David Bromwich writes:
President Obama in his Cairo speech mentioned and named the "unprecedented Holocaust" suffered by European Jews in the years 1933-1945. He also mentioned the sufferings of Palestinians, from the dispossession of 1948 to the life under occupation that continues today. He clearly evoked these afflictions as instances of human suffering for which all are responsible who permit them to occur. He suggested no comparison between the two, in kind or in degree. The resemblance lay rather in the fact of suffering itself. Where it could have been prevented, it was not prevented. Where it can now be stopped, it has not yet been stopped.
Some Israelis, strongly identified with the anti-two state policy of Binyamin Netanyahu, have seized on the idea that Obama was asserting a false "moral equivalence" between Jewish and Palestinian sufferings. And many of their American allies--including the large remnant of the neoconservatives still honored in the mass media--have taken up the cry. The placement of the word Palestinian beside the word Jew in the context of human suffering is supposed to be a calculated insult or a sign of defective judgment. Paul Wolfowitz and David Brooks, for example, took this line in the New York Times today--Brooks in his column, Wolfowitz in an "expert" comment cited in a news article.
The attack will go on. The war party in the Middle East are searching for the weak point in an important and courageous speech by an American president on foreign soil. With "moral equivalence," they think they have found it. And they are fortified in that assumption by memories of the success of the attack on Jimmy Carter for his supposed assertion of moral equivalence between the wrongs committed by the United States and the wrongs committed by Soviet Russia. The slander, they recall, worked then. May it not work now?
We will have to say this again and again: nothing is the moral equivalent of anything else. Jewish suffering in the mid-twentieth century was without parallel, and was inflicted with a premeditation that has no parallel. It is in the past but it should matter to us in the present. Palestinian suffering is in the present; and something can be done about it by people who are alive. Memory of the former is not an excuse for failure to remedy the latter. Indeed, the more vivid the memory is, the harder it presses on us now to avert the visiting of a catastrophe of any size or scale on any people at all.
Of course there will pushing. Obama is more skillful, consistent, deliberate. Success in ANY reasonable manner will occur ONLY if those that artiiculate live and let live predominate. Its not Ali Abunimeh sadly, from his recent blog posts. Who knows how Norman Finkelstein will relate to the speech, nothing on his website.
"Memory of the former is not an excuse for failure to remedy the latter." Anti-Semite! Sure, I can see what your game is! The whole frickin world was going crazy screwing the Jews for thousands of years. Oh, but now that we Jews have a shot at the brass ring, all of a sudden we can't do that stuff any more! Any progress towards international law or social and political justice is inherently anti-Semitic! Only a rabid Jew- hater would seek to eliminate these proven techniques from the Jew's repertoire. Attempts at nuclear dis-armament or even control come right out of Hitler's playbook. It's our turn, but all you anti-Semites don't want us to have our shot! YOU OWE US!!!
The bigger failing in the "moral equivalence" argument is that the Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust, whereas Palestinian suffering is an inevitable, necessary and ongoing consequence of Zionism.
i think it has to do with who gets to hold the mantle on who has suffered the most… of course any person or country that identifies strongly with victim mentality is going to feel slighted if anyone suggests someone else has or continues to 'suffer'… it seems kinda like a race to the bottom that never ends, with constant reminders of the holocaust always keeping the jewish in the running… obama has reminded us yet again that the holocaust indeed happened with his visit in the last day or two to the Buchenwald concentration camp…. it is hard for the palestinians to compete with competition like this….
I used to think like Phil on this issue, but after totaling up the crimes of Soviet Jews (and their radical forbears in Czarist Russia) and Zionist Jews, I concluded that the mass murder of Jews simply does not compare with the atrocities that Jews have inflicted on other peoples since the late 19th century. And then I began to look at Milton Friedman's economic theory which grows out of an epistemic Jewish Zionist business culture and found yet another stratum of brutality associated with Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim. Because Jews expect non-Jews to show acknowledgment, remorse and atonement for the anti-Jewish crimes that have grown out of non-Jewish culture, non-Jews have the right and categorical imperative to demand that Jews show acknowledgment, remorse, and atonement for the crimes that have grown out of Jewish culture. This process begins with a Jewish demand that the State of Israel be designated a terrorist state and the US goverment begin arresting the leading Zionists for aiding and abetting Zionist terrorism. Nothing less would make up for the magnitude of Jewish crimes in the 19th, 20th and 21st century.
Oy Gevalt! What a world! It turns out the Israelis are bunch of anti-Semites!: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/05/f... Quick, we need to start a charity to send ziocaine to Israelis! There must be a shortage. Damn it, if Lebensraum was good enough for the Germans, it's good enough for the Jews. And I spelled lebensraum right the first time! Take that, you Cossacks!
No there's no question at all, the 888 is indeed at the very bottom. You could at least call yourself "XR1200" to gain a little street cred.
"I used to think like Phil on this issue, but after totaling up the crimes of Soviet Jews (and their radical forbears in Czarist Russia) and Zionist Jews…" Gosh, Thors, old fellow, would you mind giving us some cites for those accusations? "Nothing less would make up for the magnitude of Jewish crimes in the 19th, 20th and 21st century." Gosh, Thors, how on earth did such a small number of us manage so much destruction? You wouldn't happen to have a citation or two. Or did all these crimes manage to elude public comprehension? Not crimes which happened to be committed by individual Jews, Thors. You are talking about "Jewish Crimes" Please provide some cites. Or at least tell me, are the "Jewish crimes" as bad as the "crimes" of Darwin? Damn you, evolution and natural selection!!!
