Richard Silverstein got a translation of the Maariv article about Rahm Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, and says that it reports that his brother was killed by Arabs in Jerusalem when the doctor was about 7 years old. Silverstein:
and it tells a more nuanced story. Dr. Emanuel is 82 years old–not that
excuses his prejudice. While he was a member of the right-wing Jewish
nationalist terror group, the Irgun, the article notes that in
Jerusalem in 1933, Emanuel’s brother, Emanuel Auerbach, was murdered in
an altercation with Arabs. To memorialize their son, his parents
changed their family name to Emanuel and moved to Tel Aviv.
Silverstein says this back story extenuates Benjamin Emanuel's racist statement about Arabs. I don't buy that. It raises other questions. Chiefly this: How much is this Rahm Emanuel's personal emotional framework for regarding the Arab world? Why hasn't he talked about this? As I have often commented, Doug Feith's father Dalck lost his entire family in the Holocaust, both parents and seven siblings. Incredible. He has my deepest compassion. But I didn't want the nephew of these murder victims making Middle East policy.
PS. The Times reported this many years ago. Though vaguely.
Sons form political views sometimes close to the tree, sometimes far from the tree, sometimes with entirely different emphases.
And, his position is in service to Obama, NOT a federal officer.
It might make hot "news", but also might be an example of "fire" in a movie theater.
Obama is the accountable one to the public, as Bush/Cheney were the accountable ones.
"murdered in an altercation"
That leaves a lot to the imagination. Road rage?
You don't think that if your brother was murdered by Arabs that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
But speaking to how this might have impacted Rahm: My great uncles were murdered in the Holocaust. I never knew them. How does their murder impact my own views of the world? Hardly at all. Similarly to Rahm. He never knew his uncle. Don't make a bigger deal out of this than should be made.
Wow, so the fact that one's brother was killed by Arabs excuses anti-Arab racism, or, at the very least, tells a "more nuanced" story about it??? There is nothing "nuanced" about racism, get that. How many neo-Nazis would justify their genocidal hatred of Jews based on the claim that they, or some relative, were wronged by a Jew at some point?
"That leaves a lot to the imagination. Road rage?"
Maybe he provoked the altercation? After all, he WAS a member of the Irgun at the time of the altercation, was he not?
"You don't think that if your brother was murdered by Arabs that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them?"
Uh, not if the brother happens to have volunteered in a terrorist organization??? Or, a military group, if that's what you want to call the Irgun…
Oddly enough, the zionists seem to have overcome hatred of Germans pretty fast, don't you think that's odd. Compare that to the zionist insistence that their genocidal hatred of Arabs is justified because they have been "wronged" by Arabs who allegedly wanted to throw them into the sea (but only after they took over Arabs' lands and threw THEM into the sea)? And last I checked, the average Jew does not go about saying hateful, racist things about Germans based on the 6 million Jews they murdered, even those Jews who have lost relatives in the Holocaust. The only thing we can conclude from this is that the zionists are riding the wave of anti-Arab racism that is not a new phenomenon, of course. If you look back at Orientalist literature dating back to the 1800s and even all the way back to the Crusades, you will see the bigoted views towards Arabs and Muslims, which often — sadly — inform the West's policies towards Arab countries.
Hopefully, Arabs rage at Zionists is based on current actions, and not on prejudice. Hard to know.
Similarly, hopefully Zionists' anger towards Palestinians and other Arabs is based on current treatment, and not residual or prejudicial.
Samir Kuntar crushed the head of a 4yr old girl after killing her father in front of her. Not only did Israel not execute him he is now in Lebanon where he is a NATIONAL HERO. Would her mother be justified in having hard feelings towards the Lebanese. I put this question to the blogger from Lebanon.
I know the Jewish conspiracy is at the center of the world for your people but a few facts may be in order here. Emanuel was in charge of the DCCC. He orchestrated the Democratic takeover of the house. He is a Chicago guy and by all accounts has the right mentality to be a presidential chief of staff. Which by all accounts is to be the presidents son of a bitch. We have so many problems right now both internally and in the world that his administration is going to be crisis management day to day. Or let me put it another way. We have to borrow 900 billion dollars over the next 20 weeks. Shockingly enough that might be a bigger deal right now than cracking down on Israel.
