In their refusal to see what the slaughter of hundreds of Arab civilians has revealed about the foreign country they love, Commentary's Noah Pollak and Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg have begun calling John Mearsheimer "Sheikh Hassan Mearsheimer." This kind of namecalling is deeply offensive and even disturbing. Both these writers have perches at (once) dignified publications, whose editors would surely have removed this type of schoolyard chanting in the days of print, thereby saving the writers from themselves. I've never seen Walt or Mearsheimer, who are both fine and courageous men with considerable decorum, treat any of their adversaries with anything like this kind of abuse.
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I think it shows that Goldberg is becoming unhinged that he is no longer one of the few trusted sages who explained to Americans what they must think of Israel/Palestine, that there are other voices breaking through, other opinions being formed that go directly against him. Ad hominem attacks are the refuge of scoundrels.
These ad hominum attacks against critics of Israel are becoming more prevalent. My wife, who is Jewish, spoke at a public event last week supporting the cease fire in Gaza. She was called a self hating Jew by the pro IDF forces there. This is not something that has ever happened before. I think that the last month has resulted in some kind of cognitive dissonance by many pro Israili Jews in this country. The horrors of the Gaza assault has resulted in them assuming fanatical positions. It does not surprise me to see that Jeffrey Goldberg has undergone a similar transition. I would hope that his editors would recognize his psychosis and get him the help he needs. At the very least, banish him from publishing any more of this dreck.
Mearsheimer is getting under Goldberg's skin. I bet he played a big part in not having Mearsheimer's and Walt's essay not published in The Atlantic. The banning of the essay eventually failed as their ideas was published in book form. And now Mearsheimer has his own blog.
That is the usual sequence of events. First try to silence an Israeli critic. When that fails attack by name calling. Predictable.
Kinda reminds me of the deep South in the 1960's, when people called others a "negro lover" or "a white nigger".
Splendid, we are back to that mentality in this country then.
Carry on.
Actually…let them keep it up. Let everyone see what they are.
The more they do it, the more the public will become disgusted, the more disgusted the public becomes they more they will protest our very zionist congress and media, the more they notice our Israeli occupied congress, the more outrage and out cry against Israel and them.
I think we should toss some more fuel on the flames…get a real bonfire going. The uber zios want a war with Americans, we should give them one.
Jeffrey Goldberg has, I seem to recall, been widely ridiculed and detested throughout his 'career'. However, I really don't waste time on these people.
Actually…let them keep it up. Let everyone see what they are.
The more they do it, the more the public will become disgusted, the more disgusted the public becomes they more they will protest our very zionist congress and media, the more they notice our Israeli occupied congress, the more outrage and out cry against Israel and them.
I think we should toss some more fuel on the flames…get a real bonfire going. The uber zios want a war with Americans, we should give them one.
I tend to agree. It's amazing all the racist stuff I've seen just in the last few hours since this site has become a victim of Zionist trolls. And they have the audacity to call us racists ("anti-semites").
Ad hominem attacks are the last refuge of the advocate who cannot make arguments based on fact or law or principle.
Phil commented recently that those who oppose Israel's aggression and who object to AIPAC's tactics need a "label" to hurl back, against those who smear good people as anti-Semites, and one that is equally effective. I'm not sure being able to give tit for tat in a name-calling contest will lead anywhere, but I do believe Neoconservativism deserves to be thoroughly discredited to the point that those associated with it are not deemed credible enough to be listened to in educated discourse. Neocons have been dead wrong on any number of key strategic points, they have promoted illegal torture and domestic wiretapping in pursuit of wild-assed fearmongering, pushing for war after war of choice and aggression that fails to achieve their goals, but instead aggravates the very conditions and animosities with which they are concerned. I stopped reading Friedman when he said we had to go into Iraq because we just needed to hit somebody in the face. This is not a credible position or emotion on which to base learned commentary. I know a lot of Jews, but only recently did I meet my first Neocon. There aren't that many of them. Their politics, their strategy, their blunders, their rewriting of history, their refusal to learn, all should be slammed for the total botch they are, but other than calling them Neocons, I don't think much of namecalling as a tactic.
Anyone interested in Chomsky's latest on I-P and Obama?
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20364
I have stopped regularly reading or commenting in contentions. These people are apologists for criminals.