" for the crimes that have grown out of Jewish culture." Oh, come on. Kosher food isn't that bad.
It's worse than I thought! Anti-Semites everywhere!: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/06...
When is there going to being a national Holocaust holiday for the country, where we all have the day off to remember what a bad man Hitler was (and Europe for that matter)? I mean it's definitely more important that the 4th of July. -Krauthammer's article today is laughable. The comments following his article are 80 percent against him.
It's been years since I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC but isn't there an exhibit at the end that says we are all guilty for this because no one spoke up even if we weren't alive at the time? How does this same principle not apply to the Palestinians now? Is it because they are bad people so they can't use that rule?
The American media is parsing the speech in an inflammatory way, through the prism of AIPAC and the ADL. The Los Angeles Times has a front page story that is headlined "Did speech reveal his sympathies" — makes me think of the drunken teen in Max's video who says Obama is a Muslim, "for sure." the article quotes all manner of Zionists upset that Obama used the word resistance -"a word that can cast Israel as an illegitimate occupier" — what a laugh! Israel is a legitimate occupier, don't you know. In fact, no newspaper any longer uses the phrase Occupied Territories. And they often refer to the West Bank and Gaza as "territory claimed by Palestinians for a future state."
It's simply irrelevant. Time like an ever-flowing stream Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten as a dream Dies at the break of day.
By all means, please take the mantle of suffering. But can Zionists and other like-minded Jews sulk among themselves, and leave the Palestinians alone, finally, once and for all? I mean, why couldn't they sulk on their suffering in New York or something? What a cultural concept, this idea of suffering. Are Jews really that cynical?
Aha, another poetry lover.
I have a whole web site that discusses these issues and cites sources. Just go look at Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel. There were more ethnic Ashkenazim in E. Europe than there were Danes and Croats. On the whole Jews were wealthier, had more free time, and were better educated than their neighbors. In general they were angry that they had lost the elite status that they had enjoyed in the Polish Commonwealth when that state collapsed. Overall Jews probably represented the most combustible element in a region that was not doing well with modernization.
and the UN had zero to do w/ the creation of Israel Diane? its called an fucking history book. Jesus you people are dense.
You can refer to any of the mainstream specialists in the field of Jewish or E. European studies like Slezkine, Harris, Stanislawski, Harshav, and maybe even Silberstein, and you will find that they ascribe an astounding role to Jews in revolutionary violence, which usually includes assassinations, mass murder, and genocide. Start with Haaretz Confirms: Two Separate Holocausts and work backwards.
Absolutely silly coverage by Chuck Todd from and on MSNBC. But it was really brilliantly covered over here. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/31122782#... It's not comfortable for a lot of Germans to have to see the president come to Germany to go to Buchenwald and to relive one of the more painful memories in the German past. So sure, politically would she rather have had a meeting with the president in Berlin in a more uplifting time and uplifting topic, probably. But at the same time, I think, both sides this morning, you know this was brought up (in press conference in Dresden) is there sort of a fractured relationship, personally, between Merkel and Obama and both of them tried to put that to rest. I think they had some different philosophies in how to deal with the economic crisis … bla, bla, bla The Germans are clearly not his topic, he is more comfortable with Obamas cultural and religious roots. Merkel gave the best speech at Buchenwald, I have ever heard from her. I have nothing to complain about.
Anyway, when Adam says "a premeditation that has no parallel," he is adopting the Intentionalist view of the Holocaust, which is far from uncontested. Many perfectly respectable historians consider it a propaganda myth. They say that whatever happened to the European Jews, it was not the product of a horribly "German-methodical" plan, but the product of circumstance. Certainly the details of the successive deportations of European Jews by the Germans suggest that the policy was being made up as it went along, rather than being at all "premeditated". And this is leaving quite aside the question of what actually did happen to them, about which, to put it mildly, there is still some dispute …
So what? The US Supreme Court made numerous rulings supporting slavery, yet slavery like the State of Israel was completely wrong and evil.
Resisting slavery by killing the slave-holders and resisting Zionism by killing Zionists are completely legitimate and ethically equivalent.
More to the point under Nuremberg law, international acceptance of a transfer of territory does not negate the right of an occupied or ethnically cleansed population to attack and to kill the occupiers.
Because the Zionist motherland is a virtual state, whose public face is the Israel Lobby, both pre-1967 Israel (Stolen Palestine) and the OT (Occupied Palestine) count as an occupied territory where the native Palestinian population may engage in legitimate resistance by blowing up or otherwise killing the Zionist interlopers, who are all criminals under international law.
http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2009/05/haaretz-confirm...
The UN partition plan did not call for, or condone, the ethnic cleansing of Israel of its non-Jewish Palestinians. According to the UN Partition Plan, all residents in either the UN designated Jewish or Arab state were to have full citizenship rights in whichever area they resided in prior to the partition, regardless of their ethnic background. If Israel had in fact accepted the conditions of the Partition Plan, instead of falsely claiming that they did while conversely violating its requirements, then none of the continuing suffering of the Palestinians would have occurred. Instead of yelling at others to read a book, maybe you need to read the actual Partition Plan. Israel violated it territorially and legally by its expansion and ethnic cleansing. The Plan may have been faulty or unworkable, or even undemocratic, being imposed on a population without provisions for bringing to a vote among all those affected by it, but the provisions of the plan itself were not responsible for the ethnic cleansing and oppression of the Palestinians. The Zionist pre-state and the state of Israel are solely responsible for that.
