Leila Abu-Saba writes:
The post on this site yesterday that mentioned the destruction of the Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al Hilweh in Lebanon in 1982 hit me personally. That camp is my turf, it is my ancestral soil, it haunts my dreams. I lived there as a baby when it was still a middle class suburb, I watched the Israelis bomb it in 1974. In 1985 militants from Ain al Hilweh sacked my village and killed my grandmother. I have blood kin inside the camp: stateless children of a Lebanese cousin who married a Palestinian.
Ain al Hilweh lies west of my village, Mieh-Mieh, a Lebanese Christian enclave atop a steep hill. (You can find it here on the Wikimapia site; roll cursor to upper left.) There is also a famous refugee camp in Mieh-Mieh, but the two halves of the village are completely cut off from each other by earth berms and soldiers. Ain al Hilweh and Mieh-Mieh are now suburbs of Sidon, a port city thirty miles south of Beirut. My grandparents owned property in Ain al Hilweh in 1948 which they farmed – it was rich orchard soil. The story is in a novel I'm writing and I've written about it several times, including a piece for the Homelands Anthology (Seal Press, 2007).
In the Nakba of 1948 when the Palestinians fled to Lebanon, many settled on the outskirts of Sidon. The Lebanese government approached my grandfather and other villagers who owned property in Ain al Hilweh, asking them if the refugees could stay on the land “for two weeks.” When it looked like the displacement would last longer, the United Nations began paying us rent of thirty Lebanese pounds per year; in the 1970s this was maybe $10, a laughable sum even then. My uncle started a lawsuit in the early 1970s that got held up during the civil war and has never been resolved. He is now 70 and still agitating to get compensation. My mother, brother and I inherited some of that land when my father died. It would be worth about $400,000 US. I doubt I’ll ever see the money though. First somebody would have to answer the question of the refugees.
My uncles and father used to take me to Ain al Hilweh to visit people we knew, or just to look at our property which by then had become an urban slum. The buildings were all illegal but there was nothing we could do. Today our few remaining Palestinian friends all live in the Mieh-Mieh camp because Ain al Hilweh is too dangerous. Yet in 1970 when I was eight I went to school at the front gate of the camp for a semester, at the American missionary school for girls. This was a Protestant prep school founded by rich Philadelphia Presbyterians in the 19th century. I used to walk to Ain al Hilweh alone every day. No kid from our village would do that now but we still drive past it on the way up the hill to our neighborhood.
I was raised in the United States and my mother is American. My story is similar to Obama's, except my dad stayed with my mom, and we returned to Lebanon for summer vacations until the civil war. One morning in July 1974, when I was 12 years old, I watched three Israeli fighter jets bomb Ain al-Hilweh. I could see what was happening from my uncle's balcony, and later went up to the roof with my cousin to watch. Only a handful of people died in that particular bombing; it traumatized me nonetheless.
When I returned to the States to my friends in Illinois, nice kids from Reform Jewish professional families, I tried to talk about what I had seen. Every kid I knew repeated what their parents had told them: "terrorists hide in the skirts of their women." It didn't matter what I had seen. They were all sure that if Israel bombed that refugee camp, then those people deserved it. However years later some of my friends from that time changed their reflexive support for Israel, partly because of knowing me in childhood.
The attack on Ain al Hilweh during the Israeli invasion of 1982 affected me deeply. In that first week of bombing Israel killed more than a thousand souls in Ain al Hilweh. Read Robert Fisk on what the IDF did. Young Palestinians like Saifedean al Ammous have no idea how bad 1982 was. He thinks Gaza is worse. The attacks on ambulances, the mass bombings, phosphorous, starvation, roundups, mass executions: we saw it all during that invasion.
I lived in New York then and spent the summer of 1982 horrified, depressed, reading news reports of unbelievable violence. I was surrounded by people who thought the invasion was a great idea, although I did have some friends on the Lower East Side who understood.
Americans wonder why “they” hate us so much. Juan Cole theorized that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon 1982 is what spurred Osama Ben Laden to attack America in 2001. I think that’s possible. Ain el Hilweh 1982 makes Gaza 2006 look like a soccer scrimmage. Americans are so insulated, so cut off from understanding the depth of the horrors perpetrated with our assent that they really don’t get it, still. People’s eyes glaze over if you bring it up. When I talk about it to people who aren't already informed, they tell me I am just “too angry” and should “let go and move on.” I have moved on. But the killing and destruction keep happening.
