My new theme is that there is a tremendous amount of rage against Israel that is at last boiling to the surface post-Gaza, especially amid the air of righteous impunity the Israelis have adopted toward the atrocity claims. Latest piece of evidence, from Jewlicious comment section on the Oliphant cartoon:
I should not be surprised by the cartoon or the reactions. Just this
week I was reading TechCrunch (techcrunch.com) and a simple story on Israeli Venture
Capitalists and tech investments. This site is read by literate
techies, isn’t it? And what followed was over 300 comments, many about
the evil genocidal Israelis who are great at fone technology but awful
at humanity.
week I was reading TechCrunch (techcrunch.com) and a simple story on Israeli Venture
Capitalists and tech investments. This site is read by literate
techies, isn’t it? And what followed was over 300 comments, many about
the evil genocidal Israelis who are great at fone technology but awful
at humanity.
This is big, and it is spilling at last into the American conversation.
Good God Phil. I wish I had your optimism.
Phil, until Israel is demonized in our mainstream media will people finally wake up about this state's true evil intentions. People that are against Israel online and in the blogosphere are snarter than the general public who still refuse to turn off their TV sets and turn to the internet for real news.
Okay Phil, you hate Israel. The majority of the dozen or so people who post regularly here hate Israel. Some "progressives" in the US hate Israel, such as the other dozen or so people who regularly post on MJ Rosenberg's site at TPM-Cafe. Martillo hates Israel.
There are 250 million people in the US. 70% identify with Israel, 17% with the Palestinians, according to polls taken AFTER the Gaza War.
How many out of the 250 Million Americans saw the ABC TV report you are so excited about, which you claim marks a "paradigm shift"? How many of them changed their views?
Phil, you need to get a life. You claim you don't like "Jewish exclusiveness", yet you are absolutely obsessed by Jews. You spend most of your time thinking about Jews. You make several postings a day on this matter.
This obsession with Jews is nothing new. In the 18th century, somebody in Europe spent decades writing a 3000 page book ranting about how terrible Jews and Judaism is. So there are precedents. It is a very interesting psychological phenomenon.
That paradigm shift may be coming to high places as well … Dangerous times!
What did they think would happen?
By Amos Harel
Tags: Gaza, Operation Cast Lead
GOC Southern Command Yoav Galant's meticulous planning for Operation Cast Lead was mapped out to the last detail. The information gathered by the Shin Bet security service over the preceding two years provided excellent intelligence. But the General Staff also knew that hovering above was a conflicted political triumvirate, one member of which (Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) was eager to amend the dubious legacy he left behind in Lebanon, while the other two (Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni) were preoccupied with the impending election. In the backdrop was a fickle public and an impatient and demanding media. The General Staff expected that Israelis would have trouble accepting heavy Israel Defense Forces losses.
The army chose to overcome this problem with an aggressive plan that included overwhelming firepower. The forces, it was decided, would advance into the urban areas behind a "rolling curtain" of aerial and artillery fire, backed up by intelligence from unmanned aircraft and the Shin Bet. The lives of our soldiers take precedence, the commanders were told in briefings. Before the operation, Galant and Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi painted a bleak picture for the cabinet ministers. "Unlike in Lebanon, the civilians in Gaza won't have many places to escape to," Ashkenazi warned. "When an armored force enters the city, shells will fly, because we'll have to protect our people."
The politicians promised backing. Two weeks before the incursion, a member of the General Staff, talking to a journalist, predicted that 600-800 Palestinians civilians would be killed in an Israeli operation.
Advertisement
The terrorists operated from within a large and densely crowded civilian population, which they used as a human shield. This is asymmetrical warfare, of the type waged by the Americans after the occupation of Iraq and by the Russians in Georgia. Presumably, the IDF operated with more restraint than most armies, but the question is whether Israel uses this as a pretext to justify its actions.
A large part of the operation was conducted by remote control. "The Palestinians are completely transparent to us," says A., a reservist whose brigade was posted in the Gaza Strip. "The Shin Bet has people everywhere. We observe the whole area from the air and usually the Shin Bet coordinator can also tell you who lives in what house." The Shin Bet defines the enemy and, for the most part, someone who belongs to Hamas' civilian welfare organizations (the da'awa) is treated the same way as a member of its military wing, the Iz al-Din al-Qassam.
Essentially, a person only needs to be in a "problematic" location, in circumstances that can broadly be seen as suspicious, for him to be "incriminated" and in effect sentenced to death. Often, there is no need for him to be identified as carrying a weapon. Three people in the home of a known Hamas operative, someone out on a roof at 2 A.M. about a kilometer away from an Israeli post, a person walking down the wrong street before dawn – all are legitimate targets for attack.
