My friend Steve F. has challenged me re Arab intolerance:
The chief of Saudi Arabia's highest tribunal has issued an edict that
television station owners should be killed over "immoral" programming.
In
the article is also a rather humorous statement by another esteemed cleric that
Mickey Mouse should be killed because he is a mouse (I'm not s—ting
you!). ["under Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed..."] At the end of the day, we are living in a world where Islamic
preachers and populaces believe in Medieval theories of justice and evil,
where those belonging to a different sect are viewed as apostates marked for
death, where Christians are seen as Crusaders and Jews, Zionists or not, are
viewed as descendants of pigs, where satirical cartoons, films, novels or TV
shows can cause rioting, death threats and the castigation
of western nations which have done nothing but support free
speech, where women have no real rights can be killed by a brother or
father if they have been raped, etc., etc.
In your zeal to end
an upsetting occupation, do you acknowledge honestly the worldview Israel
is up against?? It cannot deal with these issues lightly or without
extreme caution. Its neighborhood is filled with
fanatics.
Ok Steve, here's my answer. Then you get touch-back:
I've been to four Arab countries. They have free speech issues and women's rights issues. No doubt. Zionists chose to settle there. They descended on their beautiful balloon. They're 500 miles east of Istanbul and style Israel a western country. It's not. It's in Asia like South Africa is in Africa. It partakes of the climate. Bad neighborhood? You moved there, dude. When in Rome.
The article you cite says that Arabs across the spectrum are condemning the cleric. So the Arab world is actually engaged in a struggle of reform. I know the good guys aren't getting a lot of victories. But they're trying. We have to be on those folks' side. Hearts and minds. Don't invade Arab countries and impose democracy. I believe you were for the Iraq invasion. At least you're contrite. Israel is alienating the Arab world by responding militantly to everything, out of a Holocaust mentality it also imported from Europe.
There are a lot of bad neighborhoods in the world. Africa, no picnic. Oceana, where I've been a lot, democracy is larval. Fiji was shot up again and again while I was there. South America. "Emerging." Russia, I don't even know what you call it. The point is, trying to save Israel by reforming the neighborhood is arrogant. Outside of the liberal west, this is the human political condition. There has to be a degree of tolerance. China. Indonesia. India. The biggest countries in the world, and there are real freedom issues.
If Israel lived next to India, we would hear night and day about the savage caste system. And it is savage. There are endless dowry killings in India too. But no, Israel is allied with India. So we hear the Muslim world demonized. It's times like these that I think of Trita Parsi's statement in Treacherous Alliance that radical Islam was the "glue" dreamed up by Israel in the '90s to replace the last rationale for the U.S. being joined at the hip with Israel, the Soviet Union. Now the Soviet is gone, we need a new glue. Radical Islam. Parsi is a distinguished scholar. It sounds like a conspiracy theory and I think there's truth in it; that the tail has wagged the dog on our relationship with the Muslim world. The Arab world wants to be friends with the U.S. I say cast your g-damn "upsetting" occupation to the wolves right now–actually a criminal horrifying occupation that destroys the hopes of young Palestinians– get the Israelis to get back to the '67 line or we withhold our aid and our movie festivals and our visas and all the rest, and we thereby fix our relationship, and by Our, I mean the U.S., with the Arab world. So we can suck their oil with a straw and not have them fly into our tall buildings anymore.
Another thing. If Islam is so bad, then why are the idolatry clauses in their Sharia so close to Jewish fundamental belief? There are crazy Jews too, religious. They may not dominate to the extent that the mullahs do, but they're powerful. I think it's possible to demonize anyone. And here's the thing. Jews and Arabs in their funny outfits and objections to women showing their hair and their ban on representational art lived alongside one another for centuries till Israel came along, till the settlements began in a serious way in the '20s. A cycle of violence since. We can restore that understanding between the sons of Abraham. We can get back to balance. One way to do that is to end the nonstop landgrab of Palestinian land, start to respect Palestinian human rights, and stop demonizing the Arab world. I live in a neighborhood with a lot of people whose values I disagree with, pretty profoundly. But I try and be neighborly. I think the occupation is not at all neighborly, and you might actually be able to keep your Jewish state if you worked hard now to end it.
Related posts:
- My hotel is filled with young people who have come to ‘break the siege,’ like freedom riders
- Greenwald defends Freeman and goes after ‘Israel-centric fanatics’ Schumer, Rahm et al
- Zeitgeist alert: no fanatics on ‘Foreign Policy’ blog
- many American journalists can tell you the BEST Israeli cab driver, restaurant, neighborhood, etc
- Neocons slide easily from ‘radical Islam’ to all of Islam
{ 18 comments }
so move.
