For a brief moment last night, I had a sense of what it would be like to be on the other side of my issue.
The evening was coming to an end, at the New York Theatre Workshop-- a reading and discussion of Caryl Churchill’s very short, Gaza-inspired play, "Seven Jewish Children"-- and for the second time the play was read, this time by Andre Gregory, the aristocratic actor/director of social/religious engagement. He stood near the front of the stage pouring out anger against the ways of formation of Jewish identity. I applauded, as did most of the other 300 people in the house, and two seats away I could see the hands of a Zionist clasped in his lap, as he grumbled to his stony-faced girlfriend. You can listen to a recording of the play here and read it here.
For the rest of the night I could not get that picture out of my head. An important stage in New York, an elite workshop space that is contested ground: three years ago the writings of an idealistic young woman who was killed by the Israeli occupation could not even be performed here, because of the "sensitivity" of Jews, the cultural importance of Jews. But even Rachel Corrie's piece was not directed against the springs of Jewish identity, as Churchill's piece is, and here it was uncensored--swaddled of course in Context, a whole evening of discussion rather than just the thing itself-- but here it was, and Laura Flanders, the very appealing host of Grit TV, wearing black boots and a dark jacket, had begun the evening by invoking Corrie's name, and the evening now ended with Andre Gregory spitting out anger, which I applauded.
This site is about power issues, and for once I had an impression of what it would feel like when the elite sites of American life at last yield to anti-Israel argument.
That is the object, of course; that is essential. In so many ways, my side has the grass roots, while Zionism has always depended on elites, at least since Lord Balfour and down through AIPAC, because Jews are such a tiny minority, with outsized wealth and influence. It is all we Jews have: our smarts and money. The support of Israel depends utterly upon Establishment opinion, holding that opinion, and seeing Gregory shouting Churchill's lines about the ways Jews talk to their children about the Other-- it was a remarkable glimpse of a time when these things will actually be discussed in elite circles, and also when the Jewish feelings of loneliness that I was raised with, as the children in the play are being raised, will be magnified and intense. I want that day to come; because after all we are talking about the difference between conditions and feelings-- the real Palestinian condition of affliction for six decades, against the feeling of affliction on the other side--and policy must address conditions. But it is not as if I don't have sympathy--
Let us get to the thing itself.
This was the first of three readings. There will be one tonight and one tomorrow night. NYTW did not sell tickets, it invited people from donor lists, from the Jewish community, from its theater discussion group that is called "the usual suspects," and if there was still room, the general public could come in. All free. A remarkable motion of generosity and political service, but growing out of the grief of the Rachel Corrie censorship that rocked the theater 3 years ago.
NYTW is a beautiful space, a high exposed bare brick wall at the back of the stage and exposed structural brick on the sides as well. It is incredibly orderly and spare. As I sat down, I thought of all the Jewish arts-loving money that had gone to make this space. This thought came again as Thane Rosenbaum, a very hip-looking Zionist writer in a black suit, with a luxury of tumbling blond hair, having led the panel the night before at the 92d Street Y on "Why Zionism has become a dirty word," sat down in my row, soon joined by a goodlooking blonde. He seems to me to personify that identification of Jews with the finer things-- even as he defends the Gaza slaughter and marvels at "the absurdity" that Zionism has gotten a bad name.
The play is short and to the point. It is all dialogue and uses the device of Jewish adults discussing what they should tell a girl child about horrors, during 7 episodes of history, and in this way takes the Holocaust experience of ghastly suffering down though the Nakba and formation of Israel and the settlements and Gaza, so that at the end the oppressed have become oppressor. Caryl Churchill is a British leftist obviously imbued in this history and weary of any prevarication about it. I find the writing elegant and moving. The play makes the point that Avraham Burg makes more tenderly, and that many Palestinians have made for eons, that Jews are avenging the Holocaust on the Arabs.
Churchill has been accused of anti-Semitism in some measure because the last climactic speech of the play refers to Jewish chosenness and the blood of non-Jewish children in such a way as to revive the blood libel, or so it is charged:
Tell her we're the iron fist now, tell her it's the fog of war, tell her we wont stop killing them till we're safe, tell her I laughed when I saw the dead policemen, tell her they're animals living in rubble now, tell her I wouldnt care if we wiped them out, the world would hate us is the only thing, tell her I dont care if the world hates us, tell her we're better haters, tell her we're chosen people, tell her I look at one of their children covered in blood and what do I feel? tell her all I feel is happy it's not her.
The New York Theatre Workhsop, in its anxiety about providing context, gave out sheets with a statement by Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee saying the chosen people and the blood of babies are anti-Semitic "canards." Myself, I have no interest in the talk of anti-Semitic canards; it is a way of stopping open discussion of horrors. Israel is destroying babies. Let’s talk about it; let engaged creative people talk about it with the words they want to use. We see where the blacklisting of this speech has gotten us: three years after Rachel Corrie's killing, American Tristan Anderson is maimed during a peaceful protest on occupied land.
