I'm beginning to get it. Gaza is producing an explosion under the American skin. The MSM can't handle it, can't express it, except at the edges, but the American street is alarmed. And one of the crucial shifts that has taken place is that Jewish Criticism of Israel is now so commonplace that it is breaking open the bolted doorways of the discourse. The Jewish voices on the blogosphere, the leadership provided by J Street and Dan Fleshler and MJ Rosenberg and Adam Horowitz– it is saying to America, You need not hold your tongue any more, the monolith is broken! The seals are broken. You know I'm a cockeyed optimist, but I think this thing is huge.
This epiphany brought to you by Jules Rabin of Vermont, who wrote the following letters, the first to a friend, the second to a local newspaper, invoking the Holocaust. I'm sure Rabin is a ringer (has spoken out before). All the same… Rabin:
what fellow Jews have seen fit to inflict on Gaza. There have been
public protests in our area, connected with the recent attacks on
Gaza. I'm tacking on below a Comment I've submitted to our local
newspaper, where for the first time I've made a kind of claim that I've
heretofore considered taboo, that Gaza, locked down, under attack, and
starving is beginning to have a certain resemblance to the Warsaw
Ghetto.
GAZA ON MY MIND
When a certain Rabbi Perin said, in a funeral eulogy for an American-born
Israeli who had been beaten to death by a Palestinian mob, "A million Arabs are
not worth one Jewish fingernail," the world was shocked and the Israeli Prime
Minister himself denounced the statement. The murdered Israeli was Baruch
Goldstein, who on February 28, 1994, had stepped into a mosque carrying an
assault rifle, and killed 29 Palestinian men and boys before his gun jammed. He
was then beaten to death by surviving worshipers.
Now in Gaza, a more modest version of the stunning ratio suggested by Rabbi
Perin, the million and the one, is being enacted. The tally so far in the mutual
killing taking place in and around Gaza is 380 Palestinians dead and 6 Israelis
dead. The dead Palestinians include 5 sisters of one family, ages 4 to 17, and
two sisters of another family, ages 5 and 12.
The 6 Israelis were victims of the crude home-made rockets with notoriously
wild aim that this week have been fired every day from Gaza into nearby Israeli
communities: to teach Israel a lesson for its misdeeds. Such indiscriminate
attacks on civilian communities are prohibited by international law (Article 33,
Fourth Geneva Convention).
Israel's retaliatory bombing of Gaza, one of the most crowded places on
earth, has produced fatalities 65 times greater, including children and
non-combatants, and was likewise intended "to teach a lesson." Such bombing
attacks are also a violation of Article 33 of the Geneva Convention,
notwithstanding Israel's claim that it targets only "the bad guys."
When the Hamas government of Gaza declared on December 24 that it would
withdraw from the cease fire it had agreed to, it could cite two justifications.
The first was the continuation of Israel's iron blockade of already impoverished
Gaza, which deprived it of even the minimum of supplies necessary for health and
survival. Israel had, secondly, itself broken the mutual cease fire on November
4, fifty days before Hamas formally declared an end to its observation of it,
when Israeli troops broke into Gaza, killing six Palestinians and carting off
six others.
The continuing blockade of Gaza, which is itself a grave violation of the
rules of war concerning collective punishment, has had devastating consequences
for the 1 ½ million people who live there â most of them refugees from the '67
war and their descendants. The shortages of food, medical supplies, and fuel for
electricity (for, among other things, providing water and pumping away sewage),
has produced incalculable suffering. 75% of Gazans are currently malnourished.
The children of Gaza, who number 58% of the population, have been the greatest
sufferers under the blockade: 46% suffer from acute anemia, 45% have an iron
deficiency, and 18% have been stunted in their growth. .
Under the blockade, the people of Gaza were reduced to destitution. Under the
heavy bombardments of this week, terror from the sky has been added to the
months-long physical privation they have been enduring.
So will the people of Gaza and the Hamas government that they elected now
"learn the lesson" that Israel seeks to teach them?
So far, not. Neither side wants to understand the "lesson" the other side is
teaching.
Gaza, locked down, sealed in, half-starved, terrified, and overpowered as it
is now, is acquiring an eery resemblance to the Warsaw Ghetto of the 1940's: a
resemblance still faint, but developing.
Titus North, an American professor of political science, wrote just the other
day, in connection with the current bombing of Gaza, "A state founded by
Holocaust survivors should be a beacon of morality, not a black hole for
it."