"It feels like hunting season has begun," says A. "Sometimes it reminds me of a Play Station [computer] game. You hear cheers in the war room after you see on the screens that the missile hit a target, as if it were a soccer game."
The one who makes the final decision of whether to fire is usually not the brigade commander (who is with the forward forces in the field), but the "director" of combat, stationed at a command center in the rear: the deputy brigade commander, the headquarters' chiefs or majors who are studying and return to the brigade in times of combat. Another change in operational methods involved reducing reliance on the independent judgment of Israel Air Force personnel, who are located relatively far from the field.
'Little racists'
After the intense firepower employed at the outset, the forces were surprised to discover that they were not fighting in a "sterile," civilian-free environment as they had in Lebanon, 2006. Soldiers' testimonies, from graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon, and also from the watered-down descriptions supplied by the army's Bamahaneh weekly magazine, make this crystal clear. There were civilians who were too frightened to flee or who didn't read the leaflets dropped by the IAF, and remained in their homes. As in every war, prolonged time in the field led to brutish behavior in some of the units.
"The impact of the long confrontation with the Palestinians cannot be ignored," says a senior reserve officer, "and one should also bear in mind what sort of values inductees have when they come to us these days. Every year, the education system produces a significant number of little racists."
Periodic studies conducted by the IDF contain soldiers' testimonies about the use of the so-called "neighbor procedure" (forcing Palestinians to enter nearby houses to ask inhabitants to come out), abuses at checkpoints, shooting at medical personnel and more. In Gaza, too, while the official orders called for preserving the dignity and rights of Palestinian civilians, there were some junior officers who followed their own code and ignored improper actions by their troops. And there were, of course, impressive instances where the opposite occurred, such as the soldiers from a Golani patrol battalion who helped evacuate dozens of wheelchair-bound Palestinians from the combat zone.
There is a discrepancy between the official military response, of denial and horrified disapproval, the testimonies of the Rabin pre-military preparatory course graduates, and the response to those reports by key officers, unwilling to be identified.
"What did you think would happen?" a senior officer wondered this week. "We sent 10,000 troops into Gaza, more than 200 tanks and armored personnel carriers, 100 bulldozers. What were 100 bulldozers going to do there?"
The IDF estimates that approximately 2,000 houses were destroyed in the fighting. The Palestinians say the figure is twice that. IDF officers, who were not surprised by the testimonies, recalled that during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, military courts convicted soldiers for killing civilians, including the British peace activist Tom Hurndall, who was killed in Gaza in 2003.
Until the soldiers' testimonies were published, the IDF Spokesman's Office had been highly successful in promoting its version of events. The international media may not have bought it, but the army managed to sell the Israeli public an almost impossible package: We were victorious in Gaza, we suffered minimal casualties and we also came out of there smelling like roses.
On Monday, during a visit to an IDF induction center, the chief of staff addressed this matter. His statements ("I do not believe this happened") raised a few eyebrows in the defense establishment. Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi is also the commander of the investigators in the IDF criminal investigation division (CID), who are coordinating the two investigations that were launched in the wake of the soldiers' testimonies. Even when we are told time and again that "the IDF is the world's most ethical army" (copyright: Shaul Mofaz), we are not obliged to answer "Amen."
Criminal proceedings
This story is reminiscent of both intifadas: A complex, morally problematic mission, combined with lots of maneuvering room for field commanders, is liable to culminate in conduct that crosses the red line. This is what happened under then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin during the first intifada ("break their bones"), and it happened to prime minister Ehud Barak with the outbreak of the second intifada (in the form of millions of shots fired in the West Bank by the IDF, in October 2000). Sometimes, legal intervention can actually help reinstate the norms, but during the second intifada, the last IDF judge advocate general, Maj. Gen. Menachem Finkelstein, annulled the practice of opening an investigation into every killed Palestinian. His successor, Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, is launching his first investigations only now, after the publication of the testimonies from the Rabin course graduates.
During the two initial, gloomy years of the first intifada, four criminal proceedings shaped the rules of conduct: the Yehuda Meir case, the Golani case, and the Givati Alef and Givati Bet cases. Col. Emanuel Gross, who presided over the court in the Givati Alef case, made it clear to the army that breaking bones was unacceptable, that it was an illegal action "with a black flag fluttering above it." The Golani brigade commander at the time was today's chief of staff, Lieut. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.
@ Bar Kochba
I have to admit, I'm obsessed with Phil's Jew obsession.
Beware, the paradigm shift is nigh.
