The belief that the US and Israel share common values seems to be unraveling in the wake of Avigdor Lieberman's success in the recent Israeli elections. Two days after former US ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer admitted it would be difficult for the US to support an Israeli government that included an openly racist party, the Forward reported:
Administration officials have so far avoided commenting on Lieberman’s electoral success and on his prospects of becoming a senior member in Israel’s next government. In a February 12 speech, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg dismissed the issue as “hypothetical.”
But former State Department official Jon Alterman believes that the impact of the Lieberman phenomena will be seen in the long run. “There is a fundamental assumption that Israelis are basically like Americans in their belief in democracy and in the rule of law,” said Alterman, who heads the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “When this assumption is undermined, it can hurt the sense of communality that binds the two nations.”
In related news, Lieberman has publicly supported Benjamin Netanyahu for Prime Minister, clearing the way for a far-right ruling coalition in Israel. Soon, the situation the Obama administration seems wary to take on may no longer be "hypothetical." (Adam Horowitz)
"Sense of communality"?
As an American I can't help but think that's just about the same feeling my dog is having before I pull the wood tick off him.
Ouch, Chuck. They don't like being compared to parasites. And if I try to misconstrue your metaphor, I can easily accuse you of blood libel, too:
Ticks consume blood, humans have blood, dogs get ticks, some humans eat dogs–oh my G-od you're saying that Jews eat Christian babies!
You're an online ghost of some wicked medieval European inquisitor out to exterminate the Jews!
Blood Libel! Blood Libel!
“When this assumption is undermined, it can hurt the sense of communality that binds the two nations.”>>>
That assumption was always wrong and just propaganda promoted by the zionist parasites.
I don't think it will be much longer before America coughs up Israel and get's it out of our system.
I seem to remember saying the "Pledge of Allegiance" every day in school. Of course if Israelis demand the same allegiance to their country it's racism.
"I seem to remember saying the "Pledge of Allegiance" every day in school. Of course if Israelis demand the same allegiance to their country it's racism."
Posted by: Julian | February 19, 2009 at 11:27 AM
——————————-
No American is forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance under pain of losing citizenship.
Do you advocate that?
Were you asked to pledge allegiance to the United States as an Aryan or Christian state, Julian? Would you have done so if asked?
Oh, FFS, the Israeli Supreme Court won't even let you take someone's social security benefits for involvement in terrorism, they had to rewrite the law and STILL pay the family of one suicide bomber death benefits for his act of terror. You can't take anyone's citizenship for actual involvement in anti-state terror or terror against other citizens. So now the Supreme Court is suddenly going to junk established case law and render Israeli Arabs stateless because of refusal to sign a little piece of paper?
Lieberman is trying to pull along the extreme right of his base without actually forcing a confrontation with the Supremes he can't win, to enhance his personal power.
I predict the Obama administration will do exactly *nothing* even if Netanyahu and Lieberman end up running the country. The Neocons have already been busy rehabilitating Lieberman's reputation and rationalizing his positions. And the left-liberal intelligentsia routinely recite the hasbara talking points that Israel's internal politics are none of our business, and that we shouldn't interfere in their democratic process. (Regime change and blackballing democratically elected groups like Hamas are only to be leveraged against Arab and Islamic countries, never Jewish ones. That's because Jews are "the chosen," say or infer the Christian Zionists and the left-liberal Judeophiles.)
And you all thought there was separation of synagogue and state in America. That's a good one!
I never saw a USA flag in a church when I was growing up. I was brought up as a Catholic. In my early twenties, I did see an Israeli flag in a number of temples. What's it like nowadays–any readers here in their early twenties? (I quit going to any house of worship long ago, I admit.)
You also saw an American flag in a number of temples. Did you conveniently forget or did the actual facts become unimportant?
Jewish American Zionists believe in separation of church and state, but they don't believe in separation of synagogue and state. Not in the US, and not in Israel.
That's because they're "the chosen," you see. And the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to them. It's all part of their supremacist ideology. And Christian Zionists and left-liberal Judeophiles believe in Jewish supremacism as well, which is why they continue to finance the explicitly “Jewish State" out of the pockets of American taxpayers, and refuse to budge no matter how many 9/11’s and Iraq wars it might bring on.
Our country's government has basically been taken over by a cult of supremacists, and they're holding every American hostage to their twisted beliefs of racial choseness, biblical deeds, Jews as some kind of sacrosanct "leavening," and all kinds of other bizarre superstitions. In fact, the contemporary American "elite" are so far out there in moonbeam land, you've got to wonder about their collective sanity. And it shows, given how the country has been governed for the last twenty years. These people are complete flakes.
Maybe it would be a useful reminder of the lyrics of the Israeli "National" Anthem HATIKVA ("Hope"):
As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,
With eyes turned toward the East, looking toward Zion,
Then our hope – the two-thousand-year-old hope – will not be lost:
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
Any surprise that Palestinian "citizens" of Israel — the descendants of people driven from their homes and lands, whose relatives live in refugee camps – won't sing it?
I wonder how American Zionists would feel if they had to salute a flag with a crucifix and sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" in school every day?
Or African-Americans, if our national anthem were "Dixie". . .
Do you think Jews will ever feel safe around Palestinians singing "Biladi?"…"my strong will and my inflaming rage, my volcanic revenge…my revenge."
"HaTikvah" is sweetness and light by comparison. I suppose "Im Nin 'Alu" would work, in both Arabic and Hebrew.