The Stern piece-- handed out at the door along with an email that Churchill sent a couple of days ago to tortured Ari Roth at Theater J in Washington, which is also going to stage "Seven Jewish Children" in the face of boycott, is a piece of "context" that any description of Palestinian suffering must now be escorted by in elite spaces. After all, the norm in cultural circles is what I observed at the Thane Rosenbaum event the night before; the anti-Zionists are out on the street and there are four Zionists on the stage of an elite space. A great shame. If this is the only way the conversation can happen—context, the circumscription of free speech-- gosh, give them context.
After the first reading by several actors, Flanders led a 45-minute discussion in a sophisticated manner. (Tonight's hosts are Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon. Tomorrow night, Mark Crispin Miller.) Flanders's point of view was clear and helpful: she spoke of the 13 Israelis killed, 3 of them by Hamas, and compared that number to the hundreds of women and children killed by Israel. But she was very fair. The "talkback" had the feeling of an encounter session. A lot of older Jews stood up and spoke about their sense of the anti-Semitism in the play. It got a little out of control. For a while one Zionist plant after another talked about Hamas hating Jews; and they were met by our plant, Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies, who was fierce and good, standing almost in the aisle on the right side of the hall.
Here I must say again: The play is filled with rage toward Israel and in turn toward the manner in which Jewish identity is today formed—and it is a rage many of us feel--and I know that many in the crowd thrilled to hear these feelings expressed openly. I was reminded that rage is a vital component of political expression. One woman got up to say that the Holocaust was the worst thing to happen to the Jews and Israel was the next worst thing, which a tall Zionist later described as a "grotesque" statement. Another woman said that when you imprison thousands of people and rape their women and destroy their lands, well, you are going to get bombs thrown at you. Phyllis Bennis said, start the clock where you will, in 1948 or 1967 or Gaza, and the history is all of a piece, dispossession. Two of those speakers were Jews. I noticed Thane Rosenbaum crunching down in his seat and taking notes and not clapping.
A writer named Edward Einhorn said the true context for the play--"when it was written, why it was written, who it was written for"--is anti-Semitism in England. I say No, the true context is Gaza and the messianic spirit that has captured so much of Jewish life and made Jews blind to dispossession and suffering, a spirit that has reduced smart people like Bret Stephens, a neoconservative--and neoconservatism is a gift of the Jews--to justifying Israel's behavior by comparing it to the French actions in Algeria nearly 50 years ago! But Einhorn was emotional and afraid. And his experience and mine are the same; for my identity was formed by descriptions of the neverendingness of anti-Semitism and of the alleged complicity of the American Establishment in the Holocaust. And so it is terrifying for Jews to glimpse the abandonment by the U.S. elite of support for Israel. Zionism has depended on elites forever, on Truman's former business partner getting access to the White House in the runup to '48, on Gaza warmaker Ehud Barak gaining access to Clinton endlessly in the runup to Camp David 2000, on Chicago music guy and AIPAC board member Lee Rosenberg getting Obama to Israel in 2006, and so on. The Israel lobby has had to buy politicians because we are such a tiny minority and have been persecuted. And the news is that this political/cultural corruption may at last be ending, in a post-Gaza festival called Context.
I had the same feeling I had the night before at the 92d Street Y, that my side is winning. Gaza undid the Israel lobby. The great fear of the other side is that when elite opinion goes, the newspapers will go and the money and the politicians, and suddenly Israel will be radioactive. Because, as even Zionists know, its actions are "indefensible." This is just a promise, that when the shoe is finally on the other foot, I will be mindful as ever of the power issues, and for compassion.
"A writer named Edward Einhorn said the true context for the play–"when it was written, why it was written, who it was written for"–is anti-Semitism in England"
This is the most obvious evidence that the Holocaust actually happened, something which should shut all deniers up: Only a crime of that magnitude can instill in so much people such paranoia and reality denial.
Oh and I like the woman who said that Israel is after the Holocaust the 2nd worst thing happening to Jews. True true.
First, and aside: Such a New York "intellectual" event. Glad I left the place. André Gregory was in the horrid "My Dinner With André," for which I have yet to forgive him or Wallace Shawn.
Enough petty snark.
Nothing in this paragraph you can't read every day in the comboxes at contentions or the Jerusalem Post.
And STILL the big question is whether Israel's enemies will accept it in any condition, or unconditionally reject and submit a deferred fight to the death in response.
Israel was NOT the second-worst thing to happen to Jews. It may have been the second worst thing to happen to assimilated Jews that wish to merely melt in.
To European Jews and Arabian-world Jews, it was haven, now home.
Its unknown if American Jews' status would have improved to the extent that it did, if Israel didn't exist. Prior, even after the holocaust, Jews were STILL excluded from the rooms of power.
Churchill's point is "this is how we think of you", not any suggestion of self-inquiry. Burg at least asks Jews to self-inquire.
