Jerome Slater, the author of a groundbreaking article that showed that the New York Times failed to inform opinion leaders in the U.S. of the moral crisis that Israel was putting itself in, even as Haaretz provided Israelis with that news, has another analysis of Times coverage for me today:
In the last one or two years the NY Times has sometimes published
articles that treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with greater
balance than has been its norm. But just when you think there has been
a major change, the paper reverts to form. An editorial today bravely
states that Israel needs to "reexamine" its policies of "collective
punishment" and "economic blockade imposed on the civilian population of
Gaza."
In the next breath, though, it describes these policies--which
should more accurately be characterized as illegal, immoral,
and devastating to Israel's longrun security, as just a response to
"Hamas rule and a steady rain of rocket attacks," against which Israel
has a "right and a duty to defend itself."
Not a word, though, about Israel's long occupation and
repression of the Palestinian people, not even the suggestion that Hamas
might be fighting back. Yes, Hamas employs terrorism, and the Times is
right to deplore it. However, its position would be greatly
improved if it might just mention the occupation, which has been
"defended" by Israel with actions that come close to being nothing less
than state terrorism.
It is hard to find the right words to describe these kinds of
commentaries by the world's leading newspaper, without sounding
overwrought. Given what is at stake in this issue, though, I will
content myself with saying that the Time's position does not rise
to the level of minimal intellectual or moral respectability. No future
apologies for its performance over the years will be able to
atone for or undo the damage it has done, and is still doing.
[Weiss again. I'd add that Jimmy Carter said the other day on Charlie Rose that some of Israel's actions constitute state-sponsored terrorism. I believe this view of the situation is slowly breaking into the American mainstream...]
Phil. Since every post you write is about Israel, and your every waking hour is spent oy veying and hand-wringing over Jews perhaps you could enlighten those of us who don't know you well as to where you get your expertise on the subject.
You frequently invoke the term "young Jews" to describe those who agree with your positions. How old are you Phil? I'm 27, which is still young I think, and I know a hell of a lot of Jews. You're right that we're less dogmatic than those in their seventies, but I don't know a single one who is "anti-Zionist." Those who are, I would guess, cease to identify themselves as Jews.
So, how old are you, have you ever lived in Israel? If not how many times have you visited? Do you speak Hebrew? Arabic? Oh, and do you identify as a Jew when you're not around other Jews? What, to you, is the essence of that identity?
If there had been more "oy-veying" about the U.S. being the ennabler of Apartheid Israel's daily War Crimes, we might not have been attacked on 9/11. As the moderate Walt?Mearshimer study shows – with "friends" like Israel – who needs enemies.
The fact is perhaps 40% of all American Jews are anti-Zionist. They do NOT want to be complicit in Israel's slow genocide against the Palestinians. Michael Petrov above must live a very sheltered life. I'm Jewish, 25, from a fairly conservative family and I know hordes of Jews disgusted and embarrased by Israel's moral degeneracy. Phil is just one tip on a very big iceberg growing bigger by the day. Apologists for Israel like Petrov are quickly becoming the dodo birds of Jewish Civilization.
You're not 25, David.
Personally, I thought the discussion of Obama's fondness for Leon Uris was far too superficial. See link to eaazi.blogspot.com
.
"However, [the Times'] position would be greatly improved if it might just mention the occupation, which has been "defended" by Israel with actions that come close to being nothing less than state terrorism. It is hard to find the right words to describe these kinds of commentaries by the world's leading newspaper, without sounding overwrought."
Good thinking, Phil. And the next step in the inductive logic is that when the Times so obviously lies and slants and distorts and omits, perhaps it is no longer the "world's leading newspaper."
It's hard to accept that the foundational myths inculcated in our youth — that the Constitution protects our rights; that the U.S. is a light unto the world; that the New York Times is the world's newspaper of record — have been systematically falsified. Even if you accept it intellectually, it's hard to internalize it emotionally.
But the ground has shifted beneath our feet, and under those of the zionist and neocon rabble too. The Revolution is not being televised — nor is it being reported in the Slimes. Blessed are the bloggers …
Somethin's goin' on here and you don't know what it is … DO YOU, Mistuh SULZBUGGER?
One could read the Times every day for 10 years and have no clear idea of what's happening in the OT.
This is not an accident. The Times' goal is to purposely obfuscate a fairly simple proposition–colonialism combined with military occupation–with a lot of sentimental goo about Israel.
