A stunner in the Jerusalem Post, of all places, by the great Larry Derfner, denouncing the Gaza assault and saying that Israel's actions are "responsible" for the surge in the level of the global "reservoirs" of antisemitism. Has a lot to say about my favorite subject, Jewish power, not all of it in this excerpt:
I think there's a way of at least bringing that level down, a way that might work as well if not better than stepping up the hasbara: Let's stop fighting immoral wars. Let's stop laying siege to a tiny, destitute country. (That might stop Gazans from firing rockets at us, too.) Let's stop holding 10,000 Palestinian prisoners. (That might also help us get Gilad Schalit back.)
And finally, let's stop electing fascists to the Knesset. And if this is too much to ask of ourselves, let's at least have the decency not to bring them into the government. And if even that's beyond us, if we're going to have fascists as cabinet ministers, if we go so far as to have one for finance minister or foreign minister, then let's not complain about the next surge in global anti-Semitism, because we will have provoked that one, too.
This is not the 1930s. We, the nation of Israel, are far from being powerless, and we are far from being innocent.
And finally, let's stop electing fascists to the Knesset. And if this is too much to ask of ourselves, let's at least have the decency not to bring them into the government. And if even that's beyond us, if we're going to have fascists as cabinet ministers, if we go so far as to have one for finance minister or foreign minister, then let's not complain about the next surge in global anti-Semitism, because we will have provoked that one, too.
This is not the 1930s. We, the nation of Israel, are far from being powerless, and we are far from being innocent.
It is not the 30's, era of the Peel partition. Considering that over 60 years later, the partition scheme (scam) is still failing, that line of thinking can now be questioned.
It is 2009.
No blinders. The appeasements of the 1930's relative to regional expansionism is still real.
Its unknown what Iran's intentions are currently. They have voices in their official record that resemble the tone of 1930's Germany. And, they have voices that might moderate.
Unknown is the accurate term.
They have NOT made any commitments yet one way or the other.
I disagree with Lefner's and the Lobby's conflation of disagreement with aggressive and illegal Israeli policies and Anti-Semitism, as if it is all one reservoir of prejudice. It is, in my view, a high intellectual crime to constantly repeat this false conflation. It is a rationalization for one's bad behavior, and effort to change the subject to avoid accountability. "I may have murdered these 400 children, but those who object are Anti-Semites, so I don't have to repent and atone. I don't have to be accountable. I can elect leaders who are likely to be even more aggressive, and even less accountable."
In America, the right to voice one's objections to governmental policies with which one disagrees is a core value. Free and open debate is the best guardian of the truth and reality-based government. If people protest at speeches put on by Israel's defenders, it is not necessarily Anti-Semitism. Lefner's premise seems to be that only if Avigdor Lieberman is appointed to a key ministry will Israel have brought upon itself the strong opposition that rises by the day. What is required is accountability, pure and simple. No more slaughtering the Phillistines! Stop being a racist bully and war criminal, and behold how the enlightened world returns to normalcy. How about firing Chief Military Rabbi Avi Ronzki who incited IDF forces to be cruel to the Gazans, and who sought to disavow international laws of war protecting civilians, as the folly of the Gentiles. Voicing opposition to policies and actions like those promoted in Ronzki's book "Fight My Fight," isn't Anti-Semitism, it is the duty of any enlightened person who believes in the universal rights of humankind. Such people reject Anti-Semitism along with all other forms of prejudice out of hand. It ain't prejudice to disagree with policy.
Mr. Derfner steps right up to the plate and speaks truth. Not all anti-Israeli sentiment is antisemitic, and some antisemitism is a direct result of Israeli crimes. It occurs to me that the 'hood' in 'victimhood' can represent a covering of ones's mind and eyes. Many Zionists are blind to the fact that the world has changed since the 1930's, and that Jews have a respected and accepted place in American society. They are blind to the fact that group perceptions are now much more interactive. It is no longer a case of 'they are just going to hate us anyway', it is a case of 'our choices and actions do influence how other people see us'.
