I'm just back from a tremendous evening at Yale University, where the undergraduate debating society, the Yale Political Union, held a long discussion of the resolution, The U.S. Should End Its Special Relationship With Israel, featuring a stemwinder from John Mearsheimer calling for Israel to become a "normal" country in our policymaking; and the resolution passed by a lopsided margin, 44 to 25 (with four abstentions).
Really an incrediblet evening for a few reasons: that a conversation that none of our media can have is led by our children; that the prestige wall continues to crack–that Mearsheimer is given an Ivy platform and accorded the respect of having his ideas debated, something that the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington think tanks, Lester Crown's Global Affairs Council, and Yivo Institute have all found themselves incapable of extending. That our children are ahead of us, that the invitation to Mearsheimer came from a Yale Political Union exec named Laura Marcus, who has hopes of going to rabbinical school and who disagreed with many things he said but had the grace and self-possession to withstand his words somehow when so many of her elders cannot. That the argument rarely mentioned the factor I just did, religion. That there was no rancor or name-calling, over several hours, with fabulous speeches from Conservative Michael Pomeranz (against Mearsheimer), the Party of the Right's Will Wilson for Mearsheimer, and my fave, Brit ringer Joyce Arnold of the Independent Party thundering that the U.S. had lost its ability to press Arab countries about women's freedoms because our relationship with them is so "poisoned" by the special U.S.-Israel one. That no one ran out of the hall yelling about pogroms….
Our children will lead us. I'm going to keep repeating that line till I'm blue in the face. And later today I'll give a full report, including the moment when the bearded Wilson, in a 1776 tie, whipped out his passport to read the fine print and decry the idea of dual loyalty. For now: sweet dreams!
I hope someone recorded the event.
Last May, Britain's Oxford Union debated, "This house believes the pro-Israel lobby has successfully stifled Western debate about Israel’s actions." (Motion passed by a two-thirds margin.)
And in 2006, the Cambridge Union debated, "This House believes that Zionism is a danger to the Jewish people." (Motion passed by a small margin.)
The rest of the world is talking about this stuff.
Talking about the Israel Lobby with Brig. Gen. James Davidon the Liberty Hour. The Lobby's power blocked President Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention:
link to neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com
link to neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/06/scott-mcclellan-questioned-about-neocon.html
http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM
U.S. Middle East policy motivated by pro-Israel lobby
http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=49800
"End the special relationship".
Why not end all personal friendships in which a person bears any responsibility for someone that they consider uncomfortable in any way?
I prefer the corollary, ENGAGE more in the special relationship, sufficient to transform it.
The presumption being that that sets the bar high for the US, to be as worthy as possible, worthy to guide others.
The prerequisite to normalizing the relationship between Israel and the US is a FIRMLY confident peace between Israel and its neighbors.
So long as Hezbollah remains armed to the teeth in disregard of UN resolutions, and Hamas continues to pursue a path of terror (even if deferred), then that remains a dream deferred.
Its not resistance when Hezbollah declares that it will continue harrassment of Israel independant of resolution of Lebanese border issues.
Richard, I have read your almost daily comments for the past year(s)to get to know that you are a good and thoughtful person, except when it comes to Israel. You are blinded by zionism. You are a family man. Put yourself in the shoes of a father in the outdoor prison camp, imagine the humilation and dispair he must feel when his children are harassed by the settlers,or herded through the checkpoints, and he cannot help them. Can't you see the damage this relationship is doing to your country? "Be there ever a man with soul so dead, thet never to himself hath said…this is my home, my native land." You are an American! Act like one!
Bill
75% of Israel think that the US should attack Iran, and since no conventional weapons can achieve the wanted outcome, that means they support nuking Iran.
That's the part of the special relationship the world watches with irritation.
I don't know why, but reading your lines the poem's end below was on my mind.
Why wasn't there as much as whisper with very, very few exceptions heard against the war again Iraq? In spite of the fact the evidence was so obviously fabricated?
The sorcerer's apprentice
Sir, my need is sore.
Spirits that I've cited
My commands ignore.