As Phil suggests, a classic Times ploy is to publish an article that's sympathetic to Palestinians, then immediately undercut that the next day with something that AIPAC might have written.
I know a couple of Times editors and have discussed Israel with them, and I can assure you, the spirit of Jabotinsky is alive and well in this supposed bastion of liberal values.
There has been a lot of distortion in the newspapers in association with Jewish philanthropic and political causes.
See link to members.aol.com
.
Duranty's distorted coverage of the Soviet Union for the NY Times is famous.
In link to members.aol.com
, I point out:
"Nowadays, the Times has apparent given up any pretense to objective and honest reporting."
""[Weiss again. I'd add that Jimmy Carter said the other day on Charlie Rose that some of Israel's actions constitute state-sponsored terrorism. I believe this view of the situation is slowly breaking into the American mainstream...]""
Thank you Weiss/Carter, for stating the obvious.
A lot of us have been saying this for a long time. Israel is acting as a terrorist state….and who is to blame?
1) The Israelis themselves
2) The zionist cult in the US
3) Our own corrupt congress/politics
4) US gentiles and jews alike who haven't done a damn thing about it..due in part to ignorance of the true facts because of the media and press slant on Isr-Pal.
Michael, it doesn't matter whether Phil has been to Israel or not. (I don't know one way or the other.) The point he's making is valid–both the Israelis and the Palestinians commit major atrocities against innocent people in the other camp, so if the NYT had any sense of moral consistency they'd acknowledge at least that much.
I'd go further and put more of the blame on the Israelis, but one can argue about relative levels of blame and still acknowledge that both sides have done plenty of shameful things. And we Americans are complicit in the Israeli crimes.
This Finkelstein lecture + questions and answers is worth watching to the end (almost 2 hours). I completely agree with him; also and especially concerning the '48 questions and one of his latest statements at the very the end.
http://tinyurl.com/62lkhz
It's really peculiar how a very rational position can be misread as extremist:
Something I have wondered for quite some time is visible now. Scapegoat is scapegoat, is it possible that out of fear to become it again, people design a new one?
Thanks to NF:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&ar=1753
here the German Neo-Nazis proudly presenting it:
http://nasofi.blogspot.com/
Andere Ueber uns = Others about us.
Confused?
Here is my comment about the group:
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/06/nationalen-sozialisten-fr-israel.html
Nationalen Sozialisten für Israel
This group maintains a blog at link to nasofi.blogspot.com
. The concept is not unreasonable. Zionism is simply ethnic Ashkenazi Nazism and is exactly comparable to German Nazism.
Both are politicized forms of völkisch racist ethnic fundamentalism.
In understanding the post-1939 hostility of German Nazism to Zionism, one must remember that Nazis from different ethnic groups are more naturally enemies than allies. Yet finding examples pro-Zionist and pro-Jewish Nazis is fairly easy. See Challenging the Holocaust Paradigm (especially the comments).
One can legitimately consider reflexive German support for Zionism today as a sort of vicarious German Nazism.
my point was just that; phil's writing sounds like someone who gets his information from the new york times. Phil writes a thousand words every day about a place he never visited? Isn't that just a touch dishonest and, well, neurotic?
Joachim, that is putting it far too easy. I discovered a strange argument on the extreme right over here a couple of years ago.They made a difference between the good and religious Jews and the bad and secular, or worse from their perspective, left ones.
Strictly before they had attacked both Turkish Germans, or refugee centers and Jews or Jewish institutions. So there is obviously a change going on. Which may be connected to their new strategies in reaching out for the bourgeois mainstream.
They no doubt must be attracted to the ideology of an Islamofacist threat, and the academic discourse of the "Arab mind". Scapegoat is scapegoat and helpful for a certain kind of power.
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Are you aware of UBM's research on the closeness of Horowitz with white Aryan or Judeo-Christian authoritarians?
http://tinyurl.com/3u3ezg
Racism & The American Thinker?
Check out the network of news distribution of David Gaubatz's WMD discovery and not only his distributive network, but also his larger circles as e.g. Sane.