"Sword of Gideon", Samir Quntar never admitted to carrying out that act, and it appears the whole thing was fabricated. There was a gunfight on the beach while he was taking the girl and her father to the boat in order to escape and use them as bargaining chips for a prisoner exchange. If he had wanted to kill them, he would've simply put a bullet in their heads at the house from which he took them, rather than dragging them all the way to the beach and making his escape a near-impossibility. When you've got any real, reasonable, solid evidence that he really did crush the girl's father in front of her and then crushed her skull — and all this supposedly in the heat of battle in which Quntar managed to wound and almost kill the head of the border police patrol at the scene — then you could present it here. But this zionist rhetoric about Quntar has gotten quite boring. Get over it, and get over yourselves. The guy did not kill the girl, and is innocent until proven guilty, in a real court not a kangaroo court.
"We have to borrow 900 billion dollars over the next 20 weeks."
Who's the "we"? Are you speaking in your capacity is an Israeli, or an American?
Also, we have always been told that 4-5 billion a year that goes to Israel is a "piddly" sum, and so, that Americans must put up with it. Firstly, if that "piddly" sum goes toward violating human rights, killing women and children, and imposing apartheid, and in the process destroying America's standing, then there is something wrong with that, from an American perspective. Second, in the wake of the economic crisis, every dollar and every cent counts. After all, taxpayers will be "milked" for the excesses of the neo-con gang currently in power, and who went to war on Iraq at Israel's behest. So, methinks the piddly 4-5 billion per year should be slashed , to, HOW ABOUT, ZERO dollars. Israelis always boast about making the desert bloom, well, if they're THAT good, then, let them make their own deserts bloom, without American dollars. Or else, put up with a reduction in their standards of living, which are almost on par with Europe's.
Ok, got it, never happened. But, let me ask you something else. Clearly in your mind this is all Israel's fault, everything. Put your self in the place of Israel's PM with an insurmountable majority in the knesset. Ergo the ability to do whatever you want. Ok, certainly you could wind the whole conflict up by Wednesday, what would you do. How would you go about it.
Hmmmm.
These facts:
1) Rahm Emanuel's father was a member of a terrorist organization
2) Rahm served in the ISRAELI army during the First Gulf War
3) Rahm only supported pro Iraq war democrats when he was in charge of moneys used for democratic elections.
Are they ever mentioned in the American media?
ANY f***ing American media, excepting of course the blogs, which are blogspam, useless and best ignored?
This is a real question.
Was any of these 3 facts ever mentioned?
Hey Gideon. Here's what I would do. Move all the settlers out of territory conquered in 1967. Move the wall to the 67 border, just inside Israel. Leave the Army in occupation. That would let the Palestinians see the light at the end of the tunnel; they would see that Israel does not plan to endlessly expand and does not intend to "transfer" them.
Hey Gideon. Here's what I would do. Move all the settlers out of territory conquered in 1967. Move the wall to the 67 border, just inside Israel. Leave the Army in occupation. That would let the Palestinians see the light at the end of the tunnel; they would see that Israel does not plan to endlessly expand and does not intend to "transfer" them.
I would put an end to apartheid by incorporating the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, along with all its Palestinian population, into Israel, and give them full equality, voting rights, etc. Along with a phased return of the refugees along with reparation payments, and compensation for those who don't want to exercise their right of return (this would be reciprocated by compensation by Arab states of Arab Jews who have lost property — it goes without saying that they would also have the right to return to their countries of origin, if they so choose, but then, they have that right even today). That's the ideal process and outcome, and that's what I would've done if I were the Israeli PM. Now you will say, but you don't even want to give Lebanese citizenship to the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Says who? I would not mind it, if that's what the refugees themselves want. But that is not what they want, as survey after survey has demonstrated. The last survey put the percentage of those who refuse to be naturalized and want to exercise their right of return, at — if I remember correctly — 95%.
Now, what say you, Sword?
October 9, 2008
At the Checkpoint on the Day of Atonement
The Devouring Dragon
By MATS SVENSSON
In a few hours, Israel will celebrate Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and repentance. Everything will be closed for 24 hours. Tel Aviv Airport shuts. No planes land or depart. The border crossing to Egypt or Jordan is similarly closed. Everything shuts down. When I sit and speak with Muhammad in Abu Dis, I realize that he sort of celebrates Yom Kippur every day. This is his normal life. Always shut up behind a wall and military checkpoints. He no longer has a car, he is in any case unable to travel outside Abu Dis. For us foreigners, Yom Kippur gives us a day off. But many of us still complain. Feel as if somebody has stolen our freedom. We’re unable to drive a car, go shopping, go to a café. Tomorrow I was myself thinking of going to Egypt via Eilat, hoping to make use of the day off. But my meeting with Muhammad a few hours before Yom Kippur gives me another diving experience. Instead of diving into the wonderful Red Sea, I got to dive freely into the intellectual life of Muhammad, the prisoner serving a life sentence behind the wall in Abu Dis. Yom Kippur is the day during which we can to some degree understand how all Palestinians are faring behind closed walls. Feel how it is when everything slowly shuts down, ends, becomes nothing. But the day after tomorrow, we restart the car and next weekend I can cross the border to dive among corals or visit the desert town of Petra.