When you terrorize people without utterly exterminating them, they don't become cowed, they just rise up another day. Israel will pay the price. America has. My family has. I fear we will all live to suffer from this violence.
When I talk about it to people who aren't already informed, they tell me I am just “too angry” and should “let go and move on.”
Right. You're supposed to move on, but the Holocaust? Never.
Great account, Leila.
Unfortunately, you are only describing what Israel has done.
The description of the cycle is incomplete.
"When you terrorize people without utterly exterminating them, they don't become cowed, they just rise up another day."
Hopefully the message of that is not to exterminate, but to treat others kindly.
Jews, Israelis are also still waiting for kindness, acceptance, even willingness to allow them equal due process before the law, even in Lebanon, where there was a prior rich Jewish community that was expelled through some combination of invitation to Israel and oppression.
Exactly, Leila and MrW: "Never forget!" for Israel-Firsters, but "Get over it!" for anyone else.
Reminds me of studying British film in the 70s, when Brits in the industry agreed that nostalgia for WWII dominated the art. WWII seemed a vestige of lost "greatness," at a time when the Empire was gone and and few had yet learned to rejoice.
And any U.S. citizen who gives such callow advice as your friends gave to you, Leila, is a bleeding hypocrite. We allowed Bush-co to wreak bloody vengeance in our name: in Iraq as a whole, Falujah after the contractors were killed, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Everyone who cares about this blog tried to stop the revenge, but our country still failed. And how many politicians even remembered the charitable willlingness of the Vietnamese not to retaliate for the infinite damage the U.S. did to it? We have a lot of talking to do to help our country act more benevolently.
And check out the ghastly news about Israel's latest iniquity:
http://firedoglake.com/2009/02/03/gaza-update-israel-blocks-provocative-shipment-to-gaza/#more-36766
Gaza Update: Israel Blocks “Provocative” Shipment to Gaza
By: Siun Tuesday February 3, 2009 7:00
Sometimes a little story just sums up so much. Today I read something in the Jerusalem Post that says just about everything there is to say about the continuing Israeli blockade of Gaza.
The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories slammed UNRWA on Monday and accused the United Nations organization of creating a provocation at the Kerem Shalom crossing by bringing trucks to it carrying supplies that had not been approved by Israel for entry into the Gaza Strip.
And what were those “provocative” supplies?
Paper and plastic bags.
It seems UNRWA had asked permission to include them in the shipment of aid to Gaza but Israel had not approved them.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said the organization's schools in Gaza, which opened last week, only had 60 percent of the needed textbooks and that the paper was needed to fill the gap.
"We are running schools for 200,000 kids in Gaza and we have said for weeks that we would need to get it in…," Gunness said.
The need for plastic bags is explained in the latest Field Update from the UN’s humanitarian coordinator:
For example, on 30 January, UNRWA was not allowed to bring in the plastic bags that it uses to distribute supplies. With some 20,000 food parcels distributed daily, these bags are a vital component of UNRWA’s assistance.'
Nice personal note. Israel is an Anglo-Saxon tragedy. Israel is created out of too much Shakespeare. From the day the British Army invaded Palestine in 1917 to now, All of these crimes, all of these losses, sit heavily on the shoulders of the Anglo-Saxon civilization. Beginning with UK and, since the world war 2, USA.
We will not forgive and we will not forget, And one day justice will be served. Hopefully in symbolic recognition of the genocide and in monetary compensation, trillions of it.
Leila, good to see you over here! Thank you for writing this, and sending it.
Mohammed, there are continuing links between Israel's hard-liners on the one hand, and an important part of the British ruling class – this is why the chief rabbi of the United Synagogues is referred to as 'chief rabbi of the British Empire', and is always a high grade Freemason – but there is nothing especially 'anglo-saxon' about of them, in my experience.
Mohammad
Let us not forget the 30-40 years of settlement, land displacement, and conflict that occurred from 1880 to the end of WWI.
Ein el-Helwa is important to Leila because it is what Leila remembers in Sidon, and because it was done by Israel. The far greater slaughter of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians in Sabra, Chatila ('82) and Sabra, Chatila, and Borj al-Barajneh by Lebanese from Amal in '85 is forgotten in the false amnesty of Ta'if and Arab brotherhood, kiss the hand you dare not bite.