"upsetting"
I'm starting to think that Phil has been lying for his Arab friends for so long that truth is as meaningless to him as it is to them? Israel is 500 miles east of Istanbul? Look at a fucking map you ageographic asshole!
When someone makes a mistake as simple as that, it's no surprise that he cackles at the refugees who landed in Israel after fleeing fascism (Nazi and Arab) as "choosing to move there, dudes."
Would you say the same of Arabs rolling in their own shit in Gaza? Give it a try,
Yeah, Nevada has lots of empty spaces and lax gun laws. Puerile settlers can swagger with uzis to their heart's content. Same latitude as the "Holy Land" too but without troublesome jihadis.
All-in-all the perfect spot for Zion, which, as Wm. Blake knew well, is a state of mind. But certain foolish Jews are obsessed with the original stones as if they were magic. They're rocks, people, rocks! Like you'll find anywhere, sheesh!
It is a little difficult to determine exactly who said it, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin at Baruch Goldstein's funeral or Rabbi Dov Lior who is essentially the religious leader of the settlers, but what doesn't seem to be in dispute that one or the other has indeed said that "one million arab lives are not worth one jewish fingernail."
Certainly this doesn't appear to be beyond Rabbi Lior who it seems is difficult to accuse of of being some lone nut given the leadership role the settlers have stood him in for so long and given that he was even elected to the Supreme Rabbinical Council of Israel. For instance, according to Wikipedia, he has suggested that medical experiments should be performed on captured arab "terrorists." He has also issued a halakhic ruling that Israel must shoot arab civilians living in areas from whence attacks on jews originate. And he has further said it is flatly against jewish law to employ or rent property to arabs.
I.e., insanity seems to run in the Mideast neighborhood, and to not be much of a respecter of political, ethnic or religious boundaries.
Bill, why are you picking on Todd Gitlin? Why not Marc Cooper or David Corn?
Steve F, I can't add much to Phil's excellent reply and I look forward to reading your response to it. It displays the sort of maturity and sense of proportion that Zionists, liberal or not, signally lack.
I would only add that the whole issue (extremism in ME states) is irrelevant to the concerns generally addressed here, namely the occupation and the Lobby that supports it. What does the racism and/or medieval attitude of some Arab clerics in certain states surrounding Israel have to do with our disgust with an ally which oppresses and holds captive a native population, and which uses the power of it's ethnic brethren in the West to intimidate opposition to it's crimes? Where is the connection? Does the former somehow licence the latter? It's a violent neighbourhood, ergo our violence is justified? Shooting rock-tossing children or bombing kids' swimming pools in the West Bank is OK, because Israel has some scary neighbours?
What if your standard was applied elsewhere? Remember Gen William Boykin (still as far as I'm aware some top honcho in military intelligence) who opined before the war that he'd had a dream where his God smashed the living daylights out of their God, being bigger 'n all? Would that justify a dominant Mexico in it's continuing atrocities against desperate American asylum-seekers?
What if Arabs quoted former MK and minister Re'havem Ze'evi's conviction that Palestinians were 'lice that should be exterminated'? or that one of Israel's prominent clerics, Yaacov Perrin, told the congregation at Baruch Goldsein's funeral that '1000 Arabs are not worth one Jewish fingernail'? Would that not throw any violent words or action against Israel into more acceptable relief?
'Bad neighborhood? You moved there, dude.'
Says it all. Can't stand the heat? Get out of the kitchen. Or rather, if you are an American Jew who feels that the kitchen is there to stay eternally at any cost, then get yourself over there to defend it and stop helping to bleed American blood, treasure and international goodwill in defence of another country.
I love the threads here. So what that the ARabs are lunatics, It's still the fault of the Jews. What it is it guys. are we the parasitic element in all the countries of the world Condell. Or is Israel itself the virus. Basically all the Jews in the world should move to Israel, yet all the Jews in Israel should leave. Which is it?
Phil -
OK – I get it. The Jews shouldn't have moved there so now they must leave the West Bank even if it puts them in mortal harm. That is a view imposed on no other country or no other problem. And keep in mind who settled Israel. Largely two groups – refugees from the Holocaust and the larger group today – those kicked out of their homes by the Arabs. I expect one thing from you, Phil. Even though you carry just a wee bit of Jewish baggage, try to judge the Jews on the same basis as you judge others. If there are other countries which you would advise to put themselves in mortal danger to make peace, so be it. But don't look for ways to justify a disgusting double standard.
before a jewish atheist or religionist points out any lewdness, racism, barbarism, in the muslim religious books i would suggest they read a tractate or two in their babylonian books…..rabbi akiba has so much to say…as do hillel, maimonedes, eliezer et al…..
looking into these books isnt antisemitic is it?
afterall the rabbis wrote this stuff and not some gentile.
http://www.come-and-hear.com/dilling/dcontents.html
priceless stuff….so pure so blameless.
give me a break and look into your books first.
remove the plank in your own eye before pointing out the one in your brothers eye.