The sun sets early now. I am sitting on Muhammad’s veranda. He tells me that the family used to sit there every evening. You could see how the sun was reflected in the round, golden dome of the Dome of the Rock a few kilometers away. The family had a wonderful view over the holy city, the Mount of Olives, the old wall and the fine stone houses. Every Friday, Mohammed together with his nearest and dearest went to the Al Asqa Mosque to say the important prayers of the week.
In those days, they used to watch how the sun went down in the distance. In those days, the sheep used to graze under the olive trees high on the hillside. Trees that were planted over a hundred years ago and were protected since each and every one of them were part of the common heritage. In those days, Muhammad used to bring the animals home at dusk and stop for a while where he had the best view. In those days, Muhammad’s sister used to have the Turkish coffee ready on the veranda immediately before the fifth hour of prayer approached,
Now Muhammad is shut up in a prison. Not in a cell, not in a little room, but in a lost future, a lost history, a lost dream. The view of the gilded dome has changed now. Every morning when Muhammad comes out onto the veranda he is met by a nine meter tall, dead, grey concrete wall. It snakes its way up through the beautiful olive covered hillside like a dead, grey dragon, the dragon is dead, but it still kills. It kills everything on the eastern side where the sun no longer sets in the distance; it kills everything where the twilight comes early.
The wall holds sway on one side, Israeli checkpoints on the other. Muhammad con no longer leave the Abu Dis district. He cannot go to Jericho, to the Dead Sea or to the old city in Jerusalem.
Four years ago, when I met Muhammad for the first time, he was still strong. You could see the wall in the distance, the dragon had started to approach, but it was still a little way off. Muhammad talked about his work. How he had worked throughout Israel as building contractor and build houses in Tel Aviv and Haifa. He talked about Israeli friends and joint building projects. He pointed to the dragon, to its folly, but in those days he was able to hope and believe that the wall was temporary, that the world would react, that the ravaging would be stopped.
Now that we have met many times he personifies a national tragedy. He shows me how the dragon kills, crushes your soul, destroys your gaze, paralyses your arms, and crooks your back. “The wall is long,” he says. “It has brought death to every house along it. And you, Mats,” says Muhammad, “What are you doing? What have you been doing all this time? What have you done with all the reports, all the pictures? Next time you come, I probably won´t be here anymore, I can´t go any longer. The dragon is going to devour us all.”
Mats Svensson, a former Swedish diplomat working on the staff of SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, is presently following the ongoing occupation of Palestine. He can be reached at isbjorn2001@hotmail.com.
SOURCE- link to counterpunch.org:80
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Let's concentrate on the real point here in regard to Enamuel's uncle being killed, however it occured.
Why was there an altercation with Arabs?
Because the Jews were in the process of taking over their land.
Why were the jews taking over their land?
Because even before the holocuast, the Zionist Cult, and it can be called nothing but a cult, was after a 'Nation' for Jews.
Bible myth and the holocuast, which had nothing to do with the Arabs, was their excuse.
The idea of a Nation for Jews was the worse idea of the 20 century. The Jews should had returned to the countries they left.
The blood and treasure consumed by the Jews in the name of a Jewish nation, and the mentality behind it, is as horrifying as all other holocuast that have been carried out on people.
I will say it again, the jews are not a "people", they are a religion, and within their religion are the zionist cultist consumed by greed and revenge, that have caused so much pain and suffering for others.
The Jews will always have enemies everywhere they go just as they have thruout history because they can't rid themselves of the zionist cult and their mentality. Israel is the perfect example of that.
Who killed Rachel Corrie?
Lebanon blogger.
Your suggestion will never happen in your or your grandchildren's lifetime.
The prospect of very close to 1967 borders, but without forced removal of settlers (instead opting for Palestinian citizenship), but definitely compensation is likely.
The question to you is, do you prefer war and suffering for the next 4 generations, including more thorough forced relocations of Palestinians, or do you prefer political and legal reconciliation?
Let me ask the question another way. Say you were the PM and you wanted the country to continue to exist and not preside over the death and dispersion of the jewish population. What would you do. Because obviously Arabs such has yourself are not particularly bright. If you were you would have grasped this the first time.