The troll tactic of focusing on the supposed emotional failings of the critic (as in he hates Israel) is utterly hypocritical. Israel makes it clearer and clearer day by day that it hates and despises everyone and everything except its imaginary sacred self (including, incidentally its own citizens, whom it brainwashes and treats like shit).
Phil, I think the thing is that we do not see our governments apply the same yardstick to Israel that they do to other countries. Aggression on the scale committed by Israel usually has more transparency, and more criticism, even when it is being whitewashed. I think countries which have small Jewish numbers, such as my homeland, Australia, and larger numbers of other minorities, wonder why our government never criticises the actions of a country many miles away even when its deeds are worthy of criticism. The fact that the people we elected are not speaking for a lot of us,and not speaking out, means that we have to speak, hence, I think, the anger arises. I think a lot of the public feels why condemn what seems to be viewed as generic Arab Middle Eastern violence on the one hand, but applaud it if it is perpetrated by Israel? Because this issue is not getting discussed, does get whitewashed, discussion is stifled, that is where the anger is coming from. The anger, or frustration, increases the more it cannot be talked about. And it is not just frustration with Israel, but definitely with our politicians and media. So, people need to use any outlet they can get, even on techcrunch, as other options of addressing the situation are denied them.
Rowan-
As an Israeli citizen I find it out that you, who aren't, are telling me how I am treated by my government. Okay, you have a lot of rage in you just like many of the others who comment here (warning-that was a "troll" comment).
The sad thing is, we have no honest Zionists on this blog. None on Richard Silverstein's as well.
They are all douchebags. I say that word a lot but I mean it sincerely in regards to people like Shirazi.
Same tactics over and over: antisemitism antisemetism! Why do you hate Israel?! Don't you remember the Holocaust!?
They are so infantile and inanely idiotic that it's best just to ignore them.
bar_kochba132
Get the back of your hand off your forehead. Phil and the people here dont hate Israel. We hate what it does — excessive constant violence — the deception, the charges of anti-semitism because we, US taxpayers who have to pay for this shit, complain about it.
You live in Israel? Let me tell you Phil is right about the tide shifting here. We have former taxpayers living in tent cities in Sacramento and elsewhere now, and then we hear about the US government sending our tax dollars to your country to pay for more guns? $30 billion? We luvs you, baby, but we're done. You use our tax dollars to decimate civilians, buildings — edifices we'll wind up paying to reconstruct — because your leaders dont know how to sit down and talk as if it were a mature nation run by adults? You kill medical workers. You’re starving people right now of food and fuel. We're fed up with your whining, your terminal hatreds and sense of entitlement, and your inability to open your mouths without mentioning the Holocaust, and your national inability to tell the truth. And you have the fucking gall to label those of us who complain about this as 'anti-semitic'? We’re tired of your tribal hatreds and your belief in some agrarian holy book that dictates you should do this or that in the 21st C because you were king of the hill 5000 years ago. The world has changed but you haven't.
We're just fed up. And Phil is taking that pulse and reading it accurately.
If you think the outrage over $153 million in bonuses to AIG execs got ugly with death threats, even against the execs’ children, wait until the $30 billion to Israel sinks in. But then, you’ll all be on the ground emoting about anti-semitism and completely missing the point. Only this time all your wailing about the persecution of Jews and ‘you’re all out to destroy Israel’ and etcetera is going to fall on deaf ears.
"You live in Israel? Let me tell you Phil is right about the tide shifting here. We have former taxpayers living in tent cities in Sacramento and elsewhere now, and then we hear about the US government sending our tax dollars to your country to pay for more guns? $30 billion?"
@ MRW and all others,
Let's go and tell these people living in tent cities what our government is doing with our money, feeding foreigners who are apparently very prosperous thanks to the USA. But their insatiable greed won't let up for our money or for the Palestinian blood. Somebody make fliers and hand them out.
Currently there are not tent cities where I live and I hope to see none. How heartbreaking would that be.
Its all about HATE. You can critique the actions of other nations, but Israel is SPECIAL! Israel is specially doomed to feel the burden, so its all hate. Its true because i say it is! I'm going to ignore the facts!
Don't you know that when Israel goes excessive in its military actions, its only because they were forced to by the people they were bombing? Baby, they made me do it! Israelis are the victims in the Gaza war!
/did I cover them all?
That was a very satisfying post, MRW. Thanks.
Saleema,
Schwartzeneggar announced yesterday that the tent cities have to go; they are too prolific and ruining property values. But he is giving them the stadiums to live in, which will also provide some safety as well. There are people living there who are also working, just homeless. So heartbreaking. So incredibly heartbreaking.