Collective rage isn't all that progressive, whether anti-Israel or pro-Israel. The reason for that is that the collective expression of rage is itself violent, and the response to violence is never positive.
Wonderful, Phil. That must be painful:
and two seats away I could see the hands of a Zionist clasped in his lap, as he grumbled to his stony-faced girlfriend.
good you don't leave it out.
*************************************************************************
Whenever I read the name Einhorn, there is always the question on my mind, is he a descendant of the stern Rabbi David Einhorn, no matter how much I hated the question in school, if I was related to this or that person.
Phil,
"For a while one Zionist plant after another talked about Hamas hating Jews"
What an assinine cynical statement.
Your point about conditions vs feelings was relevant.
Remember that when you dismiss the significance of Hamas shelling after the next cease-fire closes.
The Eighth Jewish Child – for Caryl Churchill
03/03/2009 | 17:36
Robbie Gringras
In response to Seven Jewish Children, written by Caryl Churchill, and condemned by Howard Jacobson, supported by Jacqueline Rose, and labeled a 'blood libel' by Melanie Philipps.
Tell her that it’s more complicated than that.
Tell her that we love Israel.
Tell her that we hate Israel.
Tell her that Israel is in our veins, like oxygen, like a virus, like an antibody.
Tell her that to be Jewish is far more than watching the news and looking for balance, and far more than being a Zionist, and far more than just praying to God.
Tell her that Zionism isn’t a dirty word like racism. Zionism is a complicated word with good intentions and ambiguous results, like idealism.
Tell her that everyone is a human being, everyone is their own story, and everyone you meet is a potential friend however different they may discover you are.
Tell her that everyone is a potential enemy because they fear your difference, because they fear your memory, because they fear the Muslims, because they fear.
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t mention Muslims. Don’t mention anti-Semites. Don’t mention the Holocaust. Don’t mention Gaza. At least not in the same sentence.
Tell her that she can be Jewish anywhere in the world, but that Israel will come with her. Israel is the biggest project that the Jewish world has taken on in the last few thousand years, and it needs all the help it can get, even when it says it doesn’t. Sometimes helping Israel will mean backing its actions, sometimes helping Israel will mean protesting them.
Tell her to say what she thinks about Israel wherever and whenever she wants to. Tell her not to worry about giving ammunition to our enemies, because they create their own ammunition. They do fine without needing ours.
Tell her that Howard Jacobson is right, and wrong. So is Jacqueline Rose. And Melanie Philipps. And Jonathan Freedland. And so am I.
But Caryl Churchill is just plain wrong.
Tell her that those who don’t like us will always pretend to understand us.
We don’t even understand us.
And we would never dare write a 10-minute play about it.
Tell her it’s much more complicated than that.
Oh Witty. not too long ago you were quite reasonable. Now not so much:
"whether Israel's enemies will accept it in any condition"
Surely you must now that practically every Arab state and even some within Hamas are ready to accept Israel whenever Israel leaves the Palestinians alone and gets back to pre-67 borders. Israel has no right to exist where it wants, only within pre-67 borders. Expand those borders and you're fair game.
Money and smarts are what the Jewish community has, but common sense seems to be missing, Phil. Why would Israel opt for 100 percent of Palestine and perpetual war when they can have 80 percent and perpetual peace?
Here's a debate between a Phil Jew and a Fenton Jew regarding Ms. Churchill's play:
link to jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com
You will see the Fenton Jew focuses on the last page of the play, ignoring the context provided by the earlier pages. And that he is really annoyed Ms' Fenton is a Gentile with high script credentials.
Richard:
What an assinine cynical statement.
conveniently leaving out context again:
Isn't it a "balanced" construction? And it is informative "one after another" – "our plant"
@ Citizen:
"and labeled a 'blood libel' by Melanie Philipps."
Melanie Phillips ('Mad Mel Phlips') labels just about any criticism of Israel as "a bloodlibel". She recently called articles in Ha'aretz 'bloodlibels'.
delia
The "war" is not a war. There is no enemy other than kids with stones and a few ineffectual rockets. Israel pays no price for its massacre jamboree. We still stuff them with money and talk about their beleaguered status.
Nor is their oppression of the Palestinians purely a land dispute. Israelis are Nazis. They have to crush the untermenschen. I'm convinced they would be brutalizing the Palestinians and dehumanizing the Palestinians even if there were no land at dispute in the equation. They have to satisfy their lust for blood, which can never be satiated. They have to prop themselves up because they are the intellectual inferiors of the diaspora Jews, whom they can never hope to match.
Their president is a rapist. Their culture is vulgar and 15th rate. Their politicians are all on the take. Their youth are all hoods. Their economy is in tatters.
Their only reason for being is to express their sense of racial superiority.
@Witty:
I regret saying Israel is the 2nd worst thing happening to Jews after the Holocaust. It should say Israel IN ITS CURRENT COLONIALIST FORM is the 2nd worst thing. Of course Jews legitimately revel in the idea of living in a Jewish state where their religion was born, as long as the respect that not only their religion was born there.