You know some might have called Nazism or communism the worst ideas of the 20th century. then there are people like you. Why I bet your not even ant-semitic. Some of your best friends are Jews.. Am I right, asshole.
BTW, I was always against the war in Iraq. The idea that you could make a decent, pluralistic country. Out of a bunch of camel jockeys who are still getting the hang of toilet paper is absurd. Always, was, always will be. If the world ever comes up with an alternative to oil watch out. Nobody will give shit what you people think, Not then. The only reason you have influence now is because through pure dumb luck your sitting on most of the worlds oil reserves.
"The prospect of very close to 1967 borders, but without forced removal of settlers (instead opting for Palestinian citizenship), but definitely compensation is likely."
Luckily, things don't quite work out that way. If you're going to have 500,000 settlers (the worst of Israeli trash) who were deliberately planted on privately owned Palestinian land, then the least one can expect in return is a return of at least 1 million Palestinian refugees to Israel-proper. Emphasis on at least. These refugees were dispossessed and hurled across the border (or are the children of those who were hurled across the border) for having committed the "crime" of being Palestinian. In contrast, the settlers were part of a policy of zionist dispossession of Palestinians of the best (meaning, most fertile and water-rich) lands in the West Bank. If I were on the Palestinian negotiating team, I would not accept any less than a full return of ALL Palestinian refugees to Israel-proper, in return for keeping your trash and bestowing upon them Palestinian citizenship. It's only fair.
"Your suggestion will never happen in your or your grandchildren's lifetime."
Well, maybe in my great-great-grandchildren's lifetime. The bottom line is that it will happen. Your desperate attempts to postpone the inevitable are ridiculous, and will bring more tragedy to all involved.
"do you prefer war and suffering for the next 4 generations, including more thorough forced relocations of Palestinians, or do you prefer political and legal reconciliation?"
First, don't blackmail me with threats about forced relocation of Palestinians. But I am curious as to what could bring about such an eventuality. And you say it so matter-of-factly, as if you "know" that the Palestinians would be posing such a huge existential threat that they would have to be "transferred" out. But then, this is contradictory. If the Palestinians would presumably be posing such a huge existential threat that necessitates their transfer, how do you know Israel will be able to transfer them? Maybe it will be Israelis who will get transferred out? Ooops. Or maybe your claims about an existential threat are nothing but myth? We all know that's what it is, that's what it has always been (yes, even since 1948), and that's what it always will be. Don't threaten me with war. Instead think about how to get your zionist self and your fellow zionists out of the hole they've dug for themselves. I highlighted the way for political and legal reconciliation. There was no political and legal reconciliation as far as apartheid South Africa was concerned, and that's how it shall be with Israel too. You can choose to go to bed content that it won't happen for the next 4 generations, or you can choose to start worrying and doing something. I've always said that more than anything the Palestinians do, it will be Israelis' greed, genocidal intolerance, and racist condescension towards Arabs and Muslims that will destroy Israel.
But, on a positive note, at least you admit that there were FORCED relocation of Palestinians. We're getting somewhere.
"Arabs such has yourself are not particularly bright. If you were you would have grasped this the first time. "
Very funny, in an Israeli fascist sort of way.
On another note, I am not an Arab.
Richard, this guy form Lebanon just proves my point. There is no room for compromise with them, none. He is the one that is saying that, not me.
So if your Lebanese your either shiite, sunni, christian or druse. Which one asshole?
I am not Lebanese, silly.
But then you're not particularly bright, are you? If you were, you would've grasped this the first time.
So, now that the American public are filled with dopey-hopey-changitude, and have an economic crisis to deal with, and a climate crisis to deal with, but not the one you are thinking about, they will forget about the Middle East. They will think that the Palestinian question has been solved. The American government, likewise, will be too busy dealing with domestic issues to take any much notice of what happens.
So, I expect the Israelis (shielded by their friends in Washington) will quietly solve their Palestinian problem.
Hey maybe its all poetic symmetry and Sarah's son in the Stryker Brigade will get his limbs blown off protecting SOG's low IQ?
Lebanon blogger,
The significance of not removing 500,000 (the figure keeps growing, some for reality some for exageration), is that they are INDIVIDUALS living in homes.
Your use of the term "trash" to describe the settlers (in VERY different settings and motives), is as ennobling as the worst of others' racist phrases.
Individuals deserve their day in court. Individual Israelis. Individual Palestinians.
The political approach is the ugly beast. ALL politically defined bases of ethnic cleansing demean the real individuals that live there.