Your idea is a good one; however, as the tent cities proliferate — especially in the colder regions as HuffPo showed yesterday — real rage against handouts to foreign countries will grow exponentially. Israel is going to take a bullet between the eyes because the US gives it half its foreign aid monies every year. Compound that with the 19th C views of a bellicose Avigdor Lieberman, closet-extremist Netanyahu, fatigue over apartheid for any reason whatsoever, and Israel is finished here. The NYT can flick all the fairy dust it wants over the situation, but it has already lost any byzantine puerile arguments that Bronner et al can come up with.
I read that as a result of so many people having lost their jobs, the net has become the news source for people who formerly grabbed a paper on the way to work. Phil's traffic is up 107% in the last three months, so says alexa.com. This blog has become the go-to place for the straight skinny.
Its a great blog w/ great debate. The Pro-Palestinian camp is very intelligent/educated on the history of not only this conflict but other issues as well.
I'm thankful or MRW/Rowan/Joachim/LeANder/Ed/Rykart/Colin/etc (all of the rest).
Funny how after ALL this time, the Zionist presence on the blog is still like a caricature. The collective Zionist presence is about as intellectually complex as Roy Stalin from Better Off Dead.
I met Norman Finkelstein last night at a talk that he gave at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts. I had invited Phil, but he couldn't make it. (It was good that he didn't come, as they had seats only for members of the college community, and I only got in because of a Hampshire faculty member whom I knew previously.)
Norman made some good points, and some really very petty ones. I agree with the element of his goal of removing Israeli occupation from the West Bank and Gaza, and establishing confident Palestinian sovereignty.
I strongly differ with his manner of getting there. I find that he criticizes others misrepresentations or over-simplifications, and then proceeds to misrepresent and over-simplify.
Specifically, he sited that the International Court of Justice was the highest court in the planet, and that its opinions had the effect of law.
The International Court of Justice however serves only two functions, neither of which are authoritative as defining "international law" comparable to a US Supreme Court or Israeli Supreme Court.
ICJ mediates inter-STATE disputes, and in cases where the parties are not states, recommends determination to the UN General Assembly. Even UN General Assembly resolutions are not "international law", but require consent by the Security Council to be enacted into law.
But, in conflict with UN General Assembly and Security Council LAW, many UN member states (implying willing consent to the UN authority) do not even recognize Israel's existence, even 61 years after the UN ratification of its charter.
All states excepting Israel are allowed to participate in the rotation of member seats on the ICJ. Israel is prohibited from that participation.
The ICJ court process is not conducted in the same manner as US Courts, with the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, right to representation, right to appeal. As the recommendations of that court are merely recommendations to the General Assembly, it doesn't matter that much.
It only matters when individuals like Finkelstein CONFLATE the authority of that court, and describe it as consented "international law".
Similarly with the investigations of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. Their contributions in investigating are critical. They are important institutions in the world. But, they are NOT "international law". They are the equivalent of an attorney general. An attorney general may propose and argue a case, but they are solely a single claimant. The US attorney general's office has lost as many cases before the Supreme Court as its one.
To CONFLATE its accusations to "law", is false.
In cases where there is clear and unambiguous precedent for law, the law is clear.
Finkelstein's assertion that law on really any area that he's discussed is "clear and unequivocal", is a FALSE assertion, a DANGEROUSLY false assertion for the prospect of mob and political "justice", rather than reasoned and legal justice.
Witty, your definition of 'the law' is State policy.
Now, it just so happens that these institutions function differently from internal State oversight.
It's obvious what the differences are.
They are – in theory – supposed to be impartial, at least MORE impartial if we're comparing, than INTERNAL oversight.
So while you are correct to a degree, your alternative is even worse – that we allow Israel to dictate right and wrong in the I-P conflict.
The same dishonest you exude in all your arguments is present here. Norman has often spoken about how the UN issues statements that are not 'official', rather more like recommendations.
Sort of like the partition plan. The Zionists took that and ran with it.
Now, i would say all law is policy. Justice is not the same as policy.
And if that's the case, then we should at least look at these NGOs decisions as rule of thumb – at the least.
They should weigh on our decisions.
Otherwise, we are simply letting powerful countries decide when they are right and wrong. And there is no reason to believe Israel will solve this conflict by itself based on it's VIRTUE. It has none.
All one has to know about your character Witty is how you characterized the transfer of Israeli Jewish settlers from the occupied Palestinian territories, back to Israel as ETHNIC CLEANSING.
These settlers who are paid to colonize someone else's land. You call it ethnic cleansing.
