Further evidence that Israel/Palestine is going to be on Obama's front burner. Today in Washington at the National Council on US-Arab Relations, the well-spoken Iraqi Ambassador to the US, Samir Sumaida'ie said the most essential task the new administration faces in the war with Islamic terrorists is resolving the "festering" Arab-Israeli conflict.
"It has to be solved fairly. It has to be solved in a way that provides for the security of all parties and not the security of one over another," he said. "If this problem is solved... it will defuse a lot of the bitterness and hatred that fuel much of this terrorism around the world. I'm not saying this will totally stop terrorism... But it will pull the rug from under the feet of the terrorists... That one issue is at the core of it."
Great, helpful. Obvious. I think Obama's going to push, too, especially with the lobby weakened by Bernard Madoff. And by the way, compare Sumaida'ie's comments with Dan Kurtzer's comments at Princeton a couple of years ago. rtsp://128.112.130.84:554/wws/lectures/20060426kurtzerlectureTAPE56K.rm That's the link, I got it bad yesterday. Anyway, Kurtzer keeps talking about the need for Palestinians to guarantee Israel's security, or they don't get a state. It never ends. Israel must have its security guaranteed. And meanwhile it utterly demolishes any hope for a fulfilling life let alone a functioning government in what's left of Palestine for the Arabs. It's just not fair. That's Sumaida'ie's word: fair.
Do you think its the core "reason" or the core "stimuli"?
The word 'stimuli' may be a better word to use in describing Arab anger at the United States since it is indeed US foreign policy that stimulates it, notwithstanding endless protestations by the Lobby that they 'hate our freedoms, not our truly blank-check pro-Israel policy'. However, 'core' is obviously a far better word to describe the utter dominance of the I/P issue in the foreign AND domestic disasters we now face.
Phil, did you type the link to Kurtz's speech correctly? I can't get it to work.
That is not a very useful link, because you have to paste it into the address bar of your audio player, as opposed to into the address bar of your browser.
Stimuli are Pavlovian.
Reasons are of thought.
The fraud underlying Zionism and the fraud underlying the financial meltdown are the same issue.
To try to partition the problem is a serious error.
See Every Israel Advocate a Madoff.
Joachim, I think I can agree that "the fraud underlying Zionism and the fraud underlying the financial meltdown are the same issue," but not for reason you posit, which resolves back into the rather irrelevant question of genetic identity. I am opposed to the racist idea that national identities are genetic. I see Jewish culture as entirely vulpine and predatory in its relation to the non-Jewish world, but for cultural and historical reasons, rather than genetic ones.
The best fraudsters lie to themselves. Jews have been lying to themselves for a long time. Obviously, as I point out, finance fraud has been the Jewish crime of choice for a long time and I can identify a Yiddish predatory economic culture associated with the arenda system Poland as far back as the 16th century, but there has been an evolution in the American Jewish community toward ever greater mendacity over the last 40 years, and having the resources of a state like Israel with very little financial transparency has created endless possibilities of fiduciary misbehavior.
BTW, without the core historical fraud of ethnic Ashkenazi ancestral connection to Palestinian and ancient Judeans or Galileans, I doubt that Zionists could have defrauded Americans of so much money.
Yes, certainly, the officially 'Jewish' Khazar culture revolved around slave trading, and indeed this is why to this day the word 'slave' (derived from 'Slav') means what it does. I am just saying that the ferocity, the wolfishness – and,, by God, today's Jewish soldiers LOOK wolfish, if you look at their faces – should not in my view be attributed to some set of genes, whether Khazaric or Israelitic.
I agree with your second point too – the MYTHOLOGY of being the 'chosen people' by descent, irrespective of conduct, which is precisely a mythology justifying religious racism, is what makes the Jewish myth not just appealing but ESSENTIAL to imperialist religious mythologies derived from it by 'replacement', like Christianity, and in theory, Islam. It would be hypocritical to deny this.
Rowan, how can you totally divorce Jewish mythic narrative from Jewish ethnicity? I don't see the point of your nit-picking JM's comments. I think JM provides regulars to this blog with in depth historical context we'd be hard put to find elsewhere. Certainly, he knows much more than Phil about such details. Please enlighten us.
RE: "Stimuli are Pavlovian.
Reasons are of thought.
Posted by: Richard Witty"
When the dog hears the bell, then salivates, then runs in the remembered direction, does anyone have a doubt why?
What's your parsing point, Witty? Do you doubt the I/P issue deeply resonates with every Arab and Persian? Do you doubt
if that issue was taken away, that issue of simple fairness, that
Arabs and Persians would be weakened among themselves in terms of other controversial agendas they may wish fulfilled?
Do you doubt that the I/P issue is a key flag moving righteous non-Arabs
on their wish list?
Recall the talmudic debate about saving a non-Jew in dire straits?
Only one reason was justified: if not to save the non-Jew might
result in bad PR for the Jews.
I'm not trying to diminish Joachim's abilities, they are indeed remarkable. I'm just thinking out loud, as we mostly seem to do.