Another aspect of the moral equivalence issue is that Israel is probably going to refuse to be held accountable for any crimes against the Palestinians, including compensation, on the basis that it was an unpremeditated accident. Otherwise it would seem that we would use the precedent with respect to the dispossession of the Jews that compensation is payable two or three times over, into eternity, with no statute of limitations, from every possible pocket and then some. And that war criminals are to be hunted down over the face of the earth and executed. These types of questions are starting to come up in people's minds. What about the the Palestinians? Are we going to have big ongoing projects to examine every single instance of dispossession and demand accountability and compensation for the crimes? Why aren't the Palestinians entitled to a Nakba industry just like the Holocaust industry? Or is the holocaust an absolute defense to avoid accountability for the crimes against the Palestinians? Is it anti-semitic to even begin asking these questions? Would asking these questions be part of a terror plot?
Obviously you did not read the comment that demonstrated the dishonesty of the headline.
The equitable terms of the Balfour Declaration in the terms of the non-Jewish inhabitants in the Mandate has never been implemented on Palestinians beneficiary side, and the UN partition into two states (arm twisting by the USA who told those who did not vote for the partition would not get any Post WW2 reconstruction economic aid) has never been implemented either. Thanks to Truman's career ego and Zionist moneybags/media and the embryonic Cold War, which resulted in a quick recognition of Israel by Truman followed quickly by the USSR's recognition, the Palestinians were left out out of the equation. Time to right things in keeping with post Nuremberg international law–otherwise Goering was right. Pretty simple.
Palestinian suffering didn’t begin in 1947. The process of violently dispossessing, displacing and disenfranchising the Palestinian population by Zionist immigrants far predates even the existence of the United Nations, and exists quite independently of anything the UN might have said or done. The destruction of the Palestinians is a function of Zionism, not of the UN, and arises out of the impossibility of otherwise creating a Jewish state in a land where 96% of the preexisting population happens not to be Jewish. You simply cannot create a Jewish state in a land where barely 4% of the existing population is Jewish without forcing out the overwhelming Muslim and Christian majority. That has been an inherent requirement of the project from the day the first Zionist settlement was established in Palestine, a full 60 years before the UN even existed. As for the role of the UN in Palestinian suffering, certainly the partition resolution (passed by a United Nations that represented less than half the world’s population, and which even then only passed because the United States blackmailed three of the poorest members of the General Assembly – Haiti, The Philippines and Liberia – into changing their votes against partition, in order to gerrymander the majority necessary for the resolution to pass) was very much against the wishes of a large majority of the population of Mandate Palestine. But the UN partition resolution didn’t mandate the expulsion and resultant suffering of the Palestinians. It drew a border through Mandate Palestine which, even drawn as generously as possible to gather the Jewish minority into a single polity, resulted in a “Jewish Palestine” that was only 55% Jewish and still 45% Palestinian Arab (a slim majority that would be gone in a generation thanks to the high Palestinian birthrate), and it guaranteed the right of that large Arab minority NOT to be dispossessed or discriminated against by the majority. It was the Zionist leadership, certainly not the UN, that judged it impossible to make a Zionist state with an Arab minority of more than about 15%, a minority it achieved through the mass expulsions of 1947-48. (In fact, the proposed UN peace plan of Sept 1948 had as one of its central tenets the demand that the Palestinians expelled from Israel must be allowed to return – "The right of innocent people, uprooted from their homes by the present terror and ravages of war, to return to their homes, should be affirmed and made effective, with assurance of adequate compensation for the property of those who may choose not to return…. [N]o settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged. It will be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right of return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine…". Which is one of the reasons Yitzhak Shamir had its author, UN mediator Folke Bernadotte, assassinated). The “Jewish Palestine” the UN envisaged was a bi-national state of all its citizens, who were guaranteed equal rights whether they belonged to the slight Jewish majority or the Arab minority. The idea that the state of Israel that emerged as a result of the ethnic cleansing of the inconveniently large Arab minority – a herrenvolk democracy where the full benefits of citizenship are reserved only for people with the right ethnic-religious makeup – is a fulfillment of what the UN outlined, can be disproved simply by reading the text of the resolution.
Well bugger, I see that Tree already made most of the points in my comment while I was busy working on them.
For better or worse, the native population does seem resigned to the necessity of allowing and accepting the State of Israel. If the State of Israel could bring themselves to observe any of the norms and requirements of their charter and stated aspirations, they might just pull it off. And yet it seems that, for Zionism, too much is never enough. When you look at the demands being made on a well-militarised and nuclear-armed state, they are almost laughable. Withdraw from the territory acquired in the wars, declare your borders and sign treaties. Israel is in a position to do all that successfully. But they never do. And they may have succeeded in making the settlers an intractable problem. Jesus fucking Christ, Jews using the fanaticism and ignorance of other Jews to advance their interests, hell, even worse, a State's interest, using the settlers as pawns, with the peril of their complete destruction as a bargaining chip! Now this is something for the Israelis to be proud of! And this is the image of the Jews, the settlers and the people who use them, they promulgate to the world! I could vomit.
Actually Obama has Kenyan (dad), Irish, and German (mom) ethnic roots: http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_12522012 Since German and Irish remain the two largest ethnic white groups in the USA, and the ones who have done most of the quantitative dying for the country in its wars beginning with the Civil War, relatively speaking, it's interesting, no?
Thanks, I'll take a look at the link.
Joachim, you can't have it both ways, sure they can resist and 'kill their occupiers' but what if they suck at like the Palestinians? Then you get the lefties bitching about the occupation and the evil Zionist interlopers. Palestinians can either cave, accept Israel, have their state, live in prosperity, or continue the resistance. Where they will live a shitty and humiliating life, both under occupation and as a pretty much worthless resistance group. They will go down in history as the biggest, whiniest, pussies who ever tried to resist an occupation. And blowing up buses and killing babies isn't resistance, its terror.