Richard writes:
"The prerequisite to normalizing the relationship between Israel and the US is a FIRMLY confident peace between Israel and its neighbors"
Of course for you Richard, this consists of an arrangement where the Palestinians(and or their families) have no right to return to the land which was stolen from them.
The political reality is that a STABLE peace is not possible if JUSTICE is denied..
The "special" relationship is one of the US to an ally, a close ally in MANY respects. It deserves to be special for the degree of historical and present mutual benefit that the two states offer (and NOT the unholy elements).
The US has a special relationship with Great Britain, with Canada, even with Saudi Arabia. Each of whom, the US will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to defend.
(To most rational people, the war in Iraq was fought primarily to defend Saudi Arabia from Iraq moreso than to defend Israel.)
I wish I heard you or others speaking about the "American interest" of defending Saudi Arabia's monarchy. (Which I think in the context of our continued dependance on oil, is in America's interest.)
One of Dershowitz plausible points is the SELECTIVE contempt for Israel. The anger at Israel is not part of a general accounting of US relationships, by critics or officers. Its selective.
Its selective by Walt/Mearsheimer. Its selective by Phil. Its selective by the left. Its selective by the right/left.
If you wish to normalize the relationship, advocate for the prerequisite, confident peace and acceptance of Israel as Israel.
Richard Witty is so full of bullshit and smokescreens that it has become an ongoing comedy!
Who is armed to the teeth Richard?
Who is in disregard of UN Resolutions?
Who is pursuing state-sponsored terrorism?
Let's ENGAGE this bullshit, and TRANSFORM it, and then, when ACCEPTANCE is attained, rather than NEGATIVITY, we can continue to OBFUSCATE the situation until everyone feels good about discussing SOLUTIONS involving PERFECTING titles to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah….
I prefer STINKFISH HASBARAH (I would write the real moniker, but doing so would profess that there is no Palestine, a distorted view that I cannot condone). However, at least STINKFISH HASBARAH spouts his/her poison without the sugar coated chocolate that comes along with Witty's.
PM
"Special relationship" is a candy-coated euphemism for something far more perverse. The US does not fork over $1000's per capita every year to Britain or Canada. Congress does not pass resolutions specifically tailored to favour Britain or Canada. Etc.
If we were honest with ourselves, we'd characterise the US-Israel relationship as one between a master and a supplicant.
The US forked over close to a trillion dollars to defend Saudi Arabia in the Gulf Wars.
It had LITTLE to do with Israel.
Your selective blinders ignore that.
Malfara,
You won't fix the engine until you open the hood. First things come first.
Full recognition of Israel by ALL states and militias that are contending for power. That means that for Hamas to be democratically elected Palestinian parliament and executive, it must also acknowledge the precedent of prior PA administrations' treaties, agreements, policies.
For Hezbollah to be part of "democratically elected" Lebanon, it must acknowledge international law.
Iran IS maintaining a proxy army on Israel's border.
Israel, as a state, in a state of war, would be expected to be sufficiently armed.
Hezbollah does not have that responsibility. The Lebanese state has the responsibility of protecting Lebanon's borders.
For REASON (not pressure), Israel will negotiate mutually satisfactory borders and relations with the PA and with Syria.
So long as Iran excessively influences Lebanese politics through Hezbollah, it is unlikely that Lebanon and Israel will negotiate a peace, even as that border was stable before the PLO attempted to take over Lebanon in the 80's.
The left and left-right imagine that pressure hastens Israel's compromise.
At this point, civil pressure about specific rational assertions probably does. Militancy, false accusations, biased accusations, do not. They harden Israel's resolve to defend.
What you WANT (as expressed in your words) is important, and seen.
For Phil that is the case. When he is specific in goal and disciplined in how he presents his arguments, he's effective. When he gets vague, resentful, emotional, careless in what and how he presents, he's less than ineffective.
Hezbollah is part of Lebanon – they are not a proxy of Iran. Iran does support them with arms and money(as does the U.S with various unholy regimes, most notably and disagreeably with Israel).