Do you even know what that fucking word means?
You're a scumbag.
Its a great blog w/ great debate. The Pro-Palestinian camp is very intelligent/educated on the history of not only this conflict but other issues as well.
I'm thankful or MRW/Rowan/Joachim/LeANder/Ed/Rykart/Colin/etc (all of the rest).
Funny how after ALL this time, the Zionist presence on the blog is still like a caricature. The collective Zionist presence is about as intellectually complex as Roy Stalin from Better Off Dead.
A "Better Off Dead" reference on Mondoweiss! Now we're cooking!
I'm thankful for everyone here as well. Phil and Adam's posts, and the subsequent conversations we have, the information we share – it's incredible.
That said, I'll be away for a while. I'm going to be visiting an "intentional community" (similar to a kibbutz) for a few weeks, and I'll have limited access to internet.
Best wishes to all. Keep up the great work!
I Want My Two Dollars!
those rabbid anti semite techies ought to be sent to hollywoods de-programming classes.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=14471
It seems that ever since he was identified as having met with convicted Israeli spy Larry Franklin – a meeting that was monitored by the FBI's counterintelligence unit, and noted in Frankln's indictment – Arad has had great trouble obtaining a US visa. In August of 2004, Franklin – the Pentagon's top Iran analyst, and a habitué of the neocons' ad hoc lie factory, the "Office of Special Plans" – was arrested and indicted for conspiracy to transmit sensitive classified information to Israeli embassy officials. The indictment documents that he did so with the assistance of two employees of AIPAC, the Israel lobby's Washington powerhouse, including Steve Rosen, the group's chief lobbying official and architect of its unprecedented success.
They recruited Franklin, and then handed him over directly to Naor Gilon, then the Israeli embassy's chief political officer. Gilon and Franklin met regularly from February through May and throughout the summer, often at the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club. This was the venue of a meeting between Gilon, Franklin, and Arad, where, sitting at a table in the Pentagon cafeteria, Franklin briefed his handlers on the status of Iran's nuclear program – and doubtless much else.
Rozen avers that "Clinton's suggestion was made, sources say, in the hopes that Netanyahu would get the message and excuse Arad from the meeting." To be sure, he got the message all right – and so did she. The Israelis are perfectly well aware that Arad is radioactive right now, with the trial of Rosen (and his accomplice, Keith Weissman) looming – which is precisely why the Israelis pushed him forward.
I love that phrase .."most moral army".. did someone compile a list? ..if so, was he jewish?..
From the phrase one might conclude only a supremely moral peoples could have given the world the gift of the world's most moral army. Funny thing though, when i think of notable moral exemplars, i tend to think of one or two individuals and their sayings
"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also"
or
Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law
… thus – to the christian world at least – the phrase bespeaks of the zionist promotion of the worldly morality of the IDF in contradiction to what we know to be true
The US withdrew from its 1946 acceptance of compulsory ICJ jurisdiction in 1984. It has some treaties with various states which include a dispute clause incorporating ICJ jurisdiction. Enforcement of ICJ court results is very weak, for example when the ICJ told the USA it had to pay Nicaragua reparations, the USA
just ignored it–and withdrew from its jurisdiction. Israel does not recognize any shade of ICJ jurisdiction to my knowledge.
On international jurisdiction generally, Israel can point to the UN vote for partition (after Zionist Americans pressured states to vote in favor or they wouldn't get any reconstruction aid to rebuild after WW2).
The USA is responsible for the current state of Israel–thanks to Truman. Our State Department and
UN reps were prepared to vote with most other nations for a UN protectorate to replace the Brit Mandate. They were dumbfounded and wanted to walk out in protest when Truman's agent announced
the USA's unilateral recognition of Israel. Ben Gurion accepted partition (itself disproportionate in terms of respective populations) only as a temporary tactic and never agreed to borders, his declared
purpose was always to pursue a Greater Israel–this underlying policy is stat today.
Truman treated an international affair as a domestic one. He needed money for his whistle stops and the NY vote. He said he had no Arab voters but the Zionists were all over him like white on rice. We still
live in this arena over 60 years later. Niles and his former shop partner were very influential. It's totally
consistent that during the Bush days Israeli officers came and went wherever they wanted on Capital Hill, and that Obama was silent during the recent GAZA episode and on Chas Freeman
Here is a pretty concise essay on the birth of the state of Israel.
link to coat.ncf.ca
You ski the K-12 dude, and girls will go sterile just looking at you!