It is also important to note that pre-Zionist Arab, Jordanians, and Palestinians engaged in ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank as well.
I expect that to achieve peace there will be some forced removal of some settlers.
I hope not. I hope that more imaginative means to establish/improve the rule of law in Palestine and in Israel, and in Lebanon is adopted (which still excludes Palestinian refugees from citizenship, even if they are grandchildren of original refugees and were born in Lebanon).
The best law is that which affirms individual rights, and reconciles conflicting claims.
Sovereignty is solely the selection of jurisdiction.
The right of return and a single-state currently results in the suppression of a large minority, and selective ethnicity.
A MORE democratic solution would be legal settlement of individuals' contested land claims, and design of jurisdiction to simultaneously enhance plurality, defensibility, and contiguity.
You don't think that if your Hatfield brother was murdered by McCoys that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your Sioux brother was murdered by white European settlers that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your Christian brother was murdered by the Cheyene that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your Aborigne brother was murdered by white European colonialists that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your black brother was lynched by American whites that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your Congolese brother was murdered by Belgian colonialists that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your Lebanese brother was murdered by Israelis that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your Palestinian brother was murdered by Jews that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
You don't think that if your Armenian brother was murdered by the Turks that you'd have some pretty strong negative feelings towards them? Or would you simply take it all in stride?
AD NAUSEAM, AD NAUSEAM, AD NAUSEAM
“That’s all I can stands. I can’t stands no more.”
- Popeye the Sailor
"Plus ca change , plus c'est la meme chose"…
"Never again is what you swore the time before."- Depeche Mode
"When you were young and your heart was an open book You used to say live and let live…"
– Paul McCartney
______________________________________
Washington did go to church, five or 10 times a year. But when people tried to box him into making a religious stand, he deftly evaded them. He gave moral advice to his adopted children, but, so far as we know, never urged religion on them.
He wrote: "Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated.
_____________________________________
Cossack: "What's the source of all evil?"
Rabbi: "The Jews and the chimney sweeps."
Cossack: "Why the chimney sweeps?"
Rabbi: "Why the Jews?"
________________________________
"One might think that a period which, in a space of fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings should be condemned out of hand. But its culpability must still be understood… In more ingenuous times, when the tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets, when enemies were thrown to the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the mind did not reel before such unabashed crimes, and the judgment remained unclouded. But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence – through a curious transposition peculiar to our times – it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself. "
— Albert Camus, The Rebel
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Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.
– Georges Sorel
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I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war…suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.
– Phillip Caputo
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“A new society cannot be created by reproducing the repugnant past, however refined or enticingly repackaged.” Nelson Mandela
________________________________________
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"It seems that [poet Allen] Ginsberg had traced an obscenity in the dust of a dormitory window; the words were too shocking for the Dean of Students to speak, so he had written them on a piece of paper which he had pushed across the desk to my
husband: 'Fuck the Jews.' ……. 'He's a Jew himself,' said the Dean. 'Can you understand his writing a thing like that?' Yes, Lionel could understand; but he couldn't explain it to the Dean."
Dianna Trilling, (Jewish author) in BLOOM, p. 302
_________________________________________
"[Jewish psychologist Jules] Nydes argues that such individuals[representing the "paranoid masochistic character"] tend to see themselves and groups within which they identify as victims who are being persecuted. This sense of persecution derives partly from unconscious feelings of guilt. The paranoid masochistic person engages in aggression against others because he or she expects to be attacked. His aggression, which is accompanied by feelings of self-righteousness, is rarely satisfying. Indeed, he can often
achieve gratification only when he is punished, and the punishment is interpreted as confirming his preconceived sense of
persecution … The typology is suggestive. [Jewish psychoanalyst] Theodore Reik, who was Nyde's teacher, suggested that a 'paranoid masochistic' personality structure is modal among Jews."
– Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, Jewish authors,1982, p. 133
————————————-
"The discounting of anti-Semitism is itself anti-Semitic."
Evelyn Torton Beck, 1982, p. xxii
______________________________________
"The assumption of an eternal anti-Semitism … has been adapted by a great many unbiased historians and by even a greater number of Jews. It is this odd coincidence which makes the theory so very dangerous and confusing. Its escapist basis is in both instances the same; just as anti-Semites understandably desire to escape responsibility for their deeds, so Jews, attacked and on the defensive, even more understandably, do not wish to under any circumstances discuss their share of responsibility."
