Today's a day I feel blessed to be a Jew living right now in Jewish and world history. Because wow is there a lot going on, this is just an amazing moment in Jewish power and journalism and Jewish civ and nobody knows how it's going to turn out. First time tragedy, next time majesty, that's my bet as a quasi-assimilationist optimist. All this because Walt and Mearsheimer are in Israel, traveling around, accused of staging a carnival by the IDF spokesperson, but having debates everywhere and apparently having a little fun too.
It got feisty at Hebrew University. Here Mearsheimer is in a car going from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and being interviewed by phone about whether he is an anti-Semite. The Chronicle of Higher Education seems to be the only ones covering them back here. This says that Uri Avnery invited them. No wait, here is Foreign Policy saying they were threatened with boycott but everything was cordial. Here is Walt being courtly at Al Quds University (we're enjoying ourselves he says) and Mearsheimer saying only Israel wants the U.S. to attack Iran. And here's the Dersh, challenging them to debate again and saying they're whining and pandering. Oh please. Let's everyone relax. They're just in Israel, talking, like some other people of the book.
YNET's piece on the lecture at Hebrew
University implied that most of the audience
was at least somewhat hostile, but at least
someone had the courage to invite them.
Jerusalem Post June 12, 2008
"I would certainly prefer that people not call me an anti-Semite," Mearsheimer said in a phone interview with The Jerusalem Post as he and Walt were being driven from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.
"But it doesn't bother me, because I know unequivocally I am not an anti-Semite, nor is Steve [Walt]. In fact we are both philo-Semites and we both think it is a wonderful thing there is a State of Israel, and we are not in any way shape or form trying to delegitimize Israel."
_____________
- "We are not in any way trying to delegitimize Israel."
Is that a correct and honest statement?
In their original article in the LRB they said that Israel's citizenship law contradicts "core American values". I consider this a correct statement that legitimately delegitimizes Israel.
One can be a philo-Semite or believing Jew and still deligitimize Israel – there is nothing inherently contradictory to that.
.
It's a credit to Israel that M&W are able to visit the country and make public appearances.
Americans conceive of the U.S. as an open-debate, free-speech country. But the suppression of free speech is often invisible. Fulbright grants are being cancelled for Palestinian students — some of them simply can't get out of Gaza. In other cases, ICE arbitrarily denies visas to foreigners who have criticized US policies. Or seizes foreign visitors at the airport and sends them straight home (as in the expulsion of Cat Stevens / Yusuf Islam).
It's sad when Americans have to look up to Israel as an examplar of free speech. But it's probably true; surely true when it comes to discussions of zionism and the influence of the Lobby.
"It's a credit to Israel that M&W are able to visit the country and make public appearances."
__________________
Yes, that's true.
But still, it's as if a couple of free-market Americans had came to Soviet Russia claiming they were philo-Soviets.
To Israel's credit, it isn't the Soviet Union.
.
~Klas~ asked us yesterday 'What do you think about what Commentary Magazine has written about Rachel Corries book? 'The (Self-)Deceit of Rachel Corrie''
thanks for asking Klas.
i think that yahweh has banished the souls of the idolitors from hisher presence, casting them into the outer darkness, and thereby rendered them mad, like unto crazed hyenas.
what is it with the germans? anybody know?
what is it with the germans? anybody know?
What is it with the Americans, who attacked Iraq with majority opinion and majority congress, executive branch, and press, all beating the war drums? At least the majority of Germans did not.
On the other hand, looks like now their current government is doing what it can to help Bush isolate Iran (Like France), as Roosevelt did to isolate Imperial Japan… One step forward, Germans, two steps back?
.
peters — consult Charles Mackay, 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Krauts'
http://tinyurl.com/6yx355
.
listen ~martillo~. since you are intrested in the origins of things, how about this idea. that the judonian conspiracy goes all the way back to the priests of the temple in jerusalam, in concert with their allies the zealots, who were also gangster thugs who hid their apostasy behind a mask of godliness, entirely similar to the zionists of today.
"The Madness of the Krauts"/crowds
Thanks Jim for this line. I have a copy of 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions …'
I'll check it out.
There are extraordinaly delusioned Krauts/crowds in Congress and the White House – as you know better than I do.
"In their original article in the LRB they said that Israel's citizenship law contradicts 'core American values'. I consider this a correct statement that legitimately delegitimizes Israel."
Hunh? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. What we do over here, and what we hold to as settled law — here — does not, in and of itself, render other countries illegitimate or discredited.
During the cold war, Russia's lack of a First Amendment law contradicted 'core American values.' That certainly did not delegitimize Russia. The same could be said for Zimbabwe's dictator-based voter laws.
.
i guess i am confused again, but this time it is not my problem. are we trying to be esoteric here? is that your game?
~peters~ says what is it with the germans? anybody know?
anybody know which germans? nazi germans? contemporary germans? jewish germans? ~klaus~ reads it as the last, but if that were the intent of the question it need not have been asked. i think the intent was to be obscure.
.
again i am confused by ~MRW~. i think there is some selfreflexive wordplay here on what does 'mean' mean. the chatter is morping into metachatter.
.
i move that the metachatterers transplant themselves to some french academic journal where they will be more at home.