Did the UN partition plan call for an invasion of the newly formed state of Israel? Did it call for the 'ethnic cleansing' of all Jews from Arab countries? This is a two way street people….
Here's the text of the three speeches at Buchenwald–I found one of them very ironic: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/05/obama-bu...
Here's a map showing paramilitary operations outside the partition boundary before May 15. http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Maps/Stor...
If we consider the history of persecutions in Europe, yes, the premeditation may not have been complete, or longstanding, but it was unparalleled. As opposed, say to local pogroms or massacres. Sure the planning may only have been short range, or provoked by exigencies, but the administrative and bureaucratic resources of the state were used. Of course, it would be fair to say that the Bolsheviks were by then using these techniques, possibly short of mass-production death camps. And see this, which is interesting. If nothing else, it shows there may have been no effective public objection to a whole system of camps and depots for those held by the Nazis. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti... Showing how collective punishment and genocide can be facilitated right in the midst of a society.
I think the important thing about the "methodical premeditation" myth is that it suggests something Satanic. This is the essential thing about the myth of the Holocaust: it is a secular replacement for the myth of the Crucifixion. In the same way, the foundation of the State of Israel is a secular replacement for the myth of the Resurrection, three years, as opposed to three days later. All this, in my opinion, is calculated — not in advance, obviously, but in retrospect — as propaganda. I can remember when this mythic construction did not yet exist, in the 1960s.
Tune into Solzinitzyn (sic) on the Gulag and 200 Years–the reds' camps were at least as huge and far flung, and actually responsible for more deaths.
I am glad you referred to killing babies because Zionist Jews do it all the time. Just take a look at http://xymphora.blogspot.com for a great picture of Jewish Zionist achievement. No doubt in my mind that Zionists are terrorists, and certainly all Americans should agree. As for whining Jewish racists do it all the time. Lev Kopelev told me he stopped identifying as Jewish because he could not stand whining by Jewish commissars about blood-thirsty Ukrainian Jew-haters as they made or implemented policies resulting in the deaths of millions. When Eastern European Ashkenazim put their program into effect to steal Palestine, the main occupations of Palestinians were peasant farming and hospitality. I am hardly impressed that European racists, who already were responsible for the slaughter of millions and who were equipped by British and American Jewish wealth, succeeded in taking over Palestine from decent peasants who could barely conceive of the evil of which European Jews were capable. It is also hardly impressive that backed by the US Zionists have managed to maintain an occupation for the last 40 years. I have read a lot of accounts from the Polish resistance that complained how quickly Polish Jews gave into German Nazi torture to betray both Jews and Poles. I have little doubt that equally equipped Palestinians would mop the floor with Israeli Zionists, and that if such an equal contest ever took places, Jews would whine about it from now until the end of time.
ahmed, it is very alarming, not to mention distressing, when I talk to my fellow Americans and they believe the Occupied Territories are Israeli land, occupied by Palestinians! They have heard so many reports of the "terror" inflicted on the settlers, they have the situation completely reversed!
Thanks citizen. This is my favorite part of Angela Merkel's speech and it provides a link to Obama's speech in Cairo. there is a good America and there is a not so good one, as he showed: This is my favorite passage of Merkel's speech: Second, it is most important to keep the memory of the great sacrifices alive that had to be made to put an end to the terror of National Socialism and to liberate its victims and to rid all people of its yoke. This is why I want to say a particular word of gratitude to the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, for visiting this particular memorial. It gives me an opportunity to align yet again that we Germans shall never forget, and we owe the fact that we were given the opportunity after the war to start anew, to enjoy peace and freedom to the resolve, the strenuous efforts, and indeed to a sacrifice made in blood of the United States of America and of all those who stood by your side as allies or fighters in the resistance. I am aware, how many US soldiers died in the Normandy invasion. They were sent and cut down little cattle, wave after wave. … But also think this is something the American people can be proud of. To have ended the Nazi reign. I have absolutely mixed feelings when I encounter statements that the US shouldn't have joined the war against the Nazis. I think it was essential, but I am also aware of the high human price paid by the US. But at the same time I am highly suspicious of the neocons use of this part of history. I would have loved to hear something from Bertrand Herz, but Elie Wiesel's speech was quite good too, apart from the fact that I somehow share his pessimism. Look the Little Camp was really horrible, it was the worst part were you could possibly be. Even the SS myrmidons didn't like to go there. It were initially barracks/sheds meant to provide shelter for 40 (?) horses each. In this space they squeezed the Jews about close to 2000 people in each. Which of course resulted in many diseases that spread fast. Elie Wiesel The day …[my father] died was one of the darkest in my life. He became sick, weak, and I was there. I was there when he suffered. I was there when he asked for help, for water. I was there to receive his last words. But I was not there when he called for me, although we were in the same block; he on the upper bed and I on the lower bed. He called my name, and I was too afraid to move. All of us were. And then he died. I was there, but I was not there. This must be a terribly haunting memory. You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. I am pretty sure, neither Bertram Herz nor Elie Wiesel would ever suggest the things about Norman Finkelstein's mother Dershowitz did.
You could try checking out his source material on his blog, or is that too much of an effort?
LOL. It's at least as bad as German sausage.