The Jewish anthem is, like the Jewish people, passive-aggressive. The Palestinian anthem has more bravado and machismo, but in the end they're both hostile to separation of religion and state. And that's fine, but don't try to pretend either should in any way be underwritten by the West, Eurosbra. If you want to send your earnings to underwrite Israel, why don't you do so? I bet most American Jewish Zionists will quickly lose interest in Zionist expansionist ambitions if they have to be paid for on their dime. Their principles seem to end at their pocket books, which is why they've set up such an elaborate lobby — so they can pass the buck onto the American taxpayer.
Most American Zionists contribute more money to Israel then they pay in taxes, most likely.
Eurosabra, are you playing dumb on purpose — or are you just that dumb, really?
No Jew is Palestine is obligated to sing Biladi or salute a flag with a crescent and stars. Neither is a European-American required to sing "Lift Every Voice" or "We Shall Overcome" — though many do, in recognition of the wrongs inflicted on African-Americans.
Christian and Muslim Palestinians are supposed to be loyal to a state that calls itself "Jewish," salute a flag with a Jewish symbol and sing a Jewish national anthem — or be considered traitors. A state, moreover, which deprived them of their land and homes, discriminates against them in a thousand ways and which threatens now to expel them, sometimes for the second or third time.
They are required to salute the flag and stand when the anthem is played. Just like in every other country. And if they don't, they are not arrested.
No, just threatened with violence and discipline in school.
For example:
http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3231561,00.html
So, Chris, you have no problem attending school with a crucifix on the wall? Singing Onward Christian Soldier?
I presume "Dixie" would pose no problem — kindred spirit.
They are required to salute the flag and stand when the anthem is played. Just like in every other country. And if they don't, they are not arrested.
Posted by: chris berel | February 19, 2009 at 05:32 PM
—–
No one is required in the US to salute the flag and stand when the anthem is played.
Of course they are. But no one is arrested if they don't.
So I assume everyone supporting this will have no problem with Hugo Chavez asking the same from his Jewish minority. I'm not certain that he threatens them with expulsion.
The Zionuts refuse to address the fact that Israel's "national" anthem is a very peculiar artifact, addressing the perspective of only part of the population. And the colonizers, at that.
Chris never spoke to the issue of his willingness to salute a cross on the flag and sing a Christian anthem in "his" country.
Maybe such a situation exists in some other countries. If so, it is a gross injustice, just as in Israel. I know I wouldn't accept that.
Gorenberg made a good point: this is xenophobia in reverse. Whereas in European countries and in the states, they want to prevent immigrants from "infiltrating" their country and taking away jobs and making it less white. Here, we have an immigrant who is using said tactics to deport a native population. In years past, colonisation treated them as subhumans so they can be exterminated or bred out by raping their women or houses into tiny specks of land and call it restitution.
I'm not certain that he threatens them with expulsion.
Come on, Joshua. Hugo Chavez would need several lifetime dictatorships to accomplish the kind of war-crimes that Zionists are so proud of. Venezuela would need to bribe U.S. congressmen, install full military conscription, and start bombing the shit out of its neighbors and stealing their land and water for the next century if it even wanted to hold a candle to the Jewish Nazi state.
"You also saw an American flag in a number of temples. Did you conveniently forget or did the actual facts become unimportant?"
That is true. But congregants were given to understand which was the important one and it wasn't the one with red and white stripes.
"No one is required in the US to salute the flag and stand when the anthem is played."
berel: "Of course they are. . . "
You haven't been to many games in Dodger Stadium recently, have you?
"Just like in every other country."
Man, what? Do you actually know any countries except the US and Israel? In European countries most people couldn't be arsed to pay any special respect to the flag even at a state ceremony. The concept of a civilian "saluting" anything is almost ridiculous.
"No American is forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance under pain of losing citizenship.
Do you advocate that?"
Yes. If you can't pledge allegiance to this wonderful country then leave.
I'll pledge allegiance to Usgov when it pledges allegiance to the people. Fascism's much trendier in Israel than in the U.S. these days, Julian. And Avigdor Lieberman is getting on in years, he won't last forever–maybe you can be the one to carry his legacy forward, until that fateful day when the Palestinian Question is finally solved?
@ chris berel
"You also saw an American flag in a number of temples. Did you conveniently forget or did the actual facts become unimportant"
I saw no flag in any church I attended growing up. Separation of religion and state? Ever hear of it?
Any way one looks at it, what the _______ is an Israeli flag doing in any house of worship in the USA?
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people. Compare Israel's, and the USA's. Quite a different concept of "its people." Israel's is ethno-religio-centric. The USA's is universal. All follows from that, and follow too where that leads, Americans.
re: ""You also saw an American flag in a number of temples."–chris berel
No. I didn't. You were not there.
Quit masturbating.
""No American is forced to say the Pledge of Allegiance under pain of losing citizenship.
Do you advocate that?"
Yes. If you can't pledge allegiance to this wonderful country then leave.
Posted by: Julian"
Yes, and let's make all citizens by birth in the USA also recite a loyalty oath, recorded and filed for
easy access by the public. Then we can demolish those who deem dual loyalty not a problem-like Witty. Those who honestly won't take the oath, can just ship off to Israel or elsewhere, as applicable.
Others may lie under oath, but the oath will be on record. We can then decide if it has been honored
in that the creed is in the deed(s).
Bill, you'd make a great nazi. Not that you aren't one already.
chris berel, you are a great zionazi. Keep up the good work! At least you agree with HItler, we can all see.
Your Israel is trying to pass Adolph's philosophy on, best it can. Thank you for your support.