My greatest fear is that someday Israel will become an "Arab" power, and end the conflict by treating Arabs as their own people do. While an unpleasant national security state, Israel has still never committed genocide on the scale of Saddam's Iraq in Kurdistan or Nasser's UAR in Yemen. I fear that the Ashkenazi Westernization of Israel is actually the last restraint on the "big men". This may be a bit Occidentalist, but I am, after all, an Oriental.
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/02/a-minority-repo.php
Khaled Abu Toameh is not your typical Palestinian journalist. You must read him and hear what he has to say. And then Fisk him of course.
'Waltz in Denial'– Blankfort
———-
Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering.
"Most of the nation retains a simplistic collective memory of the conflict, a black-and-white memory that portrays us in a very positive light and the Arabs in a very negative one,"
Jews, Israelis are also still waiting for kindness, acceptance …
This illustrates the passive-aggressive personality structure of the 'Jewish Soul'.
A cursory glance at today's eng-lang Isra-rags indicates threats of physical attack or summary diplomatic demarche on all of Israel's neighbours : Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Most of these threats and demands come from Barak.
I suppose we often forget the megalomania induced simply by the pseudo-biblical names they all gave themselves. Barak, as in arabic, means, 'lightning' – not ideal for this portly little man, with his potato face and snub nose, but doubtless it contributes to the general atmosphere of hype and phony heroism.
"Jews, Israelis are also still waiting for kindness, acceptance, even willingness to allow them equal due process before the law…"
Oh, puleeeeeeeeeze!
Yet no Israeli has been officially amnestied, as all Lebanese have.
In fact, Sharon is the only person who has ever been found responsible, even indirectly, for Sabra and Chatila.
Kiss the hand you dare not bite. {[Smooch}}.
Eurosabra wrote:
"I fear that the Ashkenazi Westernization of Israel is actually the last restraint on the 'big men.'"
Hi Euro. Very interesting comment; could you explain it further?
Wonder also what you make of some of the recent stories in Haaretz at least about the chief rabbi of the army or chief rabbis or etc. having been found telling the IDF soldiers going into Gaza to have no mercy and etc.?
(With a more unified—if also more clearly opinionated story about same appearing in The National here: link to thenational.ae
Is this the kind of non-Ashkenazi influence creeping in that you are talking about? Is a very interesting issue you bring up that I'm utterly ignorant about and would appreciate you expanding on. I think I know a tad about the difference between between Ashkenazi and Sephardic, but it is only a tad so if you'd care to enlighten me I'd appreciate it, especially about this … moral outlook issue you raise.
Nothing makes it clear how much racist Zionist Jews deserve hatred and scorn than the comments of Richard Witty and Eurosabra.
Such vile Jewish hypocritical pieces of shit always demand that non-Jews acknowledge and show remorse for the (anti-Jewish) crimes that arise from non-Jewish politics, but such Jewish garbage invariably neither acknowledge nor show remorse for the crimes that harm non-Jews and that arise from Jewish politics.
Starting between 1840 and 1850 an increasing number of Russian ethnic Ashkenazim began undertaking sabotage, murderous radical violence, and targeted assassinations.
Since the 1850s relatively and absolutely ethnic Ashkenazim probably count as the most murderous and genocidal population on the planet.
Summary: Holocaust and Ashkenazi Genocidalism
Because it is important in the aftermath of the Israeli slaughter of Gazan civilians to understand how much far too many ethnic Ashkenazim have participated in mass murder, ethnic cleansing and genocide since the 1850s, I have put together this summary blog entry.
The Holocaust was for the most part both
Poles had strong memories of the Jewish Bolshevik commanded Soviet army that attempted to overrun Poland and that was defeated by Pilsudski in the battle called the Miracle of Warsaw.
The Holoexaleipsis of which the Nakba is only a part is much more correctly described as the archetypal genocide than is the Holocaust.
[For a list of blog entries on the Holocaust and ethnic Ashkenazi genocidalism, click .]
It is worthwhile to note that the other Jewish population of historic Poland — the Jewish Tatars — had cordial relations with ethnic Ashkenazim until the 19th century when they became just as pissed off as anyone else.
Despite Eurosabra's ridiculous and racist belief about Western or Occidental moderation, ethnic Ashkenazim brought with them from Europe the murderous genocidal violence in which Israeli Zionists so casually engage.