Delia, I think that's a symptom of the disease that can justify ethnic cleansing in the first place.
ME, Israel was given its pre-1967 borders by UN decree, "international law", but it didn't really have a right cleanse the land of arabs back then. After 60 years of trying to expand upon what it didn't really have rights to in the first place, we should call the original decree into question. Those "rights", if they ever existed have been forfeited by Israel's continued cruelty and injustice.
@ Witty
"Churchill's point is "this is how we think of you", not any suggestion of self-inquiry. Burg at least asks Jews to self-inquire."
No. Witty turns the script on its head, unless he means that the script reveals how a conflicted parent addresses his or her child over what happened from the Shoa to Gaza. But Witty does not mean this because Churchill's script is all about asking Jews to self-inquire–here's the script itself:
link to guardian.co.uk
It's not an accident that the president of Israel is a rapist.
It's by design.
Who, but a rapist, could reasonably stand as a figurehead for this depraved, hebraic junkyard?
If Christians fixated on the Stalinist/Jewish Bolshevik perpetrated holocaust the way Jews fixate on the Nazi perpetrated one, there wouldn't be a Jew left alive on this planet today, because no Christians would have opposed Hitler.
Tell her that.
In response to Robbie Gringras (who responded to
Seven Jewish Children, written by Caryl Churchill, and condemned by Howard Jacobson, supported by Jacqueline Rose, and labeled a 'blood libel' by Melanie Philipps).
The Ninth Jewish Child
Tell her that it’s more complicated than that–like when your shoe laces get all tangled up.
Tell her that we love Israel like Nana.
Tell her that we hate Israel like Uncle Sheldon.
Tell her that Israel is in our veins, like a gulp of pure and dirty air, like a mix of good and bad cells.
Tell her Jews always ask questions like your friend Judy who never quite believes it when her mother says she's pretty.
Tell her that Zionism meant well–but didn't think much about people already there because it's hard to think when you're running for your life.
Tell her that everyone was made in G-D's image, is worthy of respect, and if they are nice to you–isn't it good to be nice back?
Tell her that everyone is a fraidy-cat deep inside, and some may be afraid of you if somehow you are different than they are. So be on guard, but always be the first to smile and say hello–
Don’t tell her that.
Don’t talk about Arabs, Jew-haters, the Shoah right off the bat. The Nakba might be more important to
some people–let them have their say, then work in your story–everybody has one. Walk a mile in the
other's shoes, then they might take a walk in yours.
Tell her that she can be Jewish anywhere and sometimes helping Israel by telling it what it's doing wrong is the best a friend can do for Israel. Tell her not to worry about giving ammunition to our enemies by pointing out Israeli deeds that are suicidal. Remember the Golden Rule.
Tell her that Howard Jacobson is right, and wrong. So is Jacqueline Rose. And Melanie Philipps. And Jonathan Freedland. And Robbie Gringras. And so am I.
But Caryl Churchill shows how hard life is to explain to a child. Look at the German children today.
Talk to them if you get a chance. Their ancestors hurt us badly yet we got the state of Israel out of all that hurt. A big price to pay. Let's honor our Shoah dead by sticking to first principles learned by their suffering and mass murder. Remember that little Arab kid never even saw old Germany…
Tell her that those who don’t like us will always pretend to understand us, but those who look more at the deed than the creed want to understand us.
We don’t even understand us. That's a start. We need all the help we can get–like soldiers with PTSD.
We don't want to be spit on like they did in America during the Vietnam War times.
And when you're older, dare to write a 10-minute play about it.
Try your best to be as complicated as Ms. Churchill. Be prepared for a lot knee-jerk emotional flack.
Parents have been rationalizing the horrors of war to their children since the beginning of time. I recall my mother recounting a story of an American soldier's 'heroic' survival in Vietnam she heard on the radio. He had played dead while ants and Viet Cong crawled all over him. Stories American mothers have been telling their children about the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq no doubt have similar, archetypical, themes of rationalizing brutality so that brutality will not be visited upon their precious offspring.
Witty still refers to the shitty Qassams firing into S'Derot as "shelling".
Witty – a few days ago – referred to the hypothetical transfer of Israeli COLONISTS in the Palestinian territories as "ethnic cleansing."
He's a dishonest piece of shit.
Don't ignore his rhetoric. He's as sincere as Suzanne/Fenton/Berel/etc.
He's just toned down.
how ARE jewish children raised with respect to gentiles? what are they told? what is the storyline?
Witty sounds kookier with each passing day.
The BIG question is still whether Israel can accept peace (with the concessions it must make), or will it destroy itself and possibly the world along with it.
As far as Israel's neighbors go until they see a marked change in it's fanatical aggression and until it demonstrates an honest desire to negotiate – there's really nothing for them to do accept continue to strive to improve their defensive military capabilities and to move past tribal divisions and provide a united Arab/Persian front against the fascist in the hood.