Stop with the lies, Richard. You've been shown the truth before so spare us the crap….
I don't see any reason why any state should recognize the current aparthied state of Israel with it's undeclared nuclear arsenal and preemptive and illegal wars.
And what was that about international law?
LOL.
>> The US forked over close to a trillion dollars to defend Saudi Arabia in the Gulf Wars.
This factoid smells like bullshit — source? Of course, you are probably adding up the cost of the war and equating this to a donation to Saudi Arabia treasury. More dissembling.
I am talking about no-strings-attached cheques cut to a foreign government. The US does not cut said cheques to Canada. It does not cut said cheques to Britain. 'Splain that.
But that’s not quite all. Receiving its annual foreign aid appropriation during the first month of the fiscal year, instead of in quarterly installments as do other recipients, is just another special privilege Congress has voted for Israel. It enables Israel to invest the money in U.S. Treasury notes. That means that the U.S., which has to borrow the money it gives to Israel, pays interest on the money it has granted to Israel in advance, while at the same time Israel is collecting interest on the money. That interest to Israel from advance payments adds another $1.650 billion to the total, making it $84,854,827,200.That’s the number you should write down for total aid to Israel. And that’s $14,346 each for each man, woman and child in Israel.
It’s worth noting that that figure does not include U.S. government loan guarantees to Israel, of which Israel has drawn $9.8 billion to date. They greatly reduce the interest rate the Israeli government pays on commercial loans, and they place additional burdens on U.S. taxpayers, especially if the Israeli government should default on any of them. But since neither the savings to Israel nor the costs to U.S. taxpayers can be accurately quantified, they are excluded from consideration here.
Further, friends of Israel never tire of saying that Israel has never defaulted on repayment of a U.S. government loan. It would be equally accurate to say Israel has never been required to repay a U.S. government loan. The truth of the matter is complex, and designed to be so by those who seek to conceal it from the U.S. taxpayer.
Most U.S. loans to Israel are forgiven, and many were made with the explicit understanding that they would be forgiven before Israel was required to repay them. By disguising as loans what in fact were grants, cooperating members of Congress exempted Israel from the U.S. oversight that would have accompanied grants. On other loans, Israel was expected to pay the interest and eventually to begin repaying the principal. But the so-called Cranston Amendment, which has been attached by Congress to every foreign aid appropriation since 1983, provides that economic aid to Israel will never dip below the amount Israel is required to pay on its outstanding loans. In short, whether U.S. aid is extended as grants or loans to Israel, it never returns to the Treasury.
Israel enjoys other privileges. While most countries receiving U.S. military aid funds are expected to use them for U.S. arms, ammunition and training, Israel can spend part of these funds on weapons made by Israeli manufacturers. Also, when it spends its U.S. military aid money on U.S. products, Israel frequently requires the U.S. vendor to buy components or materials from Israeli manufacturers. Thus, though Israeli politicians say that their own manufacturers and exporters are making them progressively less dependent upon U.S. aid, in fact those Israeli manufacturers and exporters are heavily subsidized by U.S. aid.
Although it’s beyond the parameters of this study, it’s worth mentioning that Israel also receives foreign aid from some other countries. After the United States, the principal donor of both economic and military aid to Israel is Germany.
By far the largest component of German aid has been in the form of restitution payments to victims of Nazi atrocities. But there also has been extensive German military assistance to Israel during and since the Gulf war, and a variety of German educational and research grants go to Israeli institutions. The total of German assistance in all of these categories to the Israeli government, Israeli individuals and Israeli private institutions has been some $31 billion or $5,345 per capita, bringing the per capita total of U.S. and German assistance combined to almost $20,000 per Israeli. Since very little public money is spent on the more than 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are Muslim or Christian, the actual per capita benefits received by Israel’s Jewish citizens would be considerably higher.
This is great news Phil. It is also a wake up call to all Zionists (this means you Witty). The US will not continue to support Israel indefinately. Big Daddy's checkbook will someday close. So those of us who want a Jewish state in the Middle East should recommend to the Israeli govt that they better make peace now while they still have a chance.