Mohammad, you might find Judonia Rising: The Israel Lobby and American Society, Part II: Accidental Empire or The Genesis, Development and Future of the Lobby — in particular the following two sections
I think of Part 2 as “The History of Israel without the Distraction of Israeli History.”
Increasingly nervous economic Jew Robert Reich writes – with me filling in what he is really thinking when he speaks of "populism"…
Typical [non-Jewish] Americans are hurting very badly right now. They resent [the Jewish] people who appear to be living high off a [Jew-corrupted] system dominated by [Jewish] insiders with the right [Jewish] connections. They [non-Jews] have become increasingly suspicious of the [Jewish] conflicts of interest, cozy [Jewish] relationships, and [Jewish] payoffs that seem to pervade not only official [Jewish] Washington but our biggest [Jewish] banks and [Jewish] corporations. In short, many [non-Jewish] Americans who have worked hard, saved as much as they can, bought a home, obeyed the law, and paid every cent of taxes that were due [to the Jewish-dominated IRS and FED] are beginning to feel like chumps. Their jobs are disappearing, their savings are disappearing, their homes are worth far less than they thought they were, their [Jewish levied] tax bills are as high as ever if not higher.
Meanwhile, [the Jewish] people at the top seem to be living far different lives in a different [Jewish only] universe. They’re the [Jewish] executives and [Jewish] traders on Wall Street who have lived like [Jewish] kings for years off a [Jewish] bubble of their own [Jewish] making while ripping off small [non-Jewish] investors, the [Jewish] financial louts who are now taking hundreds of billions of taxpayer [i.e., non-Jewish] bailout money while awarding themselves huge [Jewish-only] bonuses and throwing lavish [Jewish only] parties, the corporate [Jewish] CEOs who are earning seven figures while laying off thousands of [non-Jewish] workers, the [Jewish] billionaire hedge-fund and [Jewish] private-equity managers who are paying a marginal tax rate of 15 percent on what they say are capital gains while [non-Jewish] people who earn a fraction of that are paying a higher rate, and, not the least, the [Jewish] Washington insiders who have served on the Hill or in an administration and then gone on to pocket millions as [Jewish] lobbyists for the same [Jewish] companies they once regulated or subsidized. To the [non-Jewish] American who’s outside the [Jewish] power centers—the places of [Jewish] entitlement and I’ll-scratch-your-[Jewish]-back-while-you-scratch-mine [Jewish] deal making—the entire [Jewish] system seems rotten.
- link to robertreich.blogspot.com
People deserve peace.
Jews deserve peace. Palestinians deserve peace. Lebanese deserve peace.
Each have experienced less than peace at the hands of each of the others.
How will that change? Only Israel can effect any change?
How idiotic a statement is that?
Where is the reluctance to war (a verb)?
Until Jews like Witty face up to the mayhem and mass murder for which Jews have been responsible in the Russian Empire/Soviet Union and the ME, they are simply contemptible scum.
If they don't want to be hated, they need to stop being scum by returning the country they stole and by restoring the residence rights of which they deprived Palestinians.
In the conflict over Palestine, Jews are completely guilty while Palestinians are just another set of victims of Jewish hunger for power and status.
"Meanwhile, [the Jewish] people at the top seem to be living far different lives in a different [Jewish only] universe. They’re the [Jewish] executives and [Jewish] traders on Wall Street who have lived like [Jewish] kings for years off a [Jewish] bubble of their own [Jewish] making while ripping off small [non-Jewish] investors, the [Jewish] financial louts who are now taking hundreds of billions of taxpayer [i.e., non-Jewish] bailout money"
Looks like the Jews outsmarted you and took all your money. Maybe you should convert and get on the gravy train.
Your hatred is really funny. No subtlety, just out right hatred.
You Jewish racists really don't get it. It's not that Jews are smarter. I think Madoff showed the opposite. It's that they cheat.
My blog entry Corrupt Jewish Social Networking Rules! discusses the problem of Jewish tribal cheating in the context of Zionism, but corrupt Jewish social networking is a much more general phenomenon.
It is funny, but I first ran into the issue when I was studying wholesale meat industry in Saxony in 19th century Germany.
Why did Saxon butchers become a center of anti-Semitic agitation in the 19th century?