My comment is somehow fished away to be approved or denied passage by the masters. But thanks. Your response shows me you know what I liked about Merkels speech. It's a link between Cairo and Normandy. The good America versus the not so good. I liked Elie Wiesel's speech too. I think he talked about a haunting memory, combined with the disturbing experience of having been made an inmate and what that it does to you. I noticed that the German public channels have picked up on the issue I find important too. That Merkel didn't offer Obama to take in some of the Guantanamo victims no matter if they have a connection to Germany or not.
Absolutely! If you object in any way to what any group of Jews do in the Name of all Jews, U B a anit-semite. That's special catagory of hate, reserved for Jews. Chosen is, as Chosen does. Problem: In the long run, it's a double-edged sword and shield. Welcome to World History 101.
Do the native Americans or the descendants of slaves in the USA have a Museum on DC precious ground? If not, why do those who suffered in a different continent across the pond? Just asking. What country is the USA anyway?
Same here. Who is more ignorant, considering the 1st Amendment & the internet, than the average American? They deserve what they get; unfortunately, this will not be in the best long term interests of the USA or Israel.
Yes, You are now on the shit list. Hasbara or nothing. That's what your kinsmen died for in the USA past. Flag day is coming up. You can draw in the new 6 pointed star; make sure it's bigger than the other 50.
I posted two comments responding here, but they have vanished.
Even if one does accept the Intentionalist view, its a massive whitewashing of all other human history to claim that the premeditation "has no parallel". Human history is replete with intentional genocide. There is nothing "unprecedented" about the Holocaust or the death and destruction of WWII, except the use of more modern and deadlier weapons.
Please take everything I have, and ever will have; that's the least I could do since I was born after WW2 in USA. If you have a heart, leave a little for all non-white minorities in the USA, no matter when they came here; again that's the least I can do. Don't worry, my children will understand.
Adam Horowitz first wrote: "We will have to say this again and again: nothing is the moral equivalent of anything else." But then wrote further: "Jewish suffering in the mid-twentieth century was without parallel, and was inflicted with a premeditation that has no parallel." I fail to see why, after writing the first sensible comment, Adam then goes on as if he doesn't believe it and is still obliged to come up with a "worst" ranking. E.g., what about the *tens* of millions of Christians (or Slavs if you want to focus on ethnicity) worked to death in the arctic or elsewhere or otherwise murdered by the Bolsheviks? Or the other ethnics such as the Chechens or etc. that Stalin turned his eyes to? Or the Ukrainians starved by him? If anything even more premeditated than the Holocaust. Or what about the tens of millions (if not a hundred million) killed by Mao? Adam ought to examine whether he really believes his first comment. There's no need to say anything more than that the suffering of the jews was unique, just as was the suffering of those under Lenin and Stalin and Mao.
WHAT? Look at the percentage of USA foreign aid that goes to Israel of the total we give to the world, all with strings attached, except we give a blank check to Israel. They get the welfare dole up front, no interest, though they charge us interest back. Also, e.g., we gave the Jews a Holocaust Museum for free in precious icon land, DC, and the private donations for its erection were all tax-deductible; that is, taxpayers paid for it. And now, 67% of on-going funds for it are direct doles from USA taxpayers. http://www.wrmea.com/archives/December_2003/03120... So, where is the DC Museum dedicated to native Americans? The one dedicated to African Americans? And, do the belated monuments to our veterans in DC get the same priority that the Jew have? Did the Shoah happen in the USA? ROFL. How much proof do you need that the 51st state rules the USA?
What's Israel and AIPAC's attitude to the Armenian genocide lately? Still trying to sweep it under the carpet?
The state of Israel has never declared its borders to this day. So how would you know if it was "invaded"? Yet, after ethnically cleansing over 350,000 non-Jewish Palestinians from January through early May of 1948, not only from territories allocated to the Jewish State, but also from parts of the territory allocated to the Arab State and and invading and usurping those areas as its own, its really the height of chutzpah to complain that Israel was "invaded" in mid May of 1948. Or to imply that the Arab army "invasion", taken in response to the massive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, justifies the prior and continued ethnic cleansing of non-Jewish Palestinians. I take it by your argument that you have at least conceded that the UN was not directly responsible for the oppression of the Palestinians, as now you seem to be blaming it on other Arab states, as if Israel had no agency in its own pre-meditated decisions. But be careful of your argument. If you are justifying the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population because of the actions of outsiders who happen to share the same religion or ethnicity, then you are likewise justifying the ethnic cleansing Jews from other Arab countries (which is likewise wrong, but not entirely what happened). And even worse, your justification is also the same one used to justify the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Nazi Germany-held territory …. Ethnic cleansing doesn't get some special dispensation, or even a minty-fresh taste, just because it is Jews doing the cleansing.
Well, simple person that I am, I don't recongize anything called the 'Jewish ' Holocaust. BECAUSE…..5 million non jews were also killed in the German Camps. So we need a better description of what occured in the camps, one that encompasses all the people who died. If jews want to call it their jewish holocaust among themselves, fine. Maybe someone can think up a description that fits what was done to everyone, not just the jews.
As I recall, 80% of the Israeli casualties died in Israeli offensive operations. The overwhelming percentage of the battles with the outside Arab armies took place on land allocated to the Arab State by the partition plan, not within the borders of the partition Jewish State.
I can't believe that! How awful!
No problem, diane. I think you made them more eloquently than I did. And you added several salient points that I did not mention.
Well, software issues? Bugs? Filters? Sabotage? I somehow doubt that Adam wants to read all the messages kept back and decide if I shall or shall not admit them. But it's a reminder that I should write something, and not hang around here. I had that before once but it disappeared again. What exactly happens if someone reports you? Would I get a message if that happens?