True Cost to U.S. Taxpayers
Generous as it is, what Israelis actually got in U.S. aid is considerably less than what it has cost U.S. taxpayers to provide it. The principal difference is that so long as the U.S. runs an annual budget deficit, every dollar of aid the U.S. gives Israel has to be raised through U.S. government borrowing.
In an article in the Washington Report for December 1991/January 1992, Frank Collins estimated the costs of this interest, based upon prevailing interest rates for every year since 1949. I have updated this by applying a very conservative 5 percent interest rate for subsequent years, and confined the amount upon which the interest is calculated to grants, not loans or loan guarantees.
On this basis the $84.8 billion in grants, loans and commodities Israel has received from the U.S. since 1949 cost the U.S. an additional $49,936,880,000 in interest.
There are many other costs of Israel to U.S. taxpayers, such as most or all of the $45.6 billion in U.S. foreign aid to Egypt since Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979 (compared to $4.2 billion in U.S. aid to Egypt for the preceding 26 years). U.S. foreign aid to Egypt, which is pegged at two-thirds of U.S. foreign aid to Israel, averages $2.2 billion per year.
There also have been immense political and military costs to the U.S. for its consistent support of Israel during Israel’s half-century of disputes with the Palestinians and all of its Arab neighbors. In addition, there have been the approximately $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees and perhaps $20 billion in tax-exempt contributions made to Israel by American Jews in the nearly half-century since Israel was created.
Even excluding all of these extra costs, America’s $84.8 billion in aid to Israel from fiscal years 1949 through 1998, and the interest the U.S. paid to borrow this money, has cost U.S. taxpayers $134.8 billion, not adjusted for inflation. Or, put another way, the nearly $14,630 every one of 5.8 million Israelis received from the U.S. government by Oct. 31, 1997 has cost American taxpayers $23,240 per Israeli.
It would be interesting to know how many of those American taxpayers believe they and their families have received as much from the U.S. Treasury as has everyone who has chosen to become a citizen of Israel. But it’s a question that will never occur to the American public because, so long as America’s mainstream media, Congress and president maintain their pact of silence, few Americans will ever know the true cost of Israel to U.S. taxpayers.
link to ifamericansknew.org
For many years the American media said that “Israel receives $1.8 billion in military aid” or that “Israel receives $1.2 billion in economic aid.” Both statements were true, but since they were never combined to give us the complete total of annual U.S. aid to Israel, they also were lies—true lies.
Recently Americans have begun to read and hear that “Israel receives $3 billion in annual U.S. foreign aid.” That's true. But it's still a lie. The problem is that in fiscal 1997 alone, Israel received from a variety of other U.S. federal budgets at least $525.8 million above and beyond its $3 billion from the foreign aid budget, and yet another $2 billion in federal loan guarantees. So the complete total of U.S. grants and loan guarantees to Israel for fiscal 1997 was $5,525,800,000.
One can truthfully blame the mainstream media for never digging out these figures for themselves, because none ever have. They were compiled by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. But the mainstream media certainly are not alone. Although Congress authorizes America's foreign aid total, the fact that more than a third of it goes to a country smaller in both area and population than Hong Kong probably never has been mentioned on the floor of the Senate or House. Yet it's been going on for more than a generation.
Probably the only members of Congress who even suspect the full total of U.S. funds received by Israel each year are the privileged few committee members who actually mark it up. And almost all members of the concerned committees are Jewish, have taken huge campaign donations orchestrated by Israel's Washington, DC lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or both. These congressional committee members are paid to act, not talk. So they do and they don't.
The same applies to the president, the secretary of state, and the foreign aid administrator. They all submit a budget that includes aid for Israel, which Congress approves, or increases, but never cuts. But no one in the executive branch mentions that of the few remaining U.S. aid recipients worldwide, all of the others are developing nations which either make their military bases available to the U.S., are key members of international alliances in which the U.S. participates, or have suffered some crippling blow of nature to their abilities to feed their people such as earthquakes, floods or droughts.