Hannah Arendt, Origins, p. 7 (Jewish historian)
___________________________
“It is no longer my country”
“For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished…I can’t bear to
see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Arabs, to the Beduins. All
kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they get off the plane
taking over lands in the territories and claiming them for their own… I can’t
do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole lot go to hell
without me.” Israeli actress (and household name) Rivka Michaeli, quoted in Israeli
peace movement periodical, “The Other Israel”, August 1998
____________________________
“Albert Einstein – ‘I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the
Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish
State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature
of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State, with borders, an army, and a
measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner
damage Judaism will sustain’…
______________________________________
The book also shows that in the lead-up to announcing his candidacy for the presidency, Bush told a Texan evangelist that he had had a premonition of some form of national disaster happening.
Bush said to James Robinson: 'I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen… I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.'
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“The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightening ain’t distributed right.” Thank you Mr. Twain.
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"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." -Gen. Omar Bradley
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There are souls that, crablike, crawl continually toward darkness, going backward in life rather than advancing, using their experience to increase their deformity, growing continually worse, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in the intensifying viciousness.-Les Miserables
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This is the real Bush doctrine: If you do one wrong, you will be caught. But if you keep up a barrage of wrongdoing, escalating it constantly, you will confuse everyone and keep them off balance.
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McCain is correct that it's time to stand up. "Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history," he said at the Republican National Convention.
_____________________________________
Ms. Palin referred to “prayer warriors” in a radio interview Wednesday with Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian multimedia ministry. Dr. Dobson told Ms. Palin that he and his wife, Shirley, were praying for her, and that they had convened 430 people last weekend to pray for “God’s perfect will to be done on Nov. 4.”
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Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your mouth,
Blowing down the backroads, headin' south
– Bob Dylan, "Idiot Wind." (1974).
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I am reminded of Chancellor Bismarck's remark about us Americans in the 19th century when he said: "God looks after drunks, little children and the United States of America."
______________________________
Keep in mind that the targeted readers’ “reasoning power” has already convinced them that they’re going to be Raptured—swooshed up bodily [naked as a third-rate centerfold] into heaven—moments after they initiate an apocalyptic nuclear conflagration in the Middle East, which they hope will eventually engulf the entire world. This is not a one-derivation-above-the-mean crowd, after all.
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“Patriotism is not pinning a flag pin to one lapel to free up both hands, so you can tear up the U.S. Constitution.”
-Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in The Warning.
___________________________________
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." – Voltaire
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Moderates to blame for GOP losses, conservative leader says
If Republicans want to get back into power, they have to go back to bedrock conservative principles such as fag-bashing.
____________________________________
Chomsky attributes the promiscuous use of the accusation of Jewish self-hatred to a piece by the late Israeli foreign minister and United Nations ambassador Abba Eban, who wrote in Congress Bi-Weekly in 1973, “One of the chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction at all.” “That is a convenient stand,” Chomsky remarked to me. “It cuts off a mere 100 percent of critical comment!
__________________________________
The 1984 defeat of Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.) — the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who crossed the lobby once too often — is one of several in recent years ascribed to pro-Israel money. "All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy," Dine claimed in a speech after the 1984 election. "And American politicians … got the message." (from the Washington Post, June 13, 1991)
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“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.”
–Mark Twain
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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
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“To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.” Thank you, Mr. Twain.
___________________________________
Mark Twain once said that “in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”
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never once did Kristol speak as directly as his father Irving did in 1973 when he said that the Democratic party's efforts to weaken the defense budget were "a knife in the heart of Israel… it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States… American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don't want to cut the military budget."
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"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
–Bush White House aide explaining the New Reality
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Obama has already said, in the AIPAC speech, that he will not be assuming such a role. “But in the end, we also know that we should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security interests. No Israeli prime minister should ever feel dragged to or blocked from the negotiating table by the United States.”
Such comments, coming from the leader of the world’s only superpower, could even blunt the ability of the Israeli public to mobilize political accountability for such actions.
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At the risk of gilding the lily, James North explains FDR's calculation: "I'm on your side. But I'm a politician. I can't expend political capital unless you show the world that I was pressured to do so."
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And, brilliantly, FDR to activists who were belaboring a point: "OK, you've convinced me. Now go out and put pressure on me.
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"Let any dissention from the war effort be shown as treason," Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering 1941
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Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
– Groucho Marx
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Or, as Chairman Mao dictated, "Make trouble, fail, make trouble again, fail again."
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"Neocon Logic: This Statement is Untrue"
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"Come mothers and fathers throughout the land And don't criticize what you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'."-Bob Zimmerman
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As the ancient Jewish maxim goes: "Everything is possible and permission is granted."