60 million people died during WWII. Jews were not the only people who suffered. although the six million Jews are the only people ever mentioned in the MSM as having been murdered during that horrendous war. People are sick of the OTHERS not being mentioned
OK, I try it again. If I keep it short, I may get a pass. I can't read these things to the end, it always feels like a mental rape to me: Sigmund Freud related his own personal sense of Jewish pathology, a product of the powerlessness generated by the Diaspora (definitively symbolized by the recounting of an episode in The Interpretation of Dreams where Freud’s own father has his hat knocked off by a Gentile and cowers off to retrieve it), to the explosiveness of the sexual drive. Though he never really makes this bond explicit as far as Jewish identity goes, it has become clear enough over many decades of Freud studies that the father of psychoanalysis found sex and identity to be inextricably linked. I could say many things about this passage from Freud, over his interpretation of dreams, patriarchy and Freud's fear of touching anything concerning his father, due to the education to respect and honor authorities (pater familias), to Freud (Fließ) as a man of his times, reacting as many to the 19th century double standards, the bowdlerized Shakespeare, supposedly freed of vulgarities, the highly interesting education of the female, what few movements she is allowed in sports, if any at all, they could be somehow vulgar, and the ostentatiously exhibited morality of the bourgeoisie their trade mark against the "perverse" nobility, their not completely honest trump card, if one compares the outside surfaces of the holy family images to the many, many, many brothels it managed to maintain at the same time. Obviously, if he thought about the repressed, sexuality must have been foremost in his mind. …. (expecting screams from Christian America Ed) But the way Joachim uses it, would make the Nazis very happy. Another cherished propaganda meme. The Jew who had nothing on his mind but sex. The Jewish rapist threatening the Aryan girl with his sex hunger. ***************************************************************************************************** But I associate quite something else with the picture of humiliation he picks out. The rise of antisemitism and the accompanying humiliation and degradation of Jews. True, it's sad to see they aren't the better humans after all "now", but that's quite another story. *********************************************************************************************************************** As there surely are deep anthropological link layers between sex and aggression, sex and war, love and dead, and a whole series of more philosophical treatments of the subject he only touches on.
Exactly. There is no reason why Jews can't accept that their persecution is just one of the many and varied persecution men have been subjecting each other to through-out history. While the Jewish persecutions have their unique features, so do the others. The best course for the Jews is to stand against any persecutions. If they can't do that….
That museum is there because the US had no part in the holocaust and was part of the allied forces against it. In reality if a holocaust museum exists in the US, that's all the more reason to have a museum about native AMERICAN sufferings or about AMERICAN slaves…. which are a much greater part of the history of the United States of AMERICA. But then again, why would the US want to air their dirty laundry. They'd much rather have a museum in the Capital that points the finger at another country, and they can say "well we stepped in and helped out!"
Two wrongs don't make a right. Can I persecute the Jews because they "killed" Jesus? Answer. No. Can Palestinian mistreatment be justified by Jewish deaths in WWII. Answer. No. This is the mindset of the blood feud. Our tradition tells us that vengeance does not belong to us. Guilt is no basis for a healthy relationship. Exploiting guilt is a form of abuse. Focusing exclusively on the suffering of the Jews in WWII is undignified and an insult to the memory of all its other victims.
Hey, there's a new member of the tribe. Charles Taylor (ex dictator of Liberia) is converting to Judaism! It appears to be a bit unorthodox as he apparently intends to also remain Christian. Or so says one of his wives One of his wives??? wtf, shouldn't he be converting ti Islam? J. Keating: "Least. Welcome. Convert. Ever." woot http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/05/ch...
there is nothing equivalent here. us aid to israel: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060...
"One of his wives??? wtf, shouldn't he be converting ti Islam?" Maybe he's a Mormon, too.
So sorry, Tree, but the attacks began in November 1947 and focused on the roads, with a bit of tit-for-tat in Haifa in December but mainly the isolation and siege of Jewish settlements in the area of Jerusalem, Hebron, and attacks in April-May from Jaffa on Tel Aviv, the earlier ones of which were broken up by the British, who could not actually allow Jaffa's militias to take HaTikvah before the withdrawal. However, you are a reminder that Israel's real option is to keep those like you powerless, or–if defeat is truly inevitable, to take you with us. Consider allowing Israel to exist in peace in the '49 borders–which Palestinians from Hamas and Fateh still will not allow–the "minimum affirmative action" for Jewish history. So, yes, we hate all of humanity, because even in our homeland, you insist on our governance by genocidal Palestinian Islamists. Only if Israeli Palestinians consented to becoming the Quebec of Israel, building a democratic relationship to the Israeli system, and Palestine actually made peace, will there be a solution.
That's another important fact and also detailed on palestineremembered mostly using Simha Flapan's statistics from Birth of Israel. http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine... Before the Arab states invaded Palestine, the Zionist paramilitaries already conquered Jaffa (part of the Arab state in the partition plan), Acre (fell on 17 May), and many surrounding villages, and of course villages around Jerusalem like Dayr Yassin. The site of Sderot, Najd, was taken on 13 May. There were also inconclusive battles in places that were later conquered, like Faluja (and let's note that Faluja is one Arab town that was depopulated after the armistice). The Haganah also attacked al-Khisas in December 1947 This shows that the Jewish Agency/Haganah only paid lip service to establishing Israel in the partition boundaries, although Ben-Gurion left behind written evidence, including a letter to his son, that partition was only a temporary measure to gain legitimacy. He knew the endogenous people would not accept it and somehow this gave the Zionists carte blanche.
Yup. lol. And old school Mormons had no artificial quota of 4 on wives. But enough of my frivolity. Live and let live I say.