A small group of Jewish meat dealers engaged in middle market restraint of trade and ruined practically all the non-Jewish retailers.
The German Geldjuden worked with the German aristocracy to make sure that this sort of collusion and discrimination was not punished or even discouraged in any way.
Needless to say, Saxony, which actually had relatively few Jews, became the center of anti-Semitic agitation, which also had a definite anti-aristocratic character.
Why did the aristocrats and German government side with the Jews even as they were effectively raping a class of non-Jews?
Because the German government needed their skills for the economic development of Germany, and there was no class of non-Jews that could step into the same economic roles.
Jews no longer have a unique skill set that wins them protectors.
Yet instead of cutting down on the corruption, I have the impression that it has increased as Jews have begun to perceive their special status as threatened.
At this point corrupt Jewish social networking has done so much damage to the US and world economy that the time for the reckoning and massive clawback of $4-6 trillion dollars is long overdue.
Nice to see Joachim descend into full-blown whining! The crank academic facade disappeared so smoothly!
sorry leila, but once Palis start shitting on your land you won't
Want it back!
Lebanon is not a great model for relations with Palestinians. Aside from the civil wars with the PLO, and the various militias, Palestinians that are born in Lebanon STILL are not citizens of Lebanon, with no vote.
A child of an illegal resident, born in the United States IS as citizen of the United States. Its a stark contrast.
I am curious how summarizing analysis of the origins of the modern Saxon anti-Semitic movement as I found it described in at least 2 books and several articles is somehow crank academics and wholesale whining.
I believe that Reinharz, Volkov, and Stern have all discussed Jews and questionable (really unethical) business practices in the German meat industry.
Harris has discussed the effort of anti-Semitic leaders to explain their position to the the German aristocracy.
Obviously the literature of Jewish studies (as distorted as it often is) differs tremendously from the pop history of Jews.
While racist Jews like Andre Baz insist that non-Jews take a critical view of non-Jewish history and acknowledge historical mistreatment of Jews, racist Jews typically exempt themselves from critical analysis of Jewish history or even contemporary Jewish behavior.
The reaction of petty Jewish racists invariably consists as usual of name calling and slurs, for as the beneficiaries of corrupt Jewish networking in academics and with license to cheat they have never had to engage in real scholarship, can't do it themselves, and wouldn't know it when they see it.
Nice whine you've got, Joachim. Like some cheese to go with it?
Couldn't help myself, Joachim's constant droning whine is too easy a set up.
Baz appears to request that all take a critical view of history. Joachim knows that his background suffers and as a racist, he can't allow that to happen.
Racist Jewish garbage Witty condemns Lebanon for not helping racist Jewish Zionists with their program of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
If Witty were a decent human being, which he is not, he would demand that Jewish Zionist invaders repatriate the native population and return everything the Zionists stole.
Witty and his ilk constitute some of the most detestable human detritus, feces and offal on the planet.
"The post on this site yesterday that mentioned the destruction of the Palestinian refugee camp at Ain al Hilweh in Lebanon in 1982 hit me personally."
Ummm… last I checked (down there just a few weeks ago), Ain el-Hiwleh was still there with 40k+ people inside. You're talking about the Sabra and Chatilla camps, perhaps? — which are also still there, much closer to Beirut than Saida, but were in fact ravaged in '82 and the subject of Waltz with Bachir (and i'm guessing the blog post in question). Israel, in fact, never really breached Ain el-Hilweh the way they did the camps around Beirut.
I would assume the refugee camps have all suffered damage and have all been rebuilt.
It is interesting to note how quickly Joachim has descended from whining to racist name calling. Interesting how quickly racist brutes return to form.
Berel still does not address the history of Jewish crimes in E.Europe and the ME, and BTW what is my racism? Is the desire to discuss Jewish criminality racist according to Berel? Are Jews so superior to the rest of us that they commit no crimes?
As far as I can tell in this forum Berel, Baz, Witty, Suzanne, and Julian are the only true racists because they believe that Jews of all people do not commit crimes that we can address in public discussion.
It seems like a racist belief in Jewish superiority to non-Jews.
So tell me Berel? Is it possible that Jew Communist or Jewish Zionist groups might have wronged Poles, Ukrainians, Palestinians and other peoples?
Martillo is just cranky because the Roxbury Mosque is under FBI surveillance.
Leila, thank you for sharing your experience.