Israel, whose troubles arise solely from its unwillingness to give back land it seized in the 1967 war in return for peace with its neighbors, does not fit those criteria. In fact, Israel's 1995 per capita gross domestic product was $15,800. That put it below Britain at $19,500 and Italy at $18,700 and just above Ireland at $15,400 and Spain at $14,300.
All four of those European countries have contributed a very large share of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has organized an ethnic group to lobby for U.S. foreign aid. Instead, all four send funds and volunteers to do economic development and emergency relief work in other less fortunate parts of the world.
The lobby that Israel and its supporters have built in the United States to make all this aid happen, and to ban discussion of it from the national dialogue, goes far beyond AIPAC, with its $15 million budget, its 150 employees, and its five or six registered lobbyists who manage to visit every member of Congress individually once or twice a year.
AIPAC, in turn, can draw upon the resources of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a roof group set up solely to coordinate the efforts of some 52 national Jewish organizations on behalf of Israel.
Among them are Hadassah, the Zionist women’s organization, which organizes a steady stream of American Jewish visitors to Israel; the American Jewish Congress, which mobilizes support for Israel among members of the traditionally left-of-center Jewish mainstream; and the American Jewish Committee, which plays the same role within the growing middle-of-the-road and right-of-center Jewish community. The American Jewish Committee also publishes Commentary, one of the Israel lobby’s principal national publications.
Perhaps the most controversial of these groups is B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League. Its original highly commendable purpose was to protect the civil rights of American Jews. Over the past generation, however, the ADL has regressed into a conspiratorial and, with a $45 million budget, extremely well funded hate group.
In the 1980s, during the tenure of chairman Seymour Reich, who went on to become chairman of the Conference of Presidents, ADL was found to have circulated two annual fund-raising letters warning Jewish parents against allegedly negative influences on their children arising from the increasing Arab presence on American university campuses.
More recently, FBI raids on ADL’s Los Angeles and San Francisco offices revealed that an ADL operative had purchased files stolen from the San Francisco police department that a court had ordered destroyed because they violated the civil rights of the individuals on whom they had been compiled. ADL, it was shown, had added the illegally prepared and illegally obtained material to its own secret files, compiled by planting informants among Arab-American, African-American, anti-Apartheid and peace and justice groups.
The ADL infiltrators took notes of the names and remarks of speakers and members of audiences at programs organized by such groups. ADL agents even recorded the license plates of persons attending such programs and then suborned corrupt motor vehicles department employees or renegade police officers to identify the owners.
Although one of the principal offenders fled the United States to escape prosecution, no significant penalties were assessed. ADL’s Northern California office was ordered to comply with requests by persons upon whom dossiers had been prepared to see their own files, but no one went to jail and as yet no one has paid fines.
Not surprisingly, a defecting employee revealed in an article he published in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that AIPAC, too, has such “enemies” files. They are compiled for use by pro-Israel journalists like Steven Emerson and other so-called “Terrorism experts,” and also by professional, academic or journalistic rivals of the persons described for use in blacklisting, defaming, or denouncing them. What is never revealed is that AIPAC’s “opposition research“ department, under the supervision of Michael Lewis, son of famed Princeton University Orientalist Bernard Lewis, is the source of this defamatory material.
But this is not AIPAC’s most controversial activity. In the 1970s, when Congress put a cap on the amount its members could earn from speakers’ fees and book royalties over and above their salaries, it halted AIPAC’s most effective ways of paying off members for voting according to AIPAC recommendations. Members of AIPAC’s national board of directors solved the problem by returning to their home states and creating political action committees (PACs).
Most special interests have PACs, as do many major corporations, labor unions, trade associations and public-interest groups. But the pro-Israel groups went wild. To date some 126 pro-Israel PACs have been registered, and no fewer than 50 have been active in every national election over the past generation.
An individual voter can give up to $2,000 to a candidate in an election cycle, and a PAC can give a candidate up to $10,000. However, a single special interest with 50 PACs can give a candidate who is facing a tough opponent, and who has voted according to its recommendations, up to half a million dollars. That’s enough to buy all the television time needed to get elected in most parts of the country.