Compared to the racism African Americans face, Jewish American concerns about racism and prejudice directed towards them appear laughably self-centered. Just because not everyone likes you doesn't mean everyone wants to kill you. Every social and ethnic group has some prejudice directed at it, however much it may vary. It can never be eliminated, only minimized. I suggest that some Jews lack confidence in their ability to properly assess the level of prejudice against them, and actions they take from an overabundance of caution, especially in Israel, are absolutely counterproductive. It is a vicious cycle, a positive feedback. Is it possible to raise confidence in assessment by trying to see the world through other people's eyes, for example, a farmer in south Lebanon who has American-made Israeli cluster bombs strewn over his fields or a Palestinian student whose school is a smoking ruin? Maybe the colonies and the bombs do have something to do with Arab antipathy.
Mr. Witty, occasionally you write a post that is too easy to invert.
****************************************************************
It is 2009.
No blinders. The attempts at appeasement via never-ending 'peace' talks by Fatah have failed to halt Israeli regional expansionism, i.e. ethnic cleansing and colonization.
Its unknown what Israel's intentions are currently. They have voices in their official record that resemble the tone of 1930's Germany. And, they have voices that might moderate. Maybe they will attack Iran in spite of there not being a single shred of evidence for Iranian nuclear weapon development. Maybe they will 'transfer' millions of Palestinians, both Israeli citizens and those living under military occupation, to Jordan in another violent Nakba. Maybe they will tighten the starvation blockade of Gaza until tens of thousands start dying from malnutrition-exacerbated disease.
Unknown is the accurate term.
They have NOT made any commitments yet one way or the other.
"Mr. Witty, occasionally you write a post that is too easy to invert."
What you refer to as inversion is called turnspeak. The reason why it's gotten easier for you is surely due to lots of practice. :-)
Books online in full text about the global jew mafia. + 70 and counting.
http://jewise.wordpress.com/
Yeah, practice watching you and chris berel turnspeak constantly shows how it's done, though your turnspeak is so shallow and obvious a moron would detect it, though all of you Chris's Stools never broadcast you are doing it as a preliminary matter for you are not in the business like Colin is of trying to
get beyond grade school disruption antics to reach the higher ground of actual objective debate.
Click here for Hoffs blog ->->->
It is easy to invert, but only by someone who would both pooh-pooh Jewish concerns and ascribe a unique malevolence to Israel as only a dedicated enemy of the Jewish people would do.
Reasonable people look at the strategic concerns of a small country and consider the likelihood of an attack on Iran to be balanced by the reality of Israel's denial of nuclear weapons to Iraq in 1981, and to Syria in 2007, considering that Iranian improvements in concealment, fortification, and dispersion may make long-distance deterrence Israel's only real option. Reasonable people look at the case law before Israel's Supreme Court that has made it impossible to revoke the citizenship of actual Israeli-Palestinian terrorists, and the failure of attempted deportations of Hamas men to Lebanon in the late 90s, as precedents that make transfer improbable.
Uninformed ignorant demonizers conclude that the Jews are their misfortune.
Reasonable people would conclude that simple fairness requires lots of pressure to make die-hards believe the Palestinian people should have gotten their own state ages ago, and that the death ratio
so recent in Gaza, including so many civilians, babies, kids, women is wrong, and should be repeated. Reasonable people would also conclude that Iran has legitimate strategic and nuclear fears of Israel and the USA. Demonizers ignore the biggest picture, focusing only on a few cherry-picked PR tactics.
A NEW PEACE MAP
In a 3/1/09 Roanoke (VA) Times Op-Ed Morton Nadler has advanced a new approach to 'cutting the gordian knot' and achieving a two-state solution. It will ruffle many feathers but I think it deserves a careful reading:
link to roanoke.com
Full disclosure: My friend Morton Adler, is one of many progressive Jews who are advocating for justice in the Middle East. He, and they, are my heroes.
Jorge
Not a bad plan but not as comprehensive as the Abdullah 2 5-state solution.
In addition, it seems to me that Nadler's suggestion of giving Pals money with strings attached has already been done. To no avail.
I believe the 5-state solution takes into account the same conditions that Nadler makes–but there is more of a security measure in place to make sure both sides adhere to the conditions.
It's either that, or pressuring Jordan somehow to absorb the Palestinians due to their inability to manage a state on their own. There is serious concern that money and water rights are enough to stabilize them…
Either way, until the Pals' internal problems are handled in a substantive way…they are risk at falling back into an old pattern.
Furthermore, this somehow all needs to be transparent. The smoke and mirror games on both sides have gone on long enough.
I happen to think Palestinian leadership is more to blame than Israel, but regardless, Israel needs to clean up its act too.
typo corrections: There is serious concern that money and water rights aren't enough to stabilize them…
they risk falling back into an old pattern.
