Why is all the good mainstream journalism about Israel appearing in England and Israel? Here is Max Hastings, former editor of the Telegraph, giving an inspired lecture on how Israel, which he frequently visited and long admired, has so celebrated the use of force that it has damaged its soul. The lecture is excerpted in the Guardian today. It is only astonishing to me that this sensible analysis of self-destruction, which Americans Ian Lustick, Steve Walt, Henry Siegman, Jerome Slater, and John Mearsheimer all echo, is not published prominently in my country. Hastings:
[In the 1970s] I glimpsed a darker side of Israel. I learned a lot about the ruthlessness of Israeli anti-terrorist operations. I spent many hours talking to thoughtful Israelis, who voiced their fears about the perils, the threatened corruption of their own society, which they perceived in the 1967 conquests. I also became dismayed by the naked imperialism displayed by Israel's rightwing zealots. One night at a dinner party in Jerusalem in 1977, I heard a young Israeli talking about the Arabs in terms which chilled my blood. "In the next war," he said, "we've got to get the Palestinians out of the West Bank for good."
To me, in my naivete, Israel's struggle had hitherto seemed that of a brilliant little people, who had suffered the most ghastly experience of the 20th century, struggling for survival amid a hostile Middle East still bent upon their destruction. Now, suddenly, I found myself meeting Israelis committed to the creation of a greater Israel embracing the West Bank, who were utterly heedless of the fate of its inhabitants. The Palestinians were perceived as losers, a mere incidental impediment to the fulfilment of Israel's historic territorial destiny. By a curious quirk, that young Israeli whom I heard enthuse about emptying the West Bank of Arabs was Binyamin Netanyahu, today his country's prime minister.
…In the days when I visited Israel regularly, dinner-table arguments about the nation's strategy became familiar. There would often come a moment when somebody would blurt out – justifying this or that aspect of Israeli policy: "But you've got to understand why we must do this – because of the Holocaust." For more than 60 years, the Holocaust card has been played again and again. Today in Europe, there is not the slightest danger that the unspeakable fate of the Jews in the 1940s will be forgotten. But many people, especially the young, no longer perceive the crimes of Hitler, however monstrous, as providing remotely adequate justification for – for instance – Israeli military excesses in Gaza and the appropriation of scarce water resources at Palestinian expense.
The Holocaust argument is sometimes displaced by a more facile jibe: that those who criticise Israel are guilty of anti-semitism. I have been accused of this myself…Many Jews no longer believe that the Zionist concept of entitlement, based first upon Biblical history, and latterly upon the Holocaust, suffices to justify perpetuating historic injustice upon the Arabs of Palestine…
An Israeli listening to all this might interrupt angrily: "But why do you say so little about Hamas and Hizbollah, rocketing and suicide-bombing innocent Israeli civilians?" Yes, indeed – such acts must always be condemned. But what of proportionality? In recent years, for every Israeli killed by terrorism, the Israeli security forces have killed 30, 40, 50 Palestinians – most of them civilians. Israel exacts a blood price from the innocent of a severity which only tyrannies have historically thought appropriate.
The entire thrust of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians in recent times has been to convey a crude message of overwhelming power, of Israel's ability to command, kill or destroy at will, without fear of sanctions. The Israeli army, which once exemplified much that was best about Israel, has today been corrupted by the long experience of suppressing insurgency. Morally, if not militarily, it is a shadow of the force which fought in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973.
RE: I heard a young Israeli [Bibi Netanyahu] talking about the Arabs in terms which chilled my blood. "In the next war," he said, "we've got to get the Palestinians out of the West Bank for good." NETANYAHU'S ÜBER RACIST FATHER: “The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases." ….. …."The two states solution doesn’t exist. There are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population… there is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation… they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews." – Ben Zion Netanyahu SOURCE OF NETANYAHU'S FATHER'S WORDS – http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009...
RE: "The entire thrust of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians in recent times has been to convey a crude message of overwhelming power, of Israel's ability to command, kill or destroy at will, without fear of sanctions." MY COMMENT: An "Iron Wall"? REFERENCES – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze'ev_Jabotinsk... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze'ev_Jabotinsk... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze'ev_Jabotinsk...
Put it this way, the current American regime, and the regimes all before, starting with the little German American squirt, Truman, with small rebellions by Ike, JFK, and Bush Senior, have all looked at the political advantages, and come down on the side of Israel, against the basic principles of their faith, for the sake of their individual power and the perks that go with it as Prez. It's actually very simple. Look at the Truman archives of recognition of Israel and the annoyed Truman. Israel is akin to his no-talent daughter. The goy in power is evil. The Jews have counted on this throughout history. It's lots of really bad music we are forced to hear, and pay for…
Go ask the IDF soldiers what they saw happen in Gaza: http://imeu.net/news/article0016419.shtml
'But you've got to understand why we must do this – because of the Holocaust." For more than 60 years, the Holocaust card has been played again and again.' And what is the Holocaust card but a victimist rationale for aggression? This is another sense in which Israel is operationally left-wing relative to America's founding libertarian ideals: it exploits historical wrongs and the pretense of remediation of those wrongs to justify its behavior and set itself up entitlement programs at others' expense. What is 'the Holocaust card' but the rhetorical pretext for affirmative action for Jews, as Israel has been described? And where does the victim's sense of entitlement end once institutionalized? How much will ever be enough for those encouraged to embrace a victim identity and a victim's sense of entitlement, and then granted funds unconditionally? We're seeing in Israel that it doesn't end.
Affirmative action never ends–watch that Supreme Court case evolving now and involving municipal firemen tests. The core belief is that all evil is posited in old white men, and their children & grandchildren shall pay the price, this, in the USA of Obama. As to Israel, the principle is the same: The great sin allows affirmative actors using state power to keep implementing collective guilt. In this latter case, there isn't even a historical connection! That's how nasty is the current status quo. Morality is turned on its head. What the current situation does prove is that might (state power & economic power) rules. Goering knew. So does Israel. So does the USA government. So, what's new?
Well then, Jews shouldn't complain when they are reminded of what their forefathers said in choosing the common thief over Jesus. As you know, they cried out for successive collective guilt on their future generations. Let's be consistently PC, huh?
Israelis are their own worst enemies. Danny Zamir, a Leftist once jailed for refusing orders, and now the head of the Rabin pre-military academy (who chose him to head this, one wonders ) used his position to solicit anti-IDF lies from soldiers who made unsubstantiated claims that "wanton killing of civilians" took place in Gaza. Of course, the New York Times and the Guardian were only too happy to put it on their front pages. They would just love to prove Israeli soldiers- the most humane army in the world- are as bad as the terrorist filth they fight. Well, surprise. It never happened. One incident was completely fabricated, and the second totally misconstrued (women wandered into the range of fire, misunderstanding IDF directions.) Below a debunking. You can also go to Honest Reporting (if this link breaks, just re-connect to get to site) http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/... d_Shoddy_Journalism.asp Don't hold your breath for a retraction. Just stop buying these rags. N. Regan
Nice little lie put out by the Paulists in order to help wipe out Judaism. Didn't work then, doesn't work now.
The core belief is that all evil is posited in old white men… Well then, as Jews, we ought to be well out of it. Whatever else we might be, we at least have the advantage of not being white, I don't think. Maybe Jacob Wolfen (if that is your real name) could settle the question.
Hpw so? Please clarify, Jacobwolfen.
I agree with Mooser. Jews aren't white, but you better wear your skull caps so blacks can know this too. Too many nose jobs these days…
Clarify what? That it never happened? Open your eyes. The incident never took place. Just another Pauline lie.
Are you implying that Blacks are racists? And that you are not?