DO you see any signs that Israel is seriously attempting to make peace with it's neighbors, Ricard Witty?
me:
"Surely you must now that practically every Arab state and even some within Hamas are ready to accept Israel whenever Israel leaves the Palestinians alone and gets back to pre-67 borders. Israel has no right to exist where it wants, only within pre-67 borders."
I keep on hearing people talk about how reasonable Hamas is. Where has Hamas ever said anything reasonable. They don't disguise their motives.
It's pretty unlikely that Israel faced with a nasty terror group is not going back to the "Auschwitz borders".
@ LeaNder Einhorn, re possible relatives,
There’s another infamous Einhorn, this one an American by the name of Ira. He was a “progressive” counterculture hippy activist and a friend of Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman.
He now sits in prison for the 1977 Murder of his long time live-in (goy?) girlfriend Holly Maddux. Apparently Einhorn became jealous over her relationship with another man, killed her, stuffed her in a trunk and shoved the trunk into his bedroom closet for eighteen months, where the smell eventually clued-in the police.
Einhorn was arrested, but sprung by his Jewish attorney, Arlen Specter (yes, THE Arlen Specter), with his bail paid by “progressive” Jewish heiress Barbara Bronfmann of the Seagram’s booze peddling dynasty. He promptly jumped bail to Europe. Decades later he was arrested and extradited.
If Ira Einhorn were out and about agitating today, my guess is that he would be an anti-Zionist, because as a Jewish leftist, Zionism would have become inconvenient to his ability to prey upon goy victims.
Now wouldn’t a guy like that have always been better off in Israel, for all involved?
Anti-Zionism in terms of getting Israel off of the American welfare tit is one thing, but there are certain murderous, anti-goy Jewish types that simply do not belong among the nations, particularly when they are aided and abetted by wealthy diaspora Jewish types of a similar orientation. Einhorn might even have lived a productive life had the ended up in Israel, although we'll never know.
Witty: "Israel was NOT the second-worst thing to happen to Jews. It may have been the second worst thing to happen to assimilated Jews that wish to merely melt in."
Why is Israel so bad for assimilated Jews in America? The main problem as far as I can tell is other less-assimilated Jews guilt-tripping them for not putting Israel first. But even that is fading with younger Jewish Americans. The intermarriage rate is growing. Like everyone else who has come to this country they are buying into American ideals of inclusion. What is so bad about that?
It seems to me that reality is nuanced, complex and revealing enough, without inventing fictitious personae to say fictitious things one thinks are somehow 'truer' than the things people actually say (or, more to the point, write). Therefore, it is quite a few years since I have read any fiction or drama at all.
@Stevieb:
"DO you see any signs that Israel is seriously attempting to make peace with it's neighbors, Ricard Witty?"
Of course. Pax Israeliensis. On their terms. After complete surrender of all of the ME.
Oh look, the fly boys from the Occupation Air Force have just bombed a convoy in the Sudan…
Thanks, citizen, interesting. True, the Nazis for the obvious reason loved Shylock or The Merchant of Venice. I wonder if Ari Roth knows Hans Mayer's interpretation of Shylock
AR: Why do you do symposiums on Shylock? Why have we done two different pieces on Shylock? Because we want to make love with that character? Because we think it's the greatest comedy William Shakespeare ever wrote? It's not a particularly good play. Why is it of interest to Jews to decode and demystify and see into what –
Mayer's critique mirrors here here:
I guess, it's fair to admit, that Hans Mayer is a double outsider: a homosexual and a Jew. But I somehow agree with him, since Shakespeare already dealt with male friendship in his earliest play: The two Gentleman of Verona. Which one shouldn't read without the knowledge in mind, that both homosexuality and rape of an heiress resulted in a death penalty at the time. And this may well be the reason why the treatment of an ancient friendship tale: Titus and Gisippus, in the book of Thomas Elyot: The Governor (1531), a book for a boy's education had adopted a distinctively homoerotic symbolism and feeling to it. As this book may well have been part of Shakespeare's little-Latin-and-less-Greek school curriculum. But I am deviating into the universe of the theater from a clearly materialist point of view.
I was encouraged to play war as a child. I was indulged with many toy guns. Not only did I have the required six shooters, with which to kill phantom Indians, I had a toy bazooka, a toy water cooled Browning automatic, and lots of other toy arms, which were used to kill phantom Japs, Krauts and the occasional Korean. Since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq I have noticed children once again playing war, and they become envious when I tell them about the war toys of my childhood, although they have some very nice toy assault rifles that were unavailable to me. I try and not interfere with their play because I know how much I enjoyed rushing up Pork Chop Hill or flinging myself on a pantomime grenade to save my comrades. But the real reason I do not interfere is because I am vehemently anti-war.