"…try to judge the Jews on the same basis as you judge others."
Heeding Steve's advice would be benefitial if he did it himself. Personally, I believe Steve is too focused on certain extremes that he conflates with every Muslim in the periphery here. From Morocco to Iran, most are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but they are much more focused on their own problems that they deal with on their home turf. You create a picture that every state surrounding Israel is waiting to burn it to the ground; that simply is not the case as Phil stated in his post that they are attempting at reform. As a matter of fact, two Arab nations with the biggest army are at peace with Israel and Syria have hinted at it also; the Saudis have addressed a plan for a two-state solution, not the destruction of Zionism by advocating a one state solution.
But what really is hurtful is that Steve is too narrowly focused on the extremes that he finds so objectionable; where's his nuanced outlook here? In the end, Israel cannot do anything to stem the tide of Wahhabism unless it delegitimises their cause of concern, that Israel is a demon that oppresses other Muslims.
It's tough to ignore Sword of Gideon's remark, but he made a major oversimplification here: Israel is not responsible for Arab "lunatics", but it does itself no favours by making life miserable for Muslims.
those crazy fanatics come from the darndnest places.
Nathan Schwalb
Nathan Schwalb served as the representative of the Jewish Agency, exercising authority upon matters of rescue of the European Jews during the holocaust.
When he was approached by the rescue committee of Czech Jewry for a sum of money to halt the transports to Auschwitz, he answered:
"Since we have the opportunity of this courier, we are writing to the group that they must always remember that matter which is most important, which is the main issue that must always be before our eyes. After all, the allies will be victorius. After the victory they will once again divide up the world between the nations as they did at the end of the first war. Then they opened the way for us for the first step and now, as the war ends, we must do everything so that Eretz Yisroel should become a Jewish state. ….we must be aware that all the nations of the Allies are spilling much blood and if we do not bring sacrifices, with what will we achieve the right to sit at the table when they make the distribution of nations and territories after the way? "
…the shedding of Jewish blood in the Diaspora is necessary in order for us to demand the establishment of a "Jewish" state before the peace commission…Czech Jewry must resign itself to annihilation in the Auschwitz crematoria"
…Holocaust Victims Accuse, pp 26-28.
jewsagainstzionism.com
'So what that the ARabs are lunatics, It's still the fault of the Jews.'
Where did I say or even imply such a thing?
'What it is it guys. are we the parasitic element in all the countries of the world Condell.'
Where did I say or even imply such a thing?
'Or is Israel itself the virus. Basically all the Jews in the world should move to Israel, yet all the Jews in Israel should leave.'
Where did I say or even imply such a thing?
The only Jews that 'should move to Israel' are those who put it's interests above those of the country they live in, t the extent of endangering that country. Happy to keep the rest!
'Which is it?'
It isn't us that needs to make the choice Bill, it's you.
Phil misrepresents the "bad neighborhood" thesis.
Israel is at a crossroads of different neighborhoods.
It like Lebanon and Turkey and Egypt and North Africa are Mediterranean communities, not only Arab.
Prior to the civil war of the 80's Lebanon was regarded as a uniquely cosmopolitan community. It is in ways now, and isn't in ways.
The extent that Hezbollah influences Lebanese society, partially pushes Lebanon to the rigid forms of Islamic norms. (There are shia that are parallel to western modern orthodox Jews, orthodox and secular at the same time.)
Turkey WAS very conservative, politically reactionary, and periodically dominated by medieval religious norms. Its NOT now. It is more modern European in values than Islamic.
Most prominently Mediterranean cosmopolitan.
The bad neighborhood thesis is the extent that groups are willing to become maliciously and violently fanatic, in some "ends justify the means" that underlie all ideological exagerated political motivations.
Don't do it in a pendulum swing, in the name of opposing it.
Censorship?
Afraid of the truth?
Israel is 500 miles east of Istanbul?
Well considering that Turkey is about 1.000 miles long, what do you consider so wrong about this statement Todd Gitlin?
How far east of Istanbul would you place it?
Bill got censored for criticizing Gitlin?
The story was sensationalized.
The Saudi Supreme Judicial Council, which was in the process of being eliminated from the judicial system, is not a court per se. It vets the appointment of judges for the King.
Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan may have made an issue of TV broadcasts as an expression of some internal Saudi politics, and he had to backtrack.
It is quite easy to find similar sorts of comments from judges throughout the world, but when it is an Arab judge very often Jewish Zionist media facilitators make sure it gets maximum play while if it is a Jewish judges the same personnel acting as gatekeeps make sure the story expires fairly quickly.
The primitivist meme gets quite a lot of traction while the real threat gets obscured.
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