and grandparents fled is often as much a demand for recognition of what occurred in 1948, and of their dignity as human beings, as it is about an actual implementation of return. Those who assume that an honest rendering of the historical record and a recognition of Palestinian rights would necessarily mean the end of the State of Israel, would do well to revise their ideological maximalism. Coexistence begins with both historical honesty and mutual recognition.
Diana Allan, well put.
Never underestimate the power of pop culture, including underground culture. The Palestinians need their own version of MAUS.
On CNN as I type, Wolf Blitzer is fielding the issue, who is appeasing Hitler more, the Republicans or the Democrats? This apropos Shrub firing from Israel that the Democrats, especially Obama, is appeasing Hitler and deeply desiring a new Holocaust.
Meanwhile, Jenna Bush recently wed her longtime boyfriend, a grad student and son of a former VA Lt Governor. The newlyweds danced to Your Are So Beautful, the ballad made famous by Joe Cocker. The Bush twins and the new groom stopped in the middle of their first dance. Jenna rushed to a stage microphone, and blurted:
"We are so happy and grateful for all our blessings, and in keeping with my Dad's highest wishes and most serious goals for all Americans, we'd like to announce that we, me Jenna, my new husband Henry, and my twin sister, Barbara, will be enlisting in the U S 82nd Airborne Division as soon as I get out of my very simple and elegant Oscar de la Renta dress–notice I have no veil."
It is 630PM, 5-15-08, and I am watching U S enlisted men testifying in congress from personal experience regarding the SOP daily atrocities visited on Iraqui civilians by their units, and the SOP cover-ups going on daily for the last five years. This is as bad, if not worse, than what the IDF does daily in its occupied land. I am really ashamed to be an American. What are soldiers
and the Iraqui people are going through daily is enough to make anyone insane. The USA is in deep, deep trouble. These soldiers
are testifying honestly, and showing us all what our government and MSM have done, and are doing. Our government does not deserve such wonderful winter soldier citizens as I see and hear testifying before me on my TV screen at this moment.
It's on C-SPAN right now.
The interview of the veterans was made by the Progressive Caucus, and most of the veterans testifying were members of
Iraqui Veterans Against the War (IVAW). All the Progressive Caucus members were Democrats, and all were women. One veteran testifying was a high ranking former officer who had details about Petraeus that were highly unflattering and delineated that Petraeus is no highly competent officer, far from it.
Sorry for this thread of posts but I don't have any place else to put it. It's much, much worse in Iraq in every way you can possibly imagine. I'm exhausted and in a state of horror.