Israelis and dual loyalty Americans think their wars and aggression are defensive, protecting the Jewish State from annihilating forces. They are fighting phantoms, too, and one wonders how their children translate those realized fears into play. Palestinian children have actual soldiers shooting at them. They play in the shadows of weapons trained on their little heads. One must wonder how their psyches are able to withstand the horrors that confront them, because they still want to go out and play, too.
The old Jewish community is sick…and I don't mean that as an insult, I mean they are actually mentally sick in the same way any paranoid or distrubed person is sick.
The world should have done some kind of intervention on them long ago before they passed down to their children their holocuast PTSD. Maybe we thought we were intervening by the special treatment we have given jews since WWII but it hasn't worked out….some of them can't or won't get over it.
The Jewish PTSD may have been justified for awhile but certainly not today or for the last several decades and I regard the new crop of zionist not only as recruits for the zionism 'cult' as I have said, but one created by the parents instilling in their children for the umpteen century, and allowing the organized zionist crowd to brain wash every generation as to, how 'different and victimized' they are, how all non jews are the enemy and underneath that how special it makes them…and so it goes on and on….the poison gets passed down and we are now in the third generation of it. I cannot understand how anyone would wish this burden or life outlook attitude on their children. They say it is because they want their children to be "ever alert" to the danger of Jews being wiped out again but no one needs to live as if they expect to be wiped out any day…any person is going to know if a real threat arises, they don't need to base their lives and attitudes on looking for it, and by living that way they provoke in others varying degrees of what they say they are afraid of.
I read Jacqline Rose's "Question of Zion" some time ago when I first stared looking into US-Isr political relationship and Palestine and she said zionism was sort of like a "collective" psychological disorder that attracted people who would be attracted to any group that filled some void or gave them company in their own psychological needs. In the case of Jews zionism fit the bill for their handicapped emotional and mental identity just as some non jews are attracted to Moonies and other types of cults where their feelings of differentness or being victimized or feeling inferior becomes translated instead to being "the right feelings" and superior because the group validates their feelings.
I think everyone has seen that Israel and the zionist are indeed killing Palestines for the holocuast…it's revenge and greed mingled together. It's insane.
Maybe Gaza was the shock treatment that some Jews needed ..but even if not it has to stop because as Phil noted the "conditions" of the Palestines trump the "feelings" of the Jews. The Palestines are being holocausted not the jews, for all their screaming and screeching about Hamas and Iran and their security, no realist believes that Israel is under threat of extinction from either. The Israei leaders don't really believe that either, they just can't cure their sickness of revenge and greed and they use the power they never had before in their history to destroy and destroy just because for once they can.
Fajr missiles from Iran, bombed in Sudan on their way to Gaza. Hamas's attempt to secure escalation dominance and a strategic threat to Tel Aviv.
Looks like we can safely ignore the bullshit in the two posts above. It's not paranoia when they really ARE out to get you.
I know Euro. Kind of like the intentionally targetting of civilian infrastructure by Israel in ALL of it's massacres.
Kind of like in the 2006 Lebanon War when your Satanic country killed 1000 Lebanese civilians and blamed it on human shields.
Whoops, the US Army War College called bullshit on that one. So did Human Rights Watch.
I'm with rykart. Israel needs to be dismantled. And the Palestinians need to spare no mercy on the IDF and all settlers who are harassing them. Take down every last one of those fascist freaks.
We're all in this together and whatever happens, we will all have lost something essential to what defines us as 'humans'.
I think Gilles Deleuze [quoted by Joseph Massad] captures not just Israel's, but indeed Humanity's conundrum in this insight:
I'm very much haunted by that observation. Should we replace 'Zionists' with the 'Jewish People' as a whole (forgetting about the racism & violence argument that does not apply), we are faced with a terrible dilemma.
From a Jewish perspective, we have this:
* I'm understanding "assimilation" as meaning assimilation with the rest of Humanity that is not part of the 'Chosen'.
From the rest of Humanity's perspective:
At this point, I'm not ready to come up with a proposition. Perhaps this though: how can Humanity deal with the fact that there's a tribe in its midst whose survival depends on the existence of walls that separate it from the other tribes who may be destroyed if the walls stay up?
@ Posted by: Me | March 26, 2009 at 11:14 AM
Israel has no right to exist where it wants, only within pre-67 borders. Expand those borders and you're fair game.
Rights aren't fully realized until other people recognize them. The vast majority of people, when they learn what is actually happening in Israel, think that Israeli rights must be balanced with Palestinian rights. They are not animals to be herded into pens. Few people have sympathy for violent racist gun-toting colonists. "Expand [beyond] those borders [at my nation's expense, dragging my people into foreign wars] and you're fair game [for complete delegitimization]."
@ Posted by: Me | March 26, 2009 at 11:58 AM
I agree.
@ Posted by: rykart | March 26, 2009 at 11:51 AM
I'm convinced they would be brutalizing the Palestinians and dehumanizing the Palestinians even if there were no land at dispute in the equation. They have to satisfy their lust for blood, which can never be satiated.