Even candidates who don’t need this kind of money certainly don’t want it to become available to a rival from their own party in a primary election, or to an opponent from the opposing party in a general election. As a result, all but a handful of the 535 members of the Senate and House vote as AIPAC instructs when it comes to aid to Israel, or other aspects of U.S. Middle East policy.
There is something else very special about AIPAC’s network of political action committees. Nearly all have deceptive names. Who could possibly know that the Delaware Valley Good Government Association in Philadelphia, San Franciscans for Good Government in California, Cactus PAC in Arizona, Beaver PAC in Wisconsin, and even Icepac in New York are really pro-Israel PACs under deep cover?
(To most rational people, the war in Iraq was fought primarily to defend Saudi Arabia from Iraq moreso than to defend Israel.)
I have to give this up, and that means to a large extent giving up verbal fights with you.
But if the above addresses me, let me repeat, I never stated that the Iraq war was fought for Israel. What irritated me highly was how enormously it was supported from both Israel and US or European "pro-Israel" circles. Our most prominent Jewish-Israeli-German presented himself as an ardent supporter of WWIII/IV and of Bush (at his reelection) clad in an American flag jacket. Repeatedly stating: We are all Americans now.
[Incidentially he also supported a Jewish-German writer from Cologne in his vicious polemics against the mosque here in Cologne.]
One of Dershowitz plausible points is the SELECTIVE contempt for Israel. The anger at Israel is not part of a general accounting of US relationships, by critics or officers. Its selective.
I wouldn't grant Dershowitz copyright for that, it is the ultimate standard in our topic. What is wrong with this argument is, the very special relationship between the US and Israel and the closeness to Europe surely is a factor or as you seem to call it a news value that pushes the news up in the selective process. Israel is simply closer to the West than other nations. That is basically not a bad sign. …
If you wish to normalize the relationship, advocate for the prerequisite, confident peace and acceptance of Israel as Israel.
This suggests you haven't read the article by Ian. S. Lustick pdf.file linked under:
Abandoning the Iron Wall: Israel and the "Middle Eastern Muck".
To us, who already read it, your statement above suggests that you are a supporter of the new changed Israeli strategy.
israel gets,strongarms,steals $15 to 30 billion minimum per year. that's just usa. then they have the brainwashed, spineless, eternally guilt-ridden germans. et als
guilt ridden true but also off. maybe guilt induced, guilt forced/enforced.
Witty – Do you have any Lebanese Maronite friends? Have you ever been to the Mount Lebanon region? Are you familiar with their culture and history? What do you think about the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinian Muslims into the (once) delicately balanced Christian/Muslim Lebanese state?
Witty is a cyborg, people. He can only respond as programmed. His soul resides in whoever taught him what to say and cannot be reached.
Phil,
I highly recommend John Carlin's new book, Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, about how, from his prison cell, Mandela first took away from the Afrikaaners their sports passion, international rugby, as a tool to force an end to Apartheid, and then, once released and elected President, gave it back, mixing symbols of the old tribes, himself wearing the Springboks green jersey, and the rugby team singing traditional African songs. Along the way, he inspired the team to World Cup victory, and the nation to believe in itself. "Speak to their hearts, not their minds," he advised. "The liberation struggle," said one colleague of the lesson Mandela taught him, "is not so much about liberating blacks from bondage, but more so it was about liberating white people from fear."
Doppler
The open question for US legislators is whether the "special" relationship with Israel should remain, and if so, in what form?
I think that the conditions in the world support the US having a very close and very supportive relationship with Israel, including that it is WORTH the money spent. I agree that there should be conditions on the use of certain weapons.
One critical reason that the US has the "special" relationship is so that it can remain intimately informed as to Israel's actions and what Israel perceives in the region.
The US has notoriously weak intelligence about the region that it is still radically economically dependant on.
Israel has mostly excellent intelligence, with occassional lapses.
The conditions that would facilitate a transition in relationship don't exist objectively.
1. The US is still radically dependant on middle eastern oil, with current favored sources of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAR and prospectively Iraq.