Ah, Sane is another site that has taken a dive (August 2007)
http://www.saneworks.us/new.php
But here is the relevant item.
http://web.archive.org/web/20061118210424/www.saneworks.us/mission.php
"MISSION STATEMENT
The Society of Americans for National Existence or SANE is what its name declares: a society of sane Americans dedicated to preserving and strengthening America�s national existence. By national existence we mean what you normally mean when speaking of such matters. America is a unique people bound together through a commitment to America�s Judeo-Christian moral foundation and to an enduring faith and trust in G-d and in His Providence. America�s founding, and its greatness was neither accident nor staging ground for some better existence or world state. America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white, who ventured from Europe to create a nation in their image of a country existing as free men under G-d. The founding fathers understood that party-led parliaments and democracy were the worse form of government and sought to resist the movement that was soon to find fertile ground in France with the French Revolution, the end of which we can see now before our eyes."
http://web.archive.org/web/20061115200837/www.saneworks.us/aboutus.php
"David Yerushalmi, SANE president and founder
Mr. Yerushalmi is a lawyer and businessman experienced in strategic business and legal analysis, international business and real estate development, and legal and strategic risk analysis for domestic and international concerns. Mr. Yerushalmi has been involved in international legal and constitutional matters for over 25 years. After completing his undergraduate studies with a B.S. in public policy studies, summa cum laude, Yerushalmi received his Juris Doctorate from Arizona State University College of Law in 1984 as the recipient of the Most Outstanding Graduate Award.� After graduation, Mr. Yerushalmi worked as a lawyer specializing in securities, banking, and business law in the Los Angeles office of the law firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & Macrae L.L.P. (then known as LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & Macrae). Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed to practice law in California and Arizona."
"Joachim, that is putting it far too easy. I discovered a strange argument on the extreme right over here a couple of years ago.They made a difference between the good and religious Jews and the bad and secular, or worse from their perspective, left ones."
German (and in a similar way Austrian) history looks anomalous if Germany (and Austria) are viewed as Central-to-Western European states as has been the tendency since the Cold War, but historically Germany and Austria have had a strong E. European input in the political culture.
From the standpoint of someone whose father's family roots are in Warsaw and Vilnius, the German Nazis, the Polish Endeks and the Zionists all look like slight variants on one theme, and finding cross-over from one movement to the other is not particularly difficult.
I know Germans want to feel that they committed some sort of unique evil during the 30s, and the belief may serve some useful purpose in restraining the more intolerant parts of the German political spectrum, but it was simply cold war propaganda meant to keep Soviet captive nations free of blame for mass killing.
I attended a lecture last year at Harvard in which the Katyn Massacre was briefly discussed. The speaker mentioned that Germans were convicted at Nuremberg for crime that the Soviets committed. He discussed some of the people involved in ordering the execution. As far as I could tell they were all Jewish.
Now I am not going to claim that the Soviets or the Soviet Jews were somehow worse than the German Nazis, but the history and the evil is a jumble, and Zionists use the confusion.
Whatever evil Germans committed during WW2, they compound it today by supporting the State of Israel, which is a purer and more evil form of Nazism than the German variant ever was.
As Harshav and Slezkine have pointed out, there is a good deal of truth to the concept of Judeobolshevism, and the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe had good reason to feel threatened by it.
What did Palestinian Arabs ever do to German Jews or ethnic Ashkenazim? Absolutely nothing. Yet Jews plotted their genocide since the 1880s. Seems like very pure evil to me.
As for SANE and Yerushalmi, when I was trying to create intra-Jewish food fights during the Roxbury Mosque controversy in Boston, I found this whole web of racist Jewish and Zionist anti-Arab anti-Muslim organizations and individuals. SANE and Yerushalmi were particularly blatant in their hatred.
CAIR came under attack during the struggle over the Khalil Gibran International Academy, and Yerushalmi was one of the more active participants in the anti-Muslim defamation.
I passed along what I had to Ibrahim Hooper, who then embarrassed StopTheMadrassa by publicizing Yerushalmi's activities.
Pipes, Yerushalmi, Charles Jacobs, Roz Rothstein et al. are trying to create a permanent anti-Muslim consensus in a new non-democratic America that the Zionist political economic elite will dominate. See link to members.aol.com
.
Because Israel is the keystone in this program, I am particular incensed at German Israel politics, which harms not only Palestinians but threatens the USA.
I know it won't happen under Merkel, who is Saban's dachshund, but at some point Germans have to grow up and denounce the State of Israel under the argument that Germans have a categorical imperative to reject Nazism whether German or Jewish.