Well, I agree that old patterns need to be avoided on all sides as I think we all agree they have not solved anything, and probably made things worse. I also agree with the need for transparency. In a different context (some at least would say), all sides on USA cable TV news say we need more transparency on
on the bailout, the economic solution too. But we aren't getting it here, regarding the handling of the
USA economic problem, not are we getting it over there, the USA enabled I-P problem.
"There is no point in raising revolution that are doomed to failure from the start because the opposition
is too strong. In 413 the moment was not quite right; in 411 it was. Why was that so? The answer to the question introduces the second necessary ingredient–accession of popular sympathy . Although
the Athenians had rallied well after the Sicilian disaster, there was a strong current of public opinion among the more moderate , centre goup that all was not as it should be–that there must be something wrong with a system that could perpetrate so gigantic a failure at this. For the first time these people begin to emerge as a coherent body. " Thucydides on the Nature of Power, pp.71-72, A. Geoffrey Woodland, Oberlin College, Harvard U Press, 1970.
It is easy to invert, but only by someone who would both pooh-pooh Jewish concerns and ascribe a unique malevolence to Israel as only a dedicated enemy of the Jewish people would do.
I do not 'pooh-pooh' Jewish concerns, I merely ascribe them no more importance than Palestinian Muslim or Christian concerns, or most especially, American concerns. Should I put your interests, and the interests of a bunch of foreign colonists, above those of my own family? Why would you think that? I have no 'unique malevolence' to Israel. Aside from the obvious immorality of the Israeli government, which is hardly unique, my hostility to Israel is based upon Israel-first partisans in my country using me and mine like food animals to subsidize murder, torture, ethnic cleansing, and colonization that results in violent blowback against my innocent people. The notion that I am a dedicated enemy of the Jewish people is beyond preposterous. It is exactly this careless and vindictive use of language, e.g. use of the accusation of antisemitism as a political weapon, that undermines the seriousness with which such accusations are taken when they are accurate. Eurosabra, you have the 'hood' in victimhood completely over your senses. See my previous post.
Reasonable people look at the strategic concerns of a small country and consider the likelihood of an attack on Iran to be balanced by the reality of Israel's denial of nuclear weapons to Iraq in 1981, and to Syria in 2007, considering that Iranian improvements in concealment, fortification, and dispersion may make long-distance deterrence Israel's only real option.
Reasonable people also look at the concerns of Iran and the likelihood of Israeli or Zionist-inspired American attack. The constants threats to Iran in the Israeli press from your fascists, and the more circumspect ones by your 'mainstream' politicians have not escaped my notice. Mutual assured-destruction deterrence is Israel's only real option. Welcome to the club. Most anybody who is anybody in this world has nukes aimed at them. I've never lived in a city that surely didn't. You aren't special.
I've read Josephus. I know very well that Jewish bickering with Syrians goes back at least two thousand years, long before Islam when they were still worshiping Baal. This conflict is not about Islam. You folks are never going to have a 'normal' country if you don't start making at least a half-ass effort to get along with neighbors that aren't going anywhere. I hypothesize that this is because Israel is so very young as a nation-state in the Westphalian sense, and does not have the long and stable governmental institutional memory that more established states have developed over centuries of stupid wars and mistakes. Then is even more apparent with Israel's governance of minorities, probably the most difficult thing for nation-states to get right. Dispossessed and impoverished Palestinians circumscribe the expanding boundary of the Israel state. How far do you think you can push them out? They are going to line your borders, no matter how far you push them. How long do you think they will stay hostile? How long do think the West, with its own very different interests, is gong to subsidize suppression of their very just and understandable anger?
Reasonable people look at the case law before Israel's Supreme Court that has made it impossible to revoke the citizenship of actual Israeli-Palestinian terrorists, and the failure of attempted deportations of Hamas men to Lebanon in the late 90s, as precedents that make transfer improbable.
You have no moral or internationally recognized legal right to revoke the citizenship of actual Arab terrorists or criminals that are either Israeli citizens or under Israeli military occupation authority. Odds are their families have lived in what is now Israel vastly longer than most Israelis have. If they are terrorists, put them in jail or execute them, like any other normal country. Rendition is for citizens of other countries, so that they can be judged under their country's legal system. This brazen automatic assumption that they are 'other' and have no right to be treated under the legal system, including being executed, of the land in which they were born, and where their families have lived for generations, if not millennia, reeks of racism.