There is not a shred of evidence to support your assertions, and they are clearly antisemitic.
Their culture is vulgar and 15th rate. Their politicians are all on the take. Their youth are all hoods. Their economy is in tatters.
These are generalizations that could just as aptly be ascribed to many other nations.
@ Posted by: rykart | March 26, 2009 at 12:09 PM
It's not an accident that the president of Israel is a rapist. It's by design.
It's by design? You mean God designed the mathematical understructure of our physical reality such that it was inevitable that a president of Israel would turn out to be a rapist? God is an antisemite? Who knew?
Who, but a rapist, could reasonably stand as a figurehead for this depraved, hebraic junkyard?
LOL, rykart, you are off the deep end. All that hate is going to burn you up. He didn't get to be President by being a rapist, he's essentially getting fired for being a rapist.
@ Jeffrey Goldberg’s ‘the Atlantic’ interview with Ari Roth:
Jeffrey Goldberg: “The play's motivation is to demonize the Jewish people. Or at least the Israeli branch of the Jewish people…Maybe you'll say, Jeff you're such a tribalist it's ridiculous, but my general position is that I don't need to listen to Europeans lecture Jews on morality. I think they have a lot more repentance to do. Why does Israel exist? Israel exists because Europe persecuted its Jews! I mean, where's her examination of the British fault? Where's her examination of European fault? The Jews are a scapegoat for her.”
–
Wrong. Israel exists because certain stunted, vindictive Jews got together with certain stunted, vindictive Stalinists and Leftists and attempted to take over the world via Communism, murdering millions in the process, and sparking World War II and the Holocaust. Israel is largely the result of Western civilization's conclusion that certain fanatical Jews simply cannot be assimilated, and Jeffrey Goldberg and other fanatical Jewish American Zionists appear to be among them.
BTW, when are Jews going to do their repentance for Jewish Bolshevism?
Never.
The US is philo-semetic and Jews possess the most political capital of all other minorities in all facets of American society. You certainly don't think of Jews as a minority in the US.
So yea, never.
Anything that de-legitimizes the image of the Jew as an eternal victim is avoided. Not dismissed – avoided. Cowardice.
Posted by: Eurosabra | March 26, 2009 at 02:04 PM
Fajr missiles from Iran, bombed in Sudan on their way to Gaza. Hamas's attempt to secure escalation dominance and a strategic threat to Tel Aviv.
I see nothing odd about any Palestinian attempts to obtains weapons of any kind. OF COURSE THEY ARE. Israel has been ethnically cleansing and colonizing them for sixty one years. I'm supposed to think that they are wicked warmongers because they attempt to defend themselves? LOL
Looks like we can safely ignore the bullshit in the two posts above. It's not paranoia when they really ARE out to get you.
It is paranoia when you allow your fear to warp your capacity to accurately interpret reality. Acquisition of weaponry and willingness to negotiate are not mutually exclusive. I realize that you do not like that Palestinians want weapons. Maybe they would prefer you didn't have any either? The greater capacity Palestinians have for armed resistance, the more reasonable Israelis will be when they finally become willing to come to a negotiating table. Implicit in your statement, Eurosabra, is that only Israelis are allowed to defend themselves, and Palestinians only have the right to be slaves or die. Readers, don't buy anyone's assertions, including mine, without applying some common sense and thinking it through for yourselves.
The only long term answer is to A) investigate and deport Zionist Israeli-American agents, operatives and leaders, and B) force Israel to draw her borders, disarm her of nukes, guarantee her security with UN troops and the US nuclear deterrent.
We will never be able to get to the conclusion (let alone the half way point) of point “B” without first fulfilling point “A”.
me says…
too bad jews have such little confidence in the holocaust numbers.
instead of pushing for a real investigation, they try to criminalize discussion.
it's obvious jews dont even believe in the holocaust themselves.
so the holocaust is the worst thing that happened to jews… just not in the sense everyone's trying the peddle.
it's worst in this sense: the numbers are so tenuous but have been written in decades of stone, and when the lid finally blows off the holocaust kettle, it's gonna hurt all jews, not just zionists.
the solution would be an investigation, using everything available, including ground penetrating radar…
but judging from doc aumann's game theory and the way jews are behaving –trying to criminalize skepticism instead of pushing for an investigation– jews dont even believe their own holocaust story.
Gene: At this point, I'm not ready to come up with a proposition. Perhaps this though: how can Humanity deal with the fact that there's a tribe in its midst whose survival depends on the existence of walls that separate it from the other tribes who may be destroyed if the walls stay up?
I think Elliott Abrams once argued that anti-Semitism was necessary to Jewish cohesiveness and identity.