This obsession with Jews is nothing new. In the 18th century, somebody in
the son of the star strikes again……
"Europe spent decades writing a 3000 page book ranting about how terrible Jews and Judaism is. So there are precedents. It is a very interesting psychological phenomenon."
phil your peeps are going to certify that you are nuts.
to the nuthouse with phil….he has antisemites disease…he hates jews through israel.
i still cant wait to see how they (the everpresent they) come after philipweissmondoweiss.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
The idea of the woefully misnamed IDF (ITF would be more accurate) as the most moral army in the world is just more Israeli propaganda, imitating their former persecutors, the Nazis.
And I think the meaning of the headless soldier in Oliphant's cartoon is that of the ghost of the long dead Nazi ideology resurrected in the Jewish State. So sad.
I am currently working on a theme of a new Exodus. Exodus as the myth it was written as, not the literal Exodus beloved of fundamentalists.
Exodus was about escaping tyranny. Israelis must now escape the tyranny trapping them presently; the tyranny of an exclusive religious state, which, against Judaism theology, justifies genocide approaching Nazi proportions.
Who will part the Sea of Reeds this time?
Yes,
"Can you rede (since We and Thou had it out already) its world? It is the same told of all. Many. Miscegenations on miscegenations. Tieckle. They lived und laughed ant loved end left. Forsin. Thy thingdome is given to the Meades and Porsons. The meandertale, aloss and again, of our old Heidenburgh in the days when Head-inClouds walked the earth. In the ignorance that implies impression that knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that en-tails the ensuance of existentiality."
-James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Sometimes you need you stand back from the wall to see the writing on it. :-)
Very true (the post is.) I follow a tennis blog and even there people were outraged about Gaza. Each day Gaza looks more and more like a game changer.
Bar Kochba, you don't know what you are talking about. You live in your world of wishful thinking, believing that if Israel was able to get away with what it was doing for such a long time, it ought to continue. Well, you're like that Nissim Taleb's turkey, that each passing day gets more and more convinced that life is good, until one evening before Thanksgiving…
Regarding Rowan's assertion about treatment of Israeli citizens, you had a very lame reaction. As if only Israeli citizens can criticize the treatment of Israeli citizens by the Israeli government? Especially those de-facto citizens that are lacking their citizens right? Do you also exercize the same restraint when talking about, say, rights of the citizens in the Arab countries or Iran?
Jewlicious – The Most Moral Web Site in the World
They can get knotted over there as they have no qualms about changing the text of someone's posts when they are losing or get in a pissy mood. They were trashing Dr. Norman Finkelstein and when people came to his defense, it didn't take long for the 'Nazi' and anti-Semite charges to appear. Then they just started to doctor the favorable posts with the most childish revisions. They pretended to take the moral high ground while at the same time not owning up to the fact they they were changing posts.
They are cowards and blowhards; pure and simple.
The sad thing is, we have no honest Zionists on this blog. None on Richard Silverstein's as well.
They are all douchebags. I say that word a lot but I mean it sincerely in regards to people like Shirazi.
Same tactics over and over: antisemitism antisemetism! Why do you hate Israel?! Don't you remember the Holocaust!?
They are so infantile and inanely idiotic that it's best just to ignore them.
LD … Don't you get it? That I'm able to piss you off so much, to the extent that you resort to ad homonyms and invectives time and time again when no one else does, it only encourages me. You want to ignore me? Go ahead, but insulting me has quite the opposite effect.
I'm here to discuss and debate, read and learn. I value everyone's comments, even yours.
Furthermore, not once — not in a single post anywhere — have I written about or used the word "Holocaust" or "anti-Semitism" (if I used the latter, it was only to distinguish it from anti-Judaism, which is what I really think you people are all about, and there is a difference). Which makes me wonder if you even read what some of us write, or the minute we don't conform to your ideas, you instantly label it as a "douchebag Zionist" comment.
I have the say, the vitriol you reserve especially for me is uniquely flattering. I know why I, in particular, bother you so much — it's because I'm a "brown" Jew who doesn't fit into your convenient white Euro settler-colonialist goosestepping stereotype. It's because I was born and lived in a part of the world you know nothing about, and therefore can see your occasional B.S. for what it is. As I said once before, you really have no "standing" to make some of the claims and arguments you do, but this is the Internet, and as Prof. Khaled Abou El Fadl likes to say, any idiot with an opinion suddenly has an audience. That would include this idiot (me) as well as you.
So yeah, go ahead and "ignore" me. Advise others to do the same. That's really productive and mature … kind of like our government's stance vis-a-vis Hamas and Hezbollah … right?
Your move, oh enlightened one.