SOG is enraged about gossip concerning the killing of a young Jewish girl by someone now venerated by Muslims. There is no question about what a good transplanted American Jew did: Only the veneration of Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 praying Muslims
Thank you MIster Dickerson.
I think you've outlined the problem.
Pardon me. I guess I took blogger from Lebanon to mean I don't know, that you were Lebanese. Pardon the insult.
As I said, Sword of Gideon, being mistaken for being Lebanese is no insult, except for your Israeli fascist self. Apparently, you have a problem getting it not only the first time, but also the second time, and maybe who knows, the third time and so on and so forth. Gee, that makes you a creature on a much "lower" scale than the Arabs you have coated with your fascist filth.
Enough said.
John D,
Your selection of those wronged did NOT include Jews that were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank in 1929 (read the Avraham Burg book that Phil praises).
Wrongs were done, are done, mutually.
I agree with you that wrongs are being done to many Palestinians, continued over time, and that it is a rational reaction to be angry.
Personally, I regard fear and anger as a source of information. I feel it, and use it to inform my reasoning, so that my CHOICE of response is effective, just, kind.
If I only acted from my fears or my angers, or if my "leaders" elicited that approach, I would be escalating the conflict rather than resolving it.
That is the failing of the Bush/McCain invocations, and the promise of the Obama.
It is why I am an enthusiastic supporter of Obama, that he presents himself as sober rather than raged. That he retained that sobriety over a marathon, proves the point.
Well, obviously it is pea brain. But I would rate my dogs crap on a higher scale of evolution than you. Not to mention the average Arab. I mean come on. Without oil they're nothing. Always were, always will be.
Witty, do you see that the SOG is a fellow MOT? Admit it, he's a big problem. Yet you scold him only once in a great while very mildly, while you exert 99% of what brain power you have to consistently put Phil and most of the rest of the posters on this blog down via your
selective use of asserted facts, the very thing you constantly accuse
others of here–but mostly by your special abstract code which pretends to appeal to objectivity and humanism–the very things you
despise as a self-affirmed ZIONIST. To objections of dual loyalties/ citizenship, you say we all have multiple loyalties, as if aesthetic taste in the color of one's socks is the same as national loyalty. Orthodox Jewish tradition mandates that the Jew is to swear allegiance to the country he or she resides in, the one that
allows him all he has, and especially the one where he is born and raised, that umbrella from the rain. Phil is in that sense a traditional Jew. You are a Zionist, exactly the reverse.
Witty, you should read the Oath of Naturalization that is law in the USA. It is most common-sensical. Something you lack, and the reason you can afford to is due to all those USA grunts, not your son of the same age.
SOG: "Without oil they're nothing. Always were, always will be."
Methinks SOG could use a course in ancient Alexandria, to say the least.
BTW, SOG, where are the Jews without the USA? Where is Israel?
I mean, how long would it be before the innocent German generations post 1945 would say, enough is enough?
Surely you understand because of your stance on affirmative action in the USA, and reparations?
Anyone loyal to Texas (or Alaska)? Anyone also loyal to the US? Anyone also loyal to humanity?
Anyone have family that live in other countries? Are you more loyal to your family or your very broad country?
Anyone live near a border of the US, say in Vermont? Are you more loyal to your fellow Americans in Texas or to your immediate neighbors in Quebec?
Or are those questions too confusing for you?
Anon,
You don't know much about Judaism. Its a good study.
Some of the study would utterly conflict with your understanding, some would confirm it.
One point about overly defining others.
Its lessens there ability to change their personal references.
And, it hinders their ability to self-inquire, to change their own references.
Its still possible.
American: The idea of a Nation for Jews was the worse idea of the 20 century. The Jews should had returned to the countries they left.
C.M.: Good grief man, would you have gone back to Germany if you were a German Jew? They were stuck with two choices, a bad one, invading Palestine, and a worse one, continuing to live amongst people who just mass-murdered their families. I damn well know which choice I would have made. The problem now is that most Israelis make no attempt to take responsibility for the ugly reality of the past, and offer the olive branch FIRST.
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American: The blood and treasure consumed by the Jews in the name of a Jewish nation, and the mentality behind it, is as horrifying as all other holocaust that have been carried out on people.