Anyone desiring to know why anti-semitism lingers on over the centuries as something more than a phenomena simply due to
the natural irrationality of non-jews should pay attention to
Joachim Martillo.
Reich's jitters regarding populism is well founded.
Israel's concern over its PR image, likewise.
In the eternal war between the haves and have-nots conflicting narratives of oppression need increasing sunshine.
Phil's and Joachim's, Leila's blogs are flashlights in the darkness
caused by the Establishment's wool pulled over the eyes of the masses.
To the extent the hasbara agents' comments here are not
simply resorts to personal name-calling, they merely echo the
current Establishment's configuration. You can recognize hasbara
comments by asking yourself, "What information is posited here
that you couldn't get from any governmental official or influential think thank?"
"Nothing makes it clear how much racist Zionist Jews deserve hatred and scorn than the comments of Richard Witty and Eurosabra. Such vile Jewish hypocritical pieces of shit…."
No, but nothing makes it clearer than this statement how abstract ideas and theories and beliefs can unhinge the human mind into becoming a mere tool for savage, animalistic hatred.
Witty and Euro deserve "hatred"? They are "pieces of shit"?
I don't agree with them in the main I don't think, and even agree with some of the ideas about there having been a general enthusiastic jewish participation in Bolshevism and the fear of same contributing to the Holocaust.
But if from what they've written here the choice is to regard them as "pieces of shit" with all the logic that implies, then count me a proud piece too.
so proud that the name you choose means 'nameless'.
or maybe 'numberless', an equally empty claim.
I wonder if Sin Nombre is Phil Weiss. Maybe he's having serious misgivings about the Jew-hating kaka he attracts here.
I don't believe you "wonder" that, at all, Suzanne. As usual, you are just trying one of your dime-a-dozen psychological ploys.
To reduce JM's information to a "whine" is straight out of a Julius Streicher's publishing company's child's book. The 1917 revolution
and the USSR's ultimate demise is being repeated in the USA now, and has been since 1967. Look to the agents of change that is not change. Start with this:
link to jbooks.com
Then go to JM's blog.
Sin Nombre,
The idea is pure snark, really, most of the real Israeli whackos (Liebermann, etc.) are Ashkenazi, but the cult of "toughness" and "Muskeljudentum" ("Muscular Judaism") is a divorce from the Ashkenazi tradition of relative non-violence (Martillo notwithstanding). There seems to be a cult of one-upmanship in who can be more oppressive to Palestinians in internal Israeli politics at the moment, which may eventually tip over into incitement and get them banned, canned, or imprisoned. Hopefully there is enough rule of law to arrange that. Both Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions contain pietist and quietist elements that are always running as a counter-current to violence, even in the context of self-segregating tribalism–as does Islam. Especially, and largely unnoticed, ISRAELI Islam. Unfortunately, there is always some Rabbi citing scripture for death, as there is always some Imam doing so. So my prescription calls for making thugs like Lieberman a bit more aware of anti-nationalist religious tradition. Oddly, people like Avraham Burg, who was raised Orthodox, fit into a religious non-violent perspective (despite their anti-Zionism) more readily than equally Ashkenazi secular thugs like Lieberman.
Talk of people being filth does no good at all.
I know almost nothing of Jewish history and in particular, I don't know anything about whether some Jews behaved badly in eastern Europe (aside, obviously, from those who were Bolsheviks), but if there's anything interesting to learn about this, I'm not going to learn it from someone who engages in lunatic ranting on the internet. It's the same problem I have with the Islamophobes–yes, there are radical Muslims with murderous tendencies, but I have no desire to learn about them from someone who obviously hates all Muslims.
There simply is no ethnic Ashkenazi tradition of non-violence, and there are lots of studies of ethnic Ashkenazi involvement in intracommunal and intercommunal violence over the last 500 years.
The ethnic Ashkenazi tradition is more accurately described as creating the appearance of harmlessness and manipulating someone else to do the dirty work. We certainly see this behavior pattern in the 17th century Ukraine, in mandatory Palestine, and in manipulating the USA into invading and occupying Iraq.
I think Joachim has finally lost his mind. I wonder what pushed him 'round the bend'? Did he lose his job, his girl, or his money to a Jew? Perhaps all three.