I am going to repost this evey time the bar_kockbal32's show how litle they understand where the US public is on Israel and what it means.
I don't think bar_kochba132 is familiar with the saying "whistling thru the graveyard" or he wouldn't give his desperation away quite so obviously.
If there is one most notable thing about the American public it is that they can turn on a dime, turn heros into zeros in a NY minute…we are fickle, ignore much unless it impacts us personally and yet when some new idea or outrage pops up on our radar screen we are all over it like white on rice… and that is what is happening in opinions of Israel. The public has been leaning that way since Lebanon 2 years ago and this year Gaza pushed them over the edge.
The Univ. of Maryland World Opinion poll is the gold standard,poll of all polls. The only poll that is recongized by experts as accurate, non partisan, non slanted by any ideology or political agenda. In short the only one the "very serious people' take seriously.
The Univ of Maryland poll showed a lot but in particular the results for America on Israel, even before Gaza, showed that 71% of the American public wanted the US to take an "even handed stand" on I-P.
When they do their next one I expect it will show a more overtly disapproving attitude toward Israel due to Gaza and the breakthru of blogs like this and the work of public figures like Carter, W&M, Tutu, Freeman, Joe Kline, Cohen and etc. in exposing the truth.
I don't have any attachment to Israel and whatever sympathy I had orginially has evaporated over the past 6 or 7 years so it doesn't much matter to me what happens to Israel as a state. My concerns, like most Americans are first, the injustice of I-P and the out of proportion suffering Israel causes a mostly defenseless people and second, my country's political corruption that enables the US-Isr relationship and I-P conflict and what it has done to our reputation in the world.
BUT..if I were a zionist and dedicated to Israel I would be standing on the brakes and doing everything I could to change Israel's policies and attitude. The last thing I would be doing is using the bar_kochba132, Suzanna, witty, and etc approach to further piss off the public that is following this issue and convince even more of us that the zionist and Israel are indeed immoral and insane with more nonsensical spin,lies and justifications for unjustifiable.
BECAUSE…Israel will be brought down if it continues doing what it is doing. And that is not a wish on my part, that is just the obvious and inevitable outcome.
The militant zionist would do well to study the comments here and pay attention to what is really being said in all the yada, yada flame wars going on that shows 2 of the issues with Israel most on American's minds…here is an example in three sentences that covers it:
"for what I think is the most quickly growing American demographic, of which I am a member: those who want America to put American interests first. This is not about choosing sides in a foreign conflict.
We Americans don't have to 'identify' with Palestinians to side against foreign ethnic cleansers and colonists."
Posted by: Colin Murray
There you have it, the two most potent and motivating factors for the public against Israel. In pointing this out to the Israelites I am doing them a favor, but I expect them to continue ignoring the facts at their own peril.
I don't know what all you people are arguing about. If we explain to people the only reason they hate Israel is because they are anti-semiotic, not only will they thank us and stop hating on Israel, but they will be much more eager to take our advice in other areas.
Here's a little clue for you all: Telling another Jew that so-and-so is anti-Semitic is a completely different proposition from telling so-and-so he is anti-Semitic.
But don't listen to me, Richard, I'm one of those bagel-and-schmear-Jews, you know, the ones for whom Judaism is just an accident of birth, not a Jew who continuously proves his bona fidoes with service to Zionism.
But you go ahead and yell how anti-semitic everything is. Be sure to use that reasoning when you are arguing the subject with anyone who is a "minority". They'll fall right in with you, throw their arms around you and say, "You and me both, brother, I know how it is! We is both fightin' Mr. Charley, every day"!
"We Americans don't have to 'identify' with Palestinians to side against foreign ethnic cleansers and colonists.""
Posted by: Colin Murray
Give us Americans a break, huh, Colin? Many people do identify with the Palestinians, and as people begin to know about them and their situation many more will.
As I remember, the Zionists were never averse to doing or saying anything which they thought might get people to "identify" with them. It works both ways.
And model rocketry has always had a large enthusiastic following in the US.
"it's because I'm a "brown" Jew who doesn't fit into your convenient white Euro settler-colonialist goosestepping stereotype."
That was one of the cheapest things I've seen a Zionist do in a while. How much you wanna bet "Eurosabra" picks up that trick. Probably green with envy.
Oh, and has "Bar Kochba" made clear whether he is a resident of Israel, or just a "citizen of Israel" by way of Jewish origin?
If I remember him from TPM, it's the latter.
There ought to be some way all of us "citizens of israel" can drain the Jewish state of social services, pensions, etc it seems to me we ought to be entitled t– residency or no residency.
We should force the israeli assholes to make good on their claim of being a state for all Jews worldwide.