Someone mentioned increased attention this blog has received recently from ultra zionist. I guess Joshua and Suzanne are part of that increased traffic. Their comments attracted my attention for the vitriol. I really think that these are symptoms of people assuming extreme defensive postures. It is something I have noticed in my own town — people who seemed generally progressive with strong attractions to Israel, but today come across as Israeli fanatics close to advocating the transfer option. I said above, this is most easily explained in the psychological term of cognitive disonance — poor souls watching over the last month as their belief in the goodness of Israel goes up in smoke and reacting with an extreme version of a belief in the goodness of Israel. I wonder how poor Witty responds to this assault on his view of the world.
Folks, I do believe that the Sixty Minutes story is going to have some major repercussions.
This kind of name-calling is only going to make it morally OK to start anti Jewish name calling. Zionists are throwing every card they have had on the table.
The hypersensitivity around anything Jewish is now being sacrificed for a jab at a political opponent. Since the Word War 2, jews have enjoyed a very safe and secure zone when it comes to all kinds of ethnic and political jokes. This zone is now being taken away from them, thanks to people like Goldberg
The funny part is, with defenders of Israel, one does not need to 'Judeofy' the names to smear them, since most of them are already Jewish. As you see the problem people like Goldberg is that a growing number of non Muslims are now speaking the truth.
The real offense in Goldberg's name calling is for the pro Israeli Muslims whose names are Hassan or their names include Sheikh. This kind of name calling goes to show the deep rooted dislike of Muslims among Zionists.
Unfortunate. It's sad and troubling.
They are getting nasty because they are desperate. They know very well this is a battle for hearts and minds, especially Americans since we are the primary underwriters of their colonial enterprise, and that they are losing. The number of newly awakened may be small, but are a steady trickle that is all one way. How many people who wise up about Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonization are going to suddenly suffer amnesia and forget it all and go back to the way they thought before?
I liken it to a coffee cup with a tiny crack in the bottom. The fluid may be lost at a very small rate, but the cup will eventually empty, unless the crack is fixed. Olmert, Barack, and Livni have ensured that it cannot.
Big deal, so the world wants me dead again. WTF. It's not like the al-Aksa Martyr's Brigades, Hamas, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad have succeeded yet.
Name calling is nothing. Ask Irv Rubin or Alex Odeh how they feel about the name-calling.
The "Hassan Mearsheimer" reference is a direct parallel to Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah.
Doppler.
I agree with you.
Eurosabra.
Big deal, so the world wants me dead again.
Oh, please. You're not that important. No one is crying for the death of Jews — and dont cite Ahmedinejad. That false translation was debunked two years ago.
http://www.imagevat.com/image/79.jpeg
Nothing is more antisemitic than Zionism.
Eurosabra wrote:
"Name calling is nothing."
Oh, c'mon Euro. If in response to the term "anti-semitic"—surely the implication of Mearsheimer being called this name by Pollak and Goldberg—people routinely took up calling jews or even Israelis "parasites" and the phrase caught on, I don't think you'd consider that nothing.
So why is calling Mearsheimer an anti-semite not an equal step in the "something" direction?
Indeed it's even crazier given that it is a guy like Mearsheimer. The man's just obviously not any kind of polemicist or etc. Not only your typical academic, but in fact like Walt a philo-semite to boot. And yet to consider him an anti-semite just because he's primarily concerned with America's foreign policy interests and you think that his thinking hurts Israel … yeesh, what a standard. Good luck keeping a monopoly on the verbal venom with that.
Must everything always descend to the lowest possible level?
"I've never seen Walt or Mearsheimer, who are both fine and courageous men with considerable decorum, treat any of their adversaries with anything like this kind of abuse."
I don't know what degree you are comparing. I've seen clips of Mearsheimer ripping into those that offer Q & A that bear signficantly different interpretations than his own.
Big deal, so the world wants me dead again. WTF.
This is actually the pseudo-'existential' bedrock of the current phase of zionism, and I interpret it something like this:
You never really wanted to stop Hitler, though you were forced to eventually, not to save Jews, but to save your investments in Europe and Asia. So, if we choose to succeed where Hitler failed, you have no moral grounds for stopping, us either, and if you try any harder or earlier than you tried with Hitler, it is because you just plain hate Jews.