(cont'd) Likewise, the Arab states occupied almost no territory allocated to Israel. After the war, Syria pulled out of the demilitarized zone that included Mishmar Ha'Yarden (the only Zionist settlement they captured). Egypt did cross the Israeli portion of the Negev to reach Beersheba, and just as with Jordan their plan was to occupy "Arab" Palestine. Lebanon did not even invade Palestine past a village on the border called Malikiyya (some places claim it was ALA irregulars instead of the Lebanese army). It's easy to forget that the IDF occupied a strip of Lebanon during the war but for all the supposed danger to Israel that was doable. The war was about expanding Israel to the 1949 line, not preventing the destruction of Israel within the 1947 line (which also had to be conquered).
Sorry, Euro, but if Israel wanted to declare its borders it could of done so at anytime during its history. It still refuses to do so. And it still continues to expropriate more and more land, so to claim that Israel desires to exist in peace in the '49 borders and that it is the Palestinians who are preventing it, is beyond borderline delusional. Apparently you think that Israelis deserve some kind of right to abuse and oppress, supposedly for past wrongs committed against other Jews. The world doesn't work that way. And this: "so,yes, we hate all of humanity" makes no sense either. Do you think that you are now the spokesperson for all Israelis, or Israeli Jews, or are you taking an even bigger crown as the spokesperson for all Jews everywhere? Because frankly you do not speak for all Israeli Jews and certainly don't speak for all Jews. And to describe the oppression of and discrimination towards others as some kind of Jewish "affirmative action" is totally grotesque and repellent. "…or–if defeat is truly inevitable, to take you with us." You sound like the suicide bombers you claim you so detest. I guess it suddenly becomes noble and understandable act in your world if its a Jewish suicide bomber killing others. Or have you come to some enlightenment over the draw of taking others out with you when a situation seem desperate or hopeless? You sound like a violence-obsessed hypocrite, Euro.
Made an error, al-Khisas was not part of the Arab state. Although Qazaza, attacked the day after, was part of the Arab state south of Lydda.
This is why no one has any sympathy for you. A two state solution is impossible because Hamas will wipe us out. Can't have one state or Hamas will wipe us out. Let's just wipe ourselves out and take everybody with us. At least when Hamas talks about the end times, it's a mystical event that will never happen. Israel has the arsenal to do exactly what you're talking about, which must be the point. If your lousy government wanted, you could negotiate a two state settlement with Hamas. They won't accept Israel as a Jewish state, but they'll stop attacking, and they have shown they can do this for months at a time even when your side conducts the occasional raid. They've made the offer repeatedly and all they get in return is isolation and bombs. Besides, if Hamas was really genocidal, do you think they'd give a passport to Jeff Halper? Wrap your self-pity in a pita and choke on it. Nobody is making the two state solution impossible except you. Even most anti Zionists will accept it over the status quo.
Or possibly Hindu.
lol, fuck you and fuck your racist website. you cocksuckers on here who think you are so intellectual sicken me. you are no better than some extreme rightwing political group in america or some facist neo nazi group in europe. fuck everyone on this worthless website, i hope you all fucking die.
I doubt you do know much about Kosher food, neither do I think you know something about German sausages. There are hundreds different sausages, not one type.
hey I remember you from Max Blumenthal's video!
Diane's point is actually important, and actually should be respected by Zionists. That is that the nature of the injustice is that the dispossession was not consented, but coerced (initially, and through legal and military machinations). And, more importantly that by skillfully respecting the person and experience of the Palestinians, it is possible to reconcile. There is no possibility that the Israel will cease to exist. Any strategem to accomplish that is vain, and like all vain pursuits, ends up harming in the addiction and ultimately failing in ways that result in worse outcomes than assertive compromise.
No it didn't. The problem is that Israel was already driving Palestinians out of their homes before the Arab invasion – it certainly is a 'two way street' – and it you who should 'read an history book people'…
Dear LeaNder22, You seem to be getting your jollies from finding hints of Nazism in articles on my blog, but this sort of accusation does not bother me because the German Nazis and their intellectual ancestors simply took part in the time period's mainstream German discourse to which Jews were major contributors and founders. I have always considered it an example of intellectual irony that Zionists and German Nazis continued to esteem the ideas of Max Nordau long after everyone else in German society lost interest. Anyway, you are mining an article that was not written by me but by David Shasha, who is Director of the Center for Sephardic [Jewish] Heritage in Brooklyn, N.Y. I guess it is another example of intellectual irony that a Jewish Arab begins to sound like he is taking part in the late 19th early 20th century German discourse when he writes about Zohan, but we should not be surprised because the State of Israel and its cultural products intellectually develop out of everything that was wrong in WW1 WW2 inter bellum Poland and Germany.
Koshrut is unrelated to cuisine or quality, but I remember a Woody Allen line that described how his mother used to slave away in the kitchen as she deflavored chicken.
No possibility that the state of Israel will one day cease to exist? I guess you are declaring a religious tenet of yours? Otherwise please explain this remarkable conclusion, especially in the context of world history.
are you from Toronto, sweetheart?
I actually know a lot about both due to intermarriage.
Funny line! I also find it true in my experience.
This is a good point, Rowan. Dead myths never die. They are merely recast.
I agree, Mooser; it's also the best course for non-Jews. I guess it's just hard for anyone to grow up and realize just how special they are not… We will always have sports teams to enhance identity.