I'm grateful for "Muskeljudentum" (never heard that term before). It needs to be kept in check, but it sure beats the head-in-the-sand posture Jews took in Europe prior to WW2. Or the buy-your-way-out-of-persecution stance. Ughhhhh!
I'm definitely a proponent of speak softly and carry a big stick.
I don't have much use for the religious expansionists (Martillo sounds like one cut from a different cloth)–but I do think a lot of the secular hardball types are operating from a place of (justified) paranoia and fear of Islamist intentions. I think acknowledging it and dealing with them from that standpoint instead of attacking is a better option.
BTW–isn't Lieberman Orthodox? I don't know if he takes a religious or secular view of Israel's creation…but I do believe he is observant. That's why I raise the question.
"I think Joachim has finally lost his mind. I wonder what pushed him 'round the bend'? Did he lose his job, his girl, or his money to a Jew? Perhaps all three."
All of that…PLUS…"God" is speaking to Joachim through his microwave.
Witty is filth because he peddles moral equivalence where there is none and because he and his fellow masbirim implicitly or even occasionally explicitly take the position that Jews should be able to plunder and to kill non-Jews with impunity.
Until I see them change their attitudes, they have to be considered pieces of shit.
I'm 100% with you there, joachim. that's all that the postings of suzanne, chris berel, richard witty, and the other hasbara merchants on here amount to. even eurosabra (unless there are two of him) is about 95% shit. Why not just say so frankly? We aren't trying to recreate rahel varnhagen's literary salon here, after all.
Instead of answering the simple question:
Berel claims I lost my mind.
Until he responds to the question, I have to believe he believes in perfect Jewish innocence and perfect non-Jewish guilt.
There really is not much more to say to him or about him.
Thank you for your touching personal account. I didn't know that was the area your family came from. I was in the area between Tyre and Sidon in 1982 with the IDF although not in Mieh-Mieh or Ain al Hilweh. I know Leila knows my story but it remains nonetheless relevant, especially as we find ourselves stuck deeper than ever in this endless cycle of violence. I know there are many people like myself on 'both sides' who have sworn off war and violence as the path to any solution because we have futilely experienced and perpetrated war and violence in seeking a solution. The link is to my story that I wrote in 2006 as Lebanon 2 raged but as I said, it resonates no less strong today.
Joachim really has become delusional. He certainly never asked me any questions.
But he did make some pretty insane allusions.
However, it is quite expected for Rowan to share Joachim's visions.
Something about feathers.
"My greatest fear is that someday Israel will become an "Arab" power, and end the conflict by treating Arabs as their own people do. While an unpleasant national security state, Israel has still never committed genocide on the scale of Saddam's Iraq in Kurdistan or Nasser's UAR in Yemen. I fear that the Ashkenazi Westernization of Israel is actually the last restraint on the "big men". This may be a bit Occidentalist, but I am, after all, an Oriental." Then Hitler was an Arabization of Europe? And it was the European elite who irradiated Moroccans (c.f. the documentary the Ringworm Children). Whenever a Zionist gloats about the high body county of western-supported dictators, all I can think is they're either glad someone else did the dirty work or they're jealous.
Israel has still never committed genocide on the scale of Saddam's Iraq in Kurdistan or Nasser's UAR in Yemen. Of course this is utter nonsense and damages whatever sensible things he has to say. We are suspicious of this notion that the Lidice-like liquidation of a thousand people in a concentration camp, prevented from even escaping, was not so bad (especially in light of other Israeli crimes). We are suspicious of well-off Lebanese who despise the Palestinians and are so eager to work together with the greatest threat to security in the region. We are suspicious of all this unacceptable, nonsensical moral relativistic pseudo-algebra which maintains as its one anchor the whitewashing of Israel amid token promises of liberalish disapproval. Isn't the worst thing after all how law-proof Israel is still doing this stuff decades later, and shows every sign of continuing until the moral of the world stop them?
I honestly don't understand why so many of my fellow citizens are so woefully ignorant of what's being done to the Arabian people in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere. The news media grossly distorts the story, but very few people I know actually trust the media anymore. On the other hand, I don't see people demanding to hear the truth, and even at some of our most respected Universities the majority of the students are woefully ignorant of what's actually happening around the world and the role our own government plays in various regional conflicts. On the other hand, I am seeing more people begin to stop and ask serious questions about what they're being told. Maybe the financial crisis will start to rouse the middle class from its complacency.