You do feed them. There are ways that you could state your theses that would express similar content, but doesn't feed them.

It is a minefield. In a minefield, you can't really whine that it is a minefield, you have to personally walk carefully so as not to make things worse (or get yourself blown up), and remove the mines that are there to the extent that you are able.

Where is the forest?

Reacting to incidents makes sense if it contributes to a coherent and benevolent thesis. If you are documenting only a series of irritations, that will either end up contradictory, or a trivial propaganda exercise.

It likely won't succeed in uncovering flaws in various neo-conservatives' theses.

To my mind, there are two critical flaws in their thesis.

1. Is the gamble that any specific escapade will be containable. USUALLY, interventions spin out, causing side conflicts that grow.

2. Is the creation of a status of empire/vassal by the intervention itself. Only a very charitable entity will undertake a military escapade for the greater good and then not opportune on the basis of it. (For what its worth, it is possible that the US will end up being that charitable in Iraq. US taxpayers footing the bill and many of the lives lost, but with no permanent base, oil drilling or pipeline contracts.)

In all my readings of Philip Giraldi, I dont see what you read in his work: Giraldi is angry at Jews, I can see that.

I can tell you what my non-Jewish friends tell me, and this includes friends in Manhattan who almost whispered it at the time. The anger is at not being allowed to talk about it. IT being Jewish political influence, Israel, national policy that does not serve US interests. The anger is at being muzzled. That anger mounts when so many lives are lost, and the economy tanks, and Christian crazies hijack a President.

You're going to see a lot of pressure valves explode before this evens out. To hurl "anti-semitism" "anger at Jews" [what are Jews? A religion? A race? A nation?] at this top coming off will undoubtedly exacerbate the situation. But maybe it's all to the good. It will hasten the discussion.

This is why I enjoy your blog because I think you are correctly framing the needed discussion on both sides. I'm not Jewish. But I have friends here in high places who have relatives back in Manhattan, and I hear from them here that they can't talk to their relatives back home about Israel and what it's doing without the threat of banishment, and an accusation of betrayal for their views.

So there is a lot of loosening that has to happen on both sides.

I generally agree with your take, although I am surprised as to how serious many people appear to Noah Pollak on the topic of biases, he is after all part of Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum and Campus Watch — the McCarthite wing and anti-Arab side of the Israel lobby.

I'm tempted to claim that "it takes one to know one."

When I hear that, I wonder if:

1. They really know me
2. They are being viciously sarcastic
or
3. They are dismissing their own experience and reflection

On ethics. My sense is that you are pursuing this line because of a commitment to what is mutual decent.

A bigger picture, the commitment to what is MUTUALLY DECENT.

The right-wing, old and new con, the anti-semitic far right and far left, don't give a shit about mutual decency. They are in a war. They usually aren't fighting to genocide, but they are often fighting to silence.

And, in the name of opening dialog, you do feed the reasoning and emotional pitch of those that wish that all Jews would keep to their place.

Their offense at the term "chosen people" isn't that anyone is preferred (a misapplication of the term anyway), but that their selected elite isn't.

Those that regard the "white race" as the natural sovereign of North America, don't want wetbacks, Jews, blacks, to have voice. They certainly don't want to acknowledge that they are living on "stolen" land, that they have an perpetual obligation that accompanies their "property".

Thats DIFFERENT that your effort to find a principled approach, a principled criticism.

Not too long ago (2002/3), I was pondering if Justin Raimondo, and thus antiwar.com were simply antisemites? The problem is the closer you look the more complicated matters get.

If, as you suggest, Richard possesses a higher spirituality than you, he has failed to communicate it to us. (apart from his dialog with you, or his admonitions about what is kosher and what not for you to write about.)

Concerning Morris to cite one of us "antisemites" (or for Bill "storm troopers":

One of the first Israeli historians to admit that Israel forced the Arabs off their land was Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University. Morris does not, however, think that it was a bad thing to kill other people and take their property. He only regrets that all of the Arabs were not driven out in 1948 and in 2004 recommended that those who remain be dealt with like animals, saying "Something like a cage has to be built for them…There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another.

Maybe he can try to explain again. Why he thinks Morris is right, why Israel should have driven out all Arabs in 1948? And what exactly would be the difference now.

Hmmm? many unspecified lives lost? Which are on your mind first? There is a very peculiar relation between lives and cost via tax. Bills, lives lost. Are these my antisemite, storm trooper, … eyes only?

No doubt you are right: all would be if there will be permanent bases. But fine from whose perspective?

Maybe you should tell Phil privately whathis hbenevolent thesis should look like.

Sorry. Rash mails, always tell you something, about emotions… So actually, not sorry.

Daniel Barenboim

"With pain in my heart, I ask today whether a situation of conquest and
control can be reconciled with Israel's Declaration of Independence?,"
Barenboim said. "Is there logic to the independence of one people if the
cost is a blow to the fundamental rights of another people? Can the Jewish
people, whose history is full of suffering and persecution, allow itself to
be apathetic about the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the
State of Israel allow itself to indulge in an unrealistic dream whose
meaning is an ambition to bring an ideological resolution to the dispute,
rather than the aim of attaining a pragmatic, humanitarian solution, based
on social justice?" Barenboim asked.