It was satanical. From your message above: Many perfectly respectable historians consider it a propaganda myth. You seem to make a mistake here. No respectable historian considers the Holocaust as such propaganda, but yes it has been suggested that the Holocaust was exploited for political ends. That's a huge difference. They say that whatever happened to the European Jews, it was not the product of a horribly "German-methodical" plan, but the product of circumstance. What you forget in this context is the whole disenfranchisement process that preceded the process set in action in the Wannsee Conference. But it didn't start then. Already during the Kristallnacht (crystal night) several thousand Jewish citizens were arrested and deported. It's true that initially there wasn't a methodical plan, as far as hard labor and extinction is concerned, that came later. But from the very start there were many legal steps in the direction. Look the pogrom usually is the result of spontaneous instigation, it's not a precisely planned process from the administration and executed on the ground by many willing helpers. I think the central problem we have here is that a special "religious" made a racial group was targeted rather systematically, from taking away their rights, making them second class citizen, to pushing them out of jobs, over a process of bringing the ones that hadn't left at a time together in so called "Judenhäusern" (Jew houses). Making them pay for their own degradation by selling their possessions in public sales, an easy grab by the "ordinary" men and women on the street, who knew well whose goods they bought cheaply. And ultimately collecting them in special places in the cities with heavy SS guardians around to deport them in the well known cattle trains, without food and water. Yes it is a systematically planned machinery. That the special techniques were developed along the way, as problems became apparent, is another question. E.g. at one point they thought that one bullet each would be too expensive. It's a highly cynical enterprise really. Then there was the problem how to get rid of all the corpses. So ovens were tested in Buchenwald that were meant for the cremation of animal bodies, that were than ordered for other camps. Buchenwald was the main test camp for the SS. Including a series of really sick medical tests. Including several special incidents you don't really want to hear. Were the SS played such deadly games that the victims decided to kill themselves rather than being killed slowly for the entertainment of SS sicko. The point is. The methods were developed along the way as problems became apparent but the ideology that led to the ultimate execution of the plan was present from the start the Nazis grabbed power. Seized, maybe, that's the usual term.
Who's tradition?
LOL. I had the exact same thought.
Actually, Andrew, I care little about sympathy–I am planning to survive the apocalyptic war which will follow either cession or non–cession of the West Bank. And bear in mind that I have lived among Palestinians for years, and I KNOW the relative peacefulness of non-mobilized Palestinians. However much I believe that a normal belligerent occupation of the West Bank might have improved the situation, Israelis have preferred settlement with war to no settlement with war. It is kind of a pity that Hamas have forced their theology on Jews so effectively. I think they'll use Halper until they can cut off his head, like any Hudna. And I've been pushing for two-states for 20 years, knowing full well it will only bring more war, betting that the Palestinians can finally practice peace.
Tree, do you know how many men I've seen die? Only killers have seen more men die, I suppose I was actually one of the ubiquitous medics in Jerusalem at the height of Intifada Two. So while I am violence-obsessed, I have lived with and saved more Palestinians than practically any Israeli. (Perhaps some of the trauma doctors, like David Appelbaum, oh, wait, you can't ask him, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed him, and Izzedine Abul-eish.) I can totally see the perspective of the three Palestinians I've seen blow up in the same room with me, through their eyes. Actually, I saw their eyes, both in and out of their heads. How a normally life-affirming people like Palestinians–who among themselves in normal circumstances resemble the Lebanese–arrived at a theology of death is interesting. The "defined" Armistice Line did not bring peace, while the early settlement of the Territories was on waste state land and reasonably peaceful, an odd irony. At any rate, nothing the Palestinians have done institutionally–as opposed to individually–has helped peace any more than the settlement drive.
I mean, only a doctor in Gaza like Izzedine abu-el-aish has saved more Palestinians, not that doctor Abuleish was killed.
"Seek out the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray for it to the Almighty, for through its welfare will you have welfare." -Jeremiah (29:7)
Mondoweiss has never taken a stand for human rights issues in the Arab/Muslim world – you shouldn't be the one to talk about "moral equivalence" since you seem to imply that Israeli's are at the same level as Nazis and Muslims. Obama made a parallel between allied bombing of Dresden and Buchewald. How sound is that? In speaking of "women's rights" he emphasized three-times the punitive nature of scarf-bans in France. That's fucked. That's just fucked. Show me how many women wear the Burkha for "freedom's sake" and I've got a bridge to sell you. It's worn the same way as the Klan wears its hoodies. To scare and intimidate, and to hate. The hijab is hate-gear.
I think we should differentiate between the Holocaust and it's political exploitation. Admittedly I am what some here call an adherent of the Holocaust religion. That's why I am usually disgusted by attempts to deny or relativize it. But I also learned over the ages, that there were other targeted groups that went unmentioned for quite a while, especially the Gypsies. The problem starts, I think, when the past suffering of one group is politically exploited for advantages in the present, when it is used to create present entitlement based on the "graves in the sky", as Elie Wiesel called it, of the mostly namelessly forgotten victims. And that's not good either. The study of the Holocaust shouldn't lead to a parochial entitlement but to the dedication and caring for all human life. But how old are comparative genocide studies now? And there surely the debate is hot. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813336864 One thing is rather obvious. In Poland e.g. just as many Poles died as Jews. The difference is that the Poles that were killed were about 10% of the Polish people, while the Polish Jews that died were about 80 to 90% and I think that tells you something about the Nazi's intention.
Well, haredi women are required to cut their real hair short and wear horrible dowdy wigs. That's hair hate. I think the traditional explanation is that this is in order not to encourage any more angels to fall out of the sky. After all, according to the Book of Enoch, it was fallen angels who taught women make-up and hair-do in the first place.