Shut up, Eurotrash. You're an idiot if you think all we're thinking about from sun-up to sun-down is killing the next Jew. Most Palestinians are honest, hard-working individuals who want what everyone else has and takes for granted–a homeland. They just want to be left alone and allowed to continue normal, productive lives like their Israelie neighbours. I'm sick and tired of how you portray my people. My cousins in the West Bank, when I ask them how they are, they don't reply, "Wanting to kill all the Jews", they reply whatever they're feeling at that moment and our conversation turns to typical ails of life such as running errands or hating your boss. When we do talk about politics, they sigh and wish they could just have a little peace in life. We do acknowledge we must fight for our freedom–freedom isn't free–but we don't wish what happened to us on anyone. So STFU and please do us all a favor and commit yourself. Paranoia is a very serious illness.
BTW my spelling "error" on the term "Israeli" is deliberate. It's a personal way of not recognizing them, so if you want to attack me for it, go right on ahead. I don't care.
Groan the antisemites ed and rykert are out in force today. Why don't you guys just go away.
But to my one small point. Citizen wrote We don't want to be spit on like they did in America during the Vietnam War times.
This is a myth perpetuated by the ultraright in the US to disparage the antiwar movement.
Colin,
It was a WMD threat aimed directly at Tel Aviv. Even conventional warheads would have been enough to render the city uninhabitable. I saw Jewish Jerusalem rendered a ghost town by about 20 10kg bombs hand-delivered by human bomb, while Arab East Jerusalem grew fat and happy and prospered and mocked the Jewish dead, knowing that its cafés and university cafeterias were safe from a random reign of terror. There are those who know that once things got desperate enough, Croatia had American advisors and American photo recon and not too many questions asked about the Military Frontier. Israel doesn't need that much American assistance, so the temptation is always there. Given the continual Palestinian tendency to precipitate disaster (Black September, etc.) there is nothing strange about it, but I can see a nightmarish future in the offing. Bear in mind that Hezbollah is considered deterrable in a way that Hamas is not. Hezbollah's continued non-recognition of Israel and continued bombardment in the face of UN recognition of the Blue Line is a clue to their final goals.
There is nothing in Palestinians' rhetoric or praxis towards Israel that is NOT genocidal, and eventually Israel will respond appropriately to the threat instead of continually saving them from themselves by neatly blowing up the weapons of genocide far afield.
Eurosabra says…
why would anyone in their right mind swallow a replay of the iraq WMD hoax?
Another contested ground — Interfaith Dialogue:
Wadosy,
Jewish (and European) reluctance to have Holocaust researched has to do with psychology, not science.
Regardless of numbers, the industrialised killing of specific groups of people: Gypsies, Jews, mentally ill etc was an evil so enormous, that it cannot really compare with anything else (except to a degree, with smaller genocides).
As soon as research starts, the inconsistencies in data will start. These will be used to argue that the Holocaust did not take place. And the group of people who will stop believing that Holocaust took place will grow, and the group of people who will become sceptical about the Holocaust will increase expotentially.
People abuse science and research routinely and for variety of reasons: financial as pharmaceutical companies do or religeous as creationists or Jehovah Witnesses to prove literal truth of the Bible.
The argument seems to be that if there is no discussion about Holocaust then there will be no denial of the Holocaust.
Denial of the Holocaust is denial of enormity of evil societies are capable of. It is as destructive as denial that child labour is wrong, or insistance that some kids welcome pedophils attentions, or that slavery is part of the immutable order of the universe.
Personally, I would welcome research into Holocaust. I believe a government licence should be availabe to the serious researchers.
Why buy a big missile that can carry WMDs and then not use them if you're an Islamist not subject to normal considerations of deterrance?
You mean like Osirak, 1981? And Syria, 2007? Lots of radiation around those sites, strangely.
Are people here calling Ed and rykart antisemites to make themselves seem PC or rather, to mitigate OTHER people's perceptions (people who visit the site but do not post, people who visit the site but are in or leaning toward the Israeli camp) of them as antisemites?
It seems like you guys are pigeonholing Ed/Rykart in an attempt to 'cleanse' yourself of un-PC thoughts you may be having while engaging in this ongoing debate on I-P – as members of the Palestinian camp.
the fact of the matter is one can talk about groups as sociological entities without degradation if it is sincere and intellectual with the intent of pursuing truth/justice.
now, i will acknowledge that rykart has said some vulgar things but i don't think they constitute antisemitism.
furthermore, you guys seem so taken aback by 'bad words' than you do by dishonest rhetoric. by disingenuous rhetoric. by sensationalism. by "point scoring" (placing shallow debate tactics above TRUTH-SEEKING)
it all seems very lame to me. kind of like how Ron Paul was ragged on during one of those republican debates sponsored by Fox when he was talking about blowback. the moderator then straw manned his argument by asking him whether he was blaming the American PEOPLE (regular everyday citizens) for the 9/11 attacks. Then that motherfucking cuntrag (oh noes, I said a dirty word) Giuliani pounced on the momentum of that redneck retard infested audience and called Ron Paul out as if he was raping a bald eagle on-stage