The determination on the part of the current zionist leadership to actually repeat the pattern and rhythm of Hitler's exploits, though in another region, is unmistakable. South Lebanon, or failing that, Gaza, is supposed to be "their Sudetenland", the place where they prove the pusillanimity of the so-called 'Great Powers'. It's obvious once you discard your pavlovian conditioned reflexes, dinned in by so many movies, about how 'Jews' and 'Nazis' are antithetical and self-explanatory as 'good' and 'evil'.
Witty, if you don't know what degree is being compared, you really need to listen to your childhood pal, Phil–he can remind you why he set up this samizdat blog in the first place. It also would help if you would react here by considering the forest, instead of focusing on a few dead branches, breaking them off, piling them up, and lighting your match. While you stare proudly at what you accomplished, the whole green forest is smoking, and soon it will be ablaze above your head.
At least the settler woman looking down on smoking Gaza admitted she was "a little bit fascist."
"Big deal, so the world wants me dead again."
See, Roy, what if you are dealing with a kind of mind which only accepts two states: supremacy or madness? What's the use of trying not to make them crazy when there is no other option? Again I say, those who believe there is an easy path for americans out of the zionist armlock are not paying attention to history. You should be prepared to lose the arm.
Excellent observation Phil, this is exactly, what was so disturbing during the last 8 years. The "heart of the beast" seems to be the "Arab mind".
Ask Daniel Kliman, MD about name-calling. Mysterious deaths of American Zionists abound, one passed away under suspicious circumstances (heart attack?) last year. And Irv Rubin.
It's not paranoia when they really ARE out to get you.
That would be the Irv Rubin who tried to kill U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa with a bomb, wouldn't it?
Oh Euro, I had not heard of the Kliman or Rubin things (and indeed thanks for noting same, with both admittedly being interesting), but both are kind of weak tea in terms of justifying or even just trying to explain extremist statements such as slandering Mearsheimer, no?
I understand that in extreme times people lose control of their tongues, but do you really think it was the Kliman or Rubin or any other kind of such thing that drove Pollak and/or Goldberg to say what they did?
C'mon again.
(As to those two cases in particular though while via my reading I suspect that this Rubin guy really did commit suicide I gotta admit that Kliman business smells funny. People don't realize the technology now that goes into making elevators safe, and the inspections that they have to undergo and etc. Very weird at the very least. Thanks again for noting it.)
The Kliman incident is a non-story. Weird accidents happen all the time. Some guy was trapped in an elevator in NYC for 48 hours. Another guy was decapitated by an elevator in Texas. Neither was Zionist.
Fanatical people do fanatical things; I doubt Kliman was able to compartmentalize enough to realize that his ultra-aggressive approach to his Zionist problems wasn't going to work on elevator problems. ("Die, Hamasevator, die!")
All I've seen so far is conspiracy theories. Wake me up when there's evidence of, well, anything.
I'm not interested in slander. I'm interested in Last Man Standing.
Thing is, I've looked into the eyes of a suicide bomber and survived three times.
It's quaint that people are still trying to discredit Mearsheimer when Zionists wind up with suspicious falls and heart attacks all the time.
But as Solzhenitsyn said about Czarism, Zionism is also fitful and weak in its defense.
"I've looked into the eyes of a suicide bomber and survived three times."
Powerful binoculars, those. With instant replay technology included.
"Die, Hamasevator, die!"
Theo, do you have the least idea how many people die because of laughter-induced cardiac arrest? Don't do that again without warning.
Kliman was also "able to compartmentalize enough" money in his pocket as to give credence to other kind of conspiracy theory for his demise.
No, anon. From across a room. And those young men taught me much about what some Palestinians desire in life…death.
And they were outsiders in Haifa, and Jerusalem, when they did it, and they killed Palestinians as well.
An undistinguished death drive makes one an enemy of humanity.
Zionism at least has some capacity for self-reflection and restraint. Whither al-Moqawwama?
Goldberg really does show his true colors with this type of racist language. It is ashame that none of the publications that publish his writing disclose his involvement in the Israeli military: link to alisonweir.org
When you can't argue the facts, attack the man.
~
Sorry, Eurosabra, I really get mixed vibes from you, Since you started posting comments on this blog, I never doubted your sincerity, just your conclusions. I am just an average goy American What you say leaves me unconvinced. But you don't have to pay attention to me–the USA plutocracy governs, and all in Likkud Israeli's favor.
I think Euro's saying that they became suicide bombers subsequently to seeing him from across the room, and maybe hearing him from across the room too, it might have that effect, who knows.