C.M.: As angry as I am about EXTREMIST Zionists using me and mine like we are food animals, I must say that your assertion is utter nonsense. Just one counter-example suffices: the terror famine the Stalinists imposed on the Ukraine. Estimate of victims run from 12 to 20 million. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Also, the mentality behind the Holocaust was hatred. I don't believe that most of the Jewish fighters who founded Israel hated the Arabs. They were escaping, and needed a
place to live. That is certainly not as true today in the IDF, after 60 years of war. This does not excuse crimes committed by Zionists in recent times: give blame where it is due, and NOT where it is not due. Exaggeration only obscures reality.
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American: I will say it again, the jews are not a "people", they are a religion, and within their religion are the zionist cultist consumed by greed and revenge, that have caused so much pain and suffering for others.
C.M.: It is as incorrect to simplify Jews as "(belonging to) a religion" as it is to simply Arabs as all being Muslim. There are Jews who are non-observant, and distance themselves from the formality of the religion. While it appears to me that some orthodox Jews apply a strict definition on who they consider a Jew, remember that is just their self-righteous and self-appointed opinion, apparent when non-orthodox American Jews tried to get married in Israel. I suspect strongly that the many Jews who are not orthodox think quite differently. Your claim that Jews are "not a 'people'" depends on how you define it. I think one can make a strong case that Jews comprise several peoples who share a substantial common culture. It is not cut and dried, and simplifying Jews as simply "a religion" is incorrect.
Similarly, there are Muslim and Christion Arabs, and Arabic cultures are not homogeneous, having substantial cultural variation. There are Arabs of many complexions. Again, it is not cut and dried.
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American: The Jews will always have enemies everywhere they go just as they have thruout history because they can't rid themselves of the zionist cult and their mentality. Israel is the perfect example of that.
C.M.: Jews have not "always (had) enemies everywhere they go". While antisemitism has a long history in Europe, I think that Jews have coexisted substantially peacefully in Arab lands, including Spain during portions of the Middle Ages, for at least a thousand years, albeit in small numbers. Antisemitism, defined as a level of hatred such that Jews are seen as 'enemies', is in my opinion negligible in the West. Only a small portion of Americans could be accurately labeled antisemitic if defined more broadly as prejudice. And I think that level of prejudice is down in the noise compared to prejudice against African and Asian Americans.
Moreover, Zionism had almost no support amongst the Jewish people until AFTER the holocaust. The notion that "the Zionist cult … throughout history" has been a cause of people seeing Jews as enemies is facile. Israel exists because of, and only because of, the Holocaust, not because "they can't rid themselves of the zionist cult and their mentality". The embrace of Zionism by many (not all) Jews after the Holocaust was forced by circumstance, not because of widespread belief in "the Zionist cult and (its) mentality". Jews have been seen as enemies by a lot of people since Roman times, and I don't yet understand why, but I am certain that it is not because they were Zionist.
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C.M., concluding remarks: I think many antisemites classify Jews by lazy simplification: they see what they want to see, not what is, because they might actually have to fire a few neurons trying to understand. God didn't make the world black and white.
Thanks Colin.
"the terror famine the Stalinists imposed on the Ukraine. Estimate of victims run from 12 to 20 million. The truth is probably somewhere in between. "
If 3 to 10 million is between 12 to 20, this is probably correct. A minor point, but the way death toll statistics are exaggerated for effect is a pet peeve of mine.
Your attempts are balance are appreciated, however, though I don't agree with everything you've said. It's a bit too simple to say there was no hatred of Arabs on the part of the ZIonists in the late 40's–you don't commit massacres and drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes without dehumanizing them in your own mind when you do it. The same, of course, is true of Arabs who commit atrocities against Jews.
Richard Witty–I would like to argue with you in many of these threads, but often there's so much outright Jew hatred going on that I feel constrained. I can't very well pick on you when there are so many antisemites (or at least a handful of vocal ones) in these threads. OTOH, sword of gideon is as vile as any of them and you don't come down on him the way you should. Phil needs to set some ground rules for this blog, IMO–I'd like to see critics of Zionism who are not antisemites thrash things out with Zionists who aren't racists, but the signal-to-noise ratio in this forum is too low.
Posted by: Colin Murray
Nice try Colin…but evidently you have absolutely no education in real history regarding zionism and the establishment of Israel.
Get your self to some 'pure' history and historical documents. Until then you are making a fool of yourself and I mean that kindly..because you obviously are trying to be well meaning.
I suggest you start here…
http://www.archiveeditions.co.uk/
Bound editions of all the documents in the British National Archives where you can find the history of the ME, Zionism, minorities in the Arab world and so forth and so on.
These aren't novels by people with a ethnic slant and they aren't the myths of zionism and Israel by a jewish writer…they are official facts in real time, as the events happened.