The terrible loop that history has taken â descendants of the historic
victims of the Holocaust now wearing the jackboots of the dominant warrior â is
a painful thing to contemplate.
halleluyah…..im repulsed when i see what that shitty little country and its influence peddlers have done to my country.
lets get rid of the parasite.
let it find another host or let it fend on its own,
jewsagainstzionism.com (gee i wonder why)
Rabbi Baruch Kaplan
Todayâs wicked Zionists are just like their predecessors, who were responsible for causing terrible suffering in Palestine with their wars with the Arabs, may G-d have mercy. At that time in 1929, the Zionists had a slogan arguing that the Western Wall in Jerusalem was a Jewish ânational symbol.â Of course, the Arabs disagreed with this idea, considering that they had control of the location for over 1,100 years. However, the Zionist mobs were yelling that âThe Wall is ours!â Itâs hard to understand why they felt that way considering they have no connection to the Jewish holy places whatsoever. An argument erupted in the Jewish newspapers about establishing a permanent prayer area for Jews at the Wall. This provoked the Arabs, and the rabbi of Jerusalem at the time, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld begged them to stop and to be appreciative to the Arabs for allowing Jews to pray at the Wall for so many centuries undisturbed. However, the Zionists wanted a permanent setup under their control.
Check out Paul Craig Roberts's article on vdare.com today.He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan's first term.He has been a virulent critic of the Israel Lobby,the Bush administration as well as the MSM for years.
Gordon "pipsquek" Johndroe speaking for Bush live on C-SPAN now:
Israel will do whatever it takes, including sending boots in, as part of the package of Israel defending itself. Any actions Israel actions they take, including ground OPs, it needs to avoid civilian harm and harm to humanitarian aid. Israel has a right to defend itself from rocket attacks. The US wants to avoid a humanitarian crisis. Israel lets in
aid but HAMAS hoards that aid. We can't speak to the notion that aid
is not flowing in fast enough. HAMAS has not done anything for its own people. The US has given Pals 200 million in aid via UN, but
HAMAS is hoarding aid and medical supplies. I cannot speak to facts on the ground. (How does he knows that HAMAS is so hoarding then? Isn't that a fact on the ground?)
Re proportionality of Israel response: Israel is simply responding
to rocket attacks. Clearly Israel is trying to get HAMAS to stop
killing Israelis with rockets. I am not sure I can define proportionality except to say Israel has a right to defend itself.
Candi Rice on phones constantly for a week; no need to travel to
Middle East.
Is White house, Rice, keeping Obama's transition team up to date?
Rice talked to them once last week. They get paper briefs.
Is White House doing anything except getting Israel's assurances
it is minimizing civilian harm? I answered that a few days ago in the last press briefing.
Candi now on C-SPAN again. HAMAS has held Pals hostage. Has used GAZA as a launching pad for rockets. We are working towards a solution, a durable and sustainable cease fire. HAMAS
rejected Egyptian offer towards peace. The president has been in touch with the major Arab leaders of their states and with Israel.
'The terrible loop that history has taken â descendants of the historic victims of the Holocaust now wearing the jackboots of the dominant warrior â is a painful thing to contemplate.' — Jules Rabin
At first glance, this epiphany seems unbelievable to those who instinctively side with Israel. Yet investigations of abusive parents usually reveal that themselves were abused as children.
Perhaps this is the dark side of the Holocaust — not only did its victims endure great suffering. But also — in an awful, ironic paradox — they may have been inured to the suffering of others.
The cold language of Israeli ministers — their literal blindness to Gazan suffering, as they repeatedly deny that any humanitarian cris exists — certainly supports this diagnosis.
How can you treat a whole society for PTSD-induced violent tendencies? I sure wish I knew. But not rewarding them with official encouragement and three billion dollars a year would be a good start.
We're still paying a price for the punishment meted out to the Germans after WW1. All nations suffered in the depression of the early twenties, but none so bad as Germany, which on top of the humiliation of Versailles, saw prices rise by 486 million % in 1923, the year of the National Socialist's first failed putsch. Some of the tales of hardship from those times are quite shocking.
This grinding them into the ground sowed the hardness of heart necessary for Nazism to take off. The word 'resentment' doesn't carry the charge necessary to describe the mindset of many if not most young men in particular – they were eternally livid with rage and were determined to show the world that they were made of sterner stuff than their parents, who had shamed the Fatherland.
Then, when they took the reins, they scapegoated the Jews and took out their frustrations on them, while creating a barrel-chested mythology about themselves as superior beings. They came bit of a cropper, but not before inculcating in the minds of some of their victims an analogue of their ruthless tribal chauvinism. This played a central role in the establishment of Israel and continues to psychologically inform it's (mis)behaviour) today.
You wonder what monsters they are creating in Gaza and the West Bank. That will be history's next 'terrible loop' I suppose. Unless the US itself falls into the sort of financial abyss Germany did, which is decidedly possible. Would armies of unemployed young American men with chips on both shoulders behave any better than their predecessors? And who will be their scapegoat?