Uninformed ignorant demonizers conclude that the Jews are their misfortune.
I have no doubt that this is true in a lot of cases. I am, however, not one of them. The truth can hurt: Israelis are no more the 'good guys' than Arabs are the 'bad guys'. It hurt when I learned my country has been involved in a lot of bad stuff, and not everyone on my side is actually one of the 'good guys'. There are good folks, and there are bad folks, and there are good folks who screw up and do bad things. Recognizing that, and that not everyone who disagrees with you or even dislikes you is your enemy and views you as 'their misfortune', is just part of growing up, of which many Israelis have some need.
internationally recognized legal right to revoke the citizenship of actual Arab terrorists or criminals that are either Israeli citizens or under Israeli military occupation authority.
I don't understand this. How does this comply with respecting sovereign self interests of a nation?
My understanding, anyway, is there is no international governance. More like loose rules on how to play nice together in the global theater. Nothing about how each country runs its internal affairs. There's no country on earth that would ever accept that.
Everything Collin said is on target, both as to USA & Israeli, the current lone (but debt-ridden) USA superpower and its special cat partner. Both the USA & Israel need to grow up, quit being the spoiled twins of the world. There's always been a debate since ancient Greece at least between the proponents of a pure democracy and those for an elite form of government. No regime still existing always favor majority world opinion, for the same reasons a domestic pure democracy does not exist on the globe.
The counter to it, an elite, always raises the practical question: " What do you do when the elite have themselves dripped their principle of looking after the whole, the very justification for their privilege, dropped that ideal to go after the plebes' notion of always looking out only for their own self-interest?
@ Suzanne
"My understanding, anyway, is there is no international governance."
So, you agree that any support of Israel as a valid nation state because the UN general assembly recognized it as such is irrelevant? And also, the pre-conditions to that, going back to the Balfour Declaration to the world banker, Rothschild, the one that conditioned jews landing in Palestine and making such a refuge for the jews conditional on not depriving then non-jewish natives of anything fundamental to their then way of life?
@ Suzanne
Your use of the word 'comply' is fairly binary. There is great variance in internal state behavior, or actualization of 'sovereign self interest', that is respected or meets the general approval of the international community. An extreme example is the nation state of North Korea. Does anyone respect their sovereign self interest in suppressing dissent via mass-murder? The use of GM seeds is an example of wide disagreement.
I said that their is 'no internationally recognized legal right'. The lack of international recognition for citizenship revocation for legal resident criminals is consistent with your term 'loose rules'. I did not imply that there was uniform agreement that it was not acceptable, merely that there is not uniform agreement that it is acceptable. My point is that it is racist to single out legal resident Arab criminals, political or not, for deportation, when the issue of deportation for Jewish criminals who commit similar crimes is inconceivable. If they commit murder and are found guilty in an impartial court of law, hang or shoot them. One may or may not disagree with the notion that their killings are a right of an occupied people to resist their occupiers, but trying to fob them off on other countries smacks of 'culling the herd' of dissidents, and setting an example for the rest. Nevertheless, I think yours was a very good question. Issues of sovereignty, rather than global Islamofascism and the like, are in my opinion at the heart of the I/P conflict, and need to hashed out.
ok…thanks for clarifying.
Actually, what you said is why I personally don't believe there is going to be mass expulsions of Arabs for failing to take a loyalty oath. I just don't see it…
"Well, I agree that old patterns need to be avoided on all sides as I think we all agree they have not solved anything, and probably made things worse. I also agree with the need for transparency.
Well, knock me down with a feather. Did we just actually agree on something? lol!
Here's where we probably differ: I think Israel is more likely to comply when they feel assurance (and thus less paranoia) that the other side is NOT going to play games.
A state is sovereign there fore can do what it pleases domestically (and within land it otherwise controls?)
Groups not granted statehood by the UN via recognition, have no right remotely comparable?
The UN is a recognized as a universal control over individual states, who could otherwise merely point to
their UN recognized sovereignty as law enough the world should step back?
Or shall we revert to tribes per simple?
The notion of progress, and that of universal human rights is fully applicable–are we animals, or more?
All this is involved, not merely the jews per se, favor or against favor.