All I know is I don't like what I see and it's being done in my name, and with my tax dollars. I'm just an average American. It's very annoying to be ignored in so many ways.
Certainly Irishmen like myself can identify with the situation of the Palestinians. I'm sure this is true as well of blacks in America.
The inability to empathize with people in your situation suggests a real failure of imagination. I've always been struck by how a fascist like Hitler, instead of admiring at the bravery of how a people like the Poles stood up to him, struck out at them with fury.
@ Mooser | March 27, 2009 at 01:36 PM
Give us Americans a break, huh, Colin? Many people do identify with the Palestinians, and as people begin to know about them and their situation many more will.
I agree with you, Mooser. The full post, @ Colin Murray | March 27, 2009 at 08:33 AM, adds more context, but I certainly could have expressed that better. I personally have great sympathy for Palestinians, and believe that they have no less right to their own state, or equal rights within a binational state, than Jewish Israelis have.
My point is that one doesn't necessarily have to have sympathy for Palestinians in order to oppose American subsidization of Israeli ethnic cleansing and colonization, and the Lobby's facilitation of it. bar_kochba132 was attempting to peddle the false argument that we have to choose a side, and that we of course should choose Israel because they are more civilized. I won't let others set the terms of the debate, beginning the dialogue with false assumptions whose purpose is to obscure from people other alternatives that may be more in their own interest. Thanks for pointing out that possible misinterpretation.
Wait!
Hold the phone!
The Palestinians "have no less right" to a state than the Israelis have?
That would imply the Palestinians have ZERO right to a state, as the Israelis plainly have zero right to a state.
The majority of Israelis should be serving lengthy prison terms. No reasonable case can be made that they are entitled to a square inch of the land they occupy. It is time for them to return to Englewood Cliffs or wherever they came from.
Englewood Cliffs. Pretty funny, rykart. And thanks, David F.
Err, the jews had land of their own what 3,000 years ago? And the arabs were living on the land for generations, what when the first zionist settlers came a 100 plus years ago?
Enter the holocaust.
Enter zionist domestic politics & money within the key power nations, overwhelmingly gentile.
You don't vote for partition, you don't get USA foreign aid to reconstruct yourself. Or any aid at all.
Enter Truman. Enter the zionists yet again.
Little man.
Now big international problem–as he refused to see in 1948.
@Shirazi
You are giving yourself way too much credit. I'm sitting here typing angrily. Rawr!
I don't even acknowledge your identity most of the time. I have to make sure to copy and paste your name because your opinions are so trite that they could easily be from Suzanne or Witty.
I didn't know you were brown. I don't care. I actually judge you only based on your comments. And from your incessant whining about swear words while you know, actual content.
I'd be more offended by Witty's claptrap than by Chris Berel's vulgarity.
And while at times I must look JUST like Berel in my posts just aimed at ZioPuke – I've been able to post w/ civility before. And I don't attack Zionists at every chance. Just the ones who play off the hasbara talking points. Witty likes to slip them in amidst the empty meaningless rhetoric that accounts for most of his posts.
All of this seems so cliche but it's unfortunately true.
But oh lawdy, don't give yourself too much credit. Zionist Jews in this on-going debate on the net, love to point out their Jewishness. It's getting lame. I don't have anything against you based on a stereotype.
Witty's the nerd that appears in every American teen movie–all written by nerds of the same ilk. They have no clue–but they do recognize white trash when they see it, just not their own version of same–or they decline to represent it–can't wash dirty jewish laundry in goy public–old saw, long held.
So most of the non -Jewish world sees the Jews and Israel in a negative light? Nothing new about that is there when we think of the charges of killing first Christian and now Moslem children in order to drink their blood!? (Wonder if it is Kosher?)Then there is the charges of poisoning wells of non-Jews and much more including G-D killing! Who cares, as Mark Twain pointed out-The Ancient Egyptians,The Ancient Greeks,The Babylonians, The Romans all tried to kill of all the Jews and their religion. They have all been consigned to the dustbins of history but the Jews are still going strong. In later years the Nazis and the communists have suffered a similar fate. I strongly believe that the Jews will still be around when all the Pro-Islamist propagandists and their Loony Left helpers have suffered a similar fate.
From: link to nkusa.org
Mileshtin was quoted by the Israeli daily, Hadashot, in an article published August 13, 1993. The writer, Sarah Laybobis-Dar, interviewed a number of Israelis who had knowledge of the use of bacteriological weapons in the 1948 war. Mileshtin said bacteria was used to poison the wells of every village emptied of its Arab inhabitants.