2. The Arab world has not yet concluded confident peace agreements and diplomatic relations with Israel (at any stated borders), and as such a US ally is still in a state of formal war with other US allies.
Do what you can to enhance the preconditions, and the fruit will drop naturally from the tree.
Put the cart before the horse, and that will initiate civil and possibly world war, probably in the form of heightened incident/escalation/retaliation/escalation.
Magic won't get there. Mearsheimer's suggestion to "normalize" relations won't get there.
Weiss wrote: “Really an incredible evening for a few reasons: that a conversation that none of our media can have is led by our children;…Our children will lead us. I'm going to keep repeating that line till I'm blue in the face.”
I’m glad to see Weiss has picked up on the generation gap between those prone toward sympathy to Jewish Zionism (the McCain-Cheney “Silent Generation” and the Bush II-Clinton “Boomers”) and succeeding generations who are more likely to view Jewish Zionism for what it is: a greedy, racialist, manipulative, victim-industry and war-profiteering enterprise that has joined with the imperial-minded to form a mass, quasi-fascist political movement.
The majority of the World War II-worship indoctrinated generations is probably too far gone to ever come to its senses on the Zionist question. And their leaders’ utter lack of morality and principles, and their elevation of materialism and greed over any kind of spiritual values (which is consistent with the Judeo-Imperialist ethic), probably made the Zionist takeover of Washington all but inevitable. But there is also a failure of moral character and fiber there, as well. Bill Clinton perfectly epitomized this on a personal and social level; Bush II perfectly epitomizes this on a foreign policy level.
I only hope succeeding generations haven’t been overly indoctrinated into the Godless materialist ethic themselves (to the financial profit of the preceding soulless generations) to ever form a coherent opposition and effective counterforce. Barring that, its going to take the kind of volcanic eruption in response to decades of utter usury and incompetence by generations of European “elites” that marked the beginnings World War II.
Given the Silent Generation/Boomer fixation on World War II, maybe that’s what they’ve been angling for all along. I don’t think they will like the outcome, though. And the Zionists will like it even less.
"Our children will lead us".
Phil, You don't have children.
Mine are Zionists, one religious, one not at all.
"Our children will lead us".
Phil, You don't have children. — R.Witty
Witty once again demonstrates his bigotry and narrow mindedness. Weiss is being inclusive and expansive, thinking of "our children" on a societal level. Witty implies no such children exist because Phil hasn't produced any Jewish offspring. Now how can an exclusive mentality like that ever be assimilated into a non-Jewish society? Next, Witty will be demanding that his taxes go exclusively to the maintenance of Jews-only public schools.
It’s that kind of Jewish bigotry, not the intolerance of non-Jews, that makes the state of Israel necessary. I just wish the diaspora Jewish Zionists would finally follow their calling and put it to use instead of forever stirring up trouble and political and social extremism out of innate racial resentment, anger, frustration and neurosis.
Lame Ed.
"That no one ran out of the hall yelling about pogroms …" — Phil W.
Touché! Phil heralds the end of an era. What's that sound? The sound of the Holocaust-guilt extortion scam crumbling to dust.
Listen up, Richard Witty. The bell tools for thee.
Again, I ask the question. Phil Weiss has no Jewish kids. Advocates for the total assimilation of the Jewish people out of existence. And wants the destruction of Israel. What exactly makes him a Jew? No, he wasn't speaking on an expansive level. It really bothers him that some people like being Jewish and care about the continued existence of Israel. He doesm't
"The bell tolls for thee".
Bells toll at funerals. Do you really mean that stupid inference, Haygood?
The only thing that one can argue in relation to my points is that you adopt an either/or approach, rather than an approach of mutual acceptance.
To ignore mutual brutalities is to ignore an elephant in the room.
The real change is to mutual aid, rather than abusing Jews for desiring to self-associate.
Yes, Jews are a people. And, as a people, some of us desire/need to self-govern. Some don't feel that need.
Phil's intermarriage, decision not to parent, and political orientation, doesn't change that.