Kind of important given Nuremberg et sequence, given how WW1 treaty led to WW2, etc.
And a key "etc" was what happened to apartheid S Afrika. In light of that pull by the world community, are we progressing, or regressing?
I don;t see that Friedman's (not Abdullah's) "5-state solution" contradicts my proposal that the US recognize the State of Palestine as 100 others have already done. It supplements my proposal. I stated the need to have an international force to enforce any agreement. What could be more international than getting Egypt and Jordan in on the deal?
The lock is that South Africa is entirely different than Israel in every possible way.
You, citizen, are very much an animal. Even though we treat you better.
Can we please finally have Chris Berel banned from this site? Or at least have him publicly given one strike out of three? He doesn't have a clue how to post without making a slimy personal attack on other posters. His presence adds nothing to the discussion but insults.
tree
The problem is, we'd have to ban every pro-israel voice from the forum, as these lying, vulgar, apologists for Nazism are virtually indistinguishable from one another.
Defending the Jewish state in 2009 is a form of hate speech.
There's no way around that.
is Rowan trying to tell us he feels diminished in size? haha!
Morton– I didn't mean to imply the 5-state solution contradicted your proposal…I may have seen more of its details, so it seemed more comprehensive than yours…but it sounds like they are quite similar. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Witty: "Its unknown what Iran's intentions are currently. They have voices in their official record that resemble the tone of 1930's Germany."
It would be nice if Israel would say what its intentions are too? What for instance are it's territorial ambitions? Why doesn't it say what its intentions are for boundaries? How many settlers does it intend to put into the West Bank? When will it stop building new houses on land seized from other people, a continuing process which makes peace totally impossible?
Alexandr
I think you are being a little unfair. Actually, the israeli leadership has been rather forthright in its ambitions since 1948. Hertzl, Ben Gurion, Weitzman, Moshe Dayan, Begin, Rabin, Golda Meir, Sharon, Olmert, Livni, Netanyahu—all have been unapologetic ethnic cleansers. All have sought regional hegemony. All have used terrorism to achieve their ends. The israelis are nothing if not consistent. They have stated their intentions over and over. The funny thing is—whenever they say "we will never dissolve the settlements. We will never freeze settlement building. we will NOT stop torturing people. We will NOT abide by international law!"..the US ignores it and goes back to talking about the Israeli right to self-defense, or some similar non-sequitur.
While r shows his ignorance, there is no escaping the fact that Iran is determined to assist Hamas in commiting genocidal crimes.
Again, you are talking to someone who would like to see Israel a bit freer of the United States, and a little military restraint on the part of the US through cessation of the aid that allows Israel to cheaply re-manufacture F-16 parts FOR UNITED STATES CONSUMPTION would probably be a good thing. Ditto the extra millions of 5.56mm rounds made in Israel for the US war in Iraq. And Dallas-Fort Worth and St. Louis could probably stand a little less of the conspicuous consumption made possible by Israeli paranoia.
The tragedy is that Hezbollah will believe that it has a free hand once Iran gets the bomb, and many, many people are going to die, the vast majority of them Iranians, Syrians, and Diaspora Jews, once a horrible proxy war of mega-attacks like the Buenos Aires, London, and Madrid bombings spreads to Flatbush, Golder's Green, rue des Rosiers and il Ghetto, and Israel brings it home to Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Tehran, and Isfahan. The 1970s and 80s were the PLFP's Leon Klinghoffer salad days, and Hezbollah would like to do the same, and the FIRST car bomb outside a Yeshiva in New York means the end of any American Jewish concern for Arabs and the final ostracism of people like Phil as malshinim, okrei Israel, sonei achim from the American Jewish community.
The problem has been that Israeli-Arab terrorists have made cynical use of their citizenship, such as bringing in perpetrators from the Territories via marriage/family reunification provisions, including submitting social security death benefit claims for suicide terrorists, which (until the law was changed) that state was OBLIGATED to pay in at least one known case. So revocation of citizenship privileges when they were an actual tool of terror may be in order, although most of the case law is vague, it may be entirely possible for Israel to develop a body of modern law relating to sedition, as it is clearly the ONLY Western-law-heritage state with a subset of the population continuously involved terrorist war against it.
Eurosabra…was your post commenting on the proposal?
The global scenario you describe is terrifying. If it comes true, I fear your assessment of the outcome is correct. Just thinking about it gives me the jitters!