[Cairo]
I'm about to go to the airport so I can go home and become a broken record about Gaza. I spent the evening with Egyptian friends and when I woke up this morning I realized how much of my own suspicion and prejudice about Muslims I have overcome in the last few years, and few days. At dinner a friend spoke about a Jewish American journalist who proclaimed to him drunkenly once, I am a Zionist, I hate Arabs. This is the most automatic prejudice in Jewish life, largely unspoken. It seems to me this was the greatness of Obama's speech (which I blew in my coverage yesterday): so much of it was pitched to an American Jewish audience, from this Arab space. In that hall he was a rock star. The silence of the crowd for the first five minutes, before he quoted the Koran and the place exploded, was stargazing silence. The chants of We love you and of Obama! at the end were expressions of hope, that Muslims would again be treated with respect. The speech was pitched to Jews because the ironclad guarantee to Israel and all the Holocaust stuff and the Buchenwald and refusal to particularize Palestinian suffering, as he particularized Jewish suffering, were all nods to the lobby. Egypt understands that; and people say, he is our hope. He is urging American Jews to get past their racism toward the Arab world. Can we follow him?
Related posts:
- Bromwich on ‘moral equivalence’ and Obama’s Cairo speech
- Overwhelmingly, Egyptians say Obama’s Cairo speech was about Israel/Palestine
- When it comes to Obama’s Cairo speech, what matters are actions, not fine words
- Obama’s Cairo speech offers to relegitimize Israel
- Obama’s credibility hurt during Cairo speech because of silence on the horrors of Gaza and Iraq
{ 70 comments }
Mr Weiss,
The reason why you are a broken record is that you skip reality and loop back to the fantasy you have convinced yourself of. What you say does not make sense because you leave out critical parts of the melody. Then you can't figure out why mainstream America recognizes something not quite right in your tune.
A problem here is that there is nothing profound in your writing, it is all shallow snake oil and boring, predictable misinterpretation. You have this pathologically high self-esteem, perhaps because the hate mongers that have gravitated to your side have pandered to your ego. I keep coming back because your desperation is so farcical it is like watching one of those cheap coming of age movies we all laugh at. I am certain that anything that challenges your flight from reality is perceived as a threat, so I will just keep talking to empty air for the rest of your readers to see.
An Informed Reader
Have a safe flight.
Can't wait for you to get back.
That's an interesting observation. Once stated, it seems obvious and natural that any politician's speech, regardless of where it is given or under what auspices, is essentially aimed at the home audience. That's who he has to please to get re-elected, after all.
Sad to see so few comments. And even sadder to see enough REAL journalism about this event in the US. The political grounds are shifting. Keep up your work, it's enlightening to out generation.
dear phil, in the 80's i was at a friend's house who is a physician who volunteers to work the emergency room on weekends. this is the busiest time of all in a hospital and the most difficult. he patches the drunk loggers and fisherman. he was on the phone to his father who was leaving to visit israel for the express purpose of marching in a demonstration to support menachem begin and the invasion of lebanon. he told his father not to worry, "there are too many arabs in the world anyway". i was shocked and left his house, called him an asshole and have never been back. imagine if someone said "don't worry dad, there's too many jews in the world". jim byers
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–"The chants of We love you and of Obama! at the end were expressions of hope, that Muslims would again be treated with respect." Muslims don't deserve to be treated with respect if they didn't earn it themselves. I know this is one of Zionist anti-Arab rhetoric, and I am an Arab Muslim, but it's true–without indigenous sacrifice for democracy and without resistance to violent oppression, no one will give them anything they don't have to give them.
From a ‘What’s best for America’ standpoint, Obama’s speech was a very smart move. He made it clear that the U.S. is not in a war against Islam, and doesn’t intend to be under his administration. This will save American soldiers’ lives, both immediately and in the long run. The Right says he’s going around the world apologizing to Muslims. Well US government SHOULD apologize for the Iraq war, which both Bush and Cheney have now conceded was totally unconnected to 9/11, it’s primary rationale. The Right also says he’s preparing to throw Israel under the bus. What does that mean? Stop letting the tail wag the dog? [cont'd]
Just as the left-wingers will never be able to convincingly reconcile their push for world left-liberalism and its attendant atheism and hedonism with conservative Islam, the right-wing will never be able to convincingly reconcile its Israel first-ism with American patriotism and authentic American conservative and Christian values, notwithstanding all their hawking of this new-fangled “Judeo-Christian” religion. In each case, those who believe otherwise exist in a government-is-God, “Washington makes its own reality” fantasyland. Obama is more of a realist, at least vis-à-vis fantasies for a liberal Western war against Islam.
Obama's speech to the Muslim world should be judged as an effort to win the hearts and minds of the people among whom Al Queda is hiding. In an insurgency/counterinsurgency, the result depends on which side the populace decides to favor and to help. If the whole neighborhood decides to blow the whistle, drop a dime, turn in the violent ones, they cannot last a week. If the whole neighborhood decides to provide them cover, it will be impossible to root them out. Bush-Cheney, with their Crusade/torture/GWOT/Israel-right-or-wrong approach, played right into Al Queda's hands. Now that the Muslim street loves Obama, will they continue to hide Al Queda? The best answer to Cheney's ranting will be to quickly capture or kill Osama bin Laden, and that will be when someone who knows where he is decides that "blowing up old women on a bus" is not the heroic Jihad that bin Laden makes it out to be. People know where bin Laden is hiding. Obama spoke to those people today. We will see if some one among them decides to embrace Obama's values, rather than bin Laden's. Progressive and Middle-of-the-road Jews and Israelis could take comfort from the few remarks directed at them – that the ties that bind the US and Israel are unbreakable, that Holocaust denial is wrong, ignorant and hateful, and that violence is not the answer. His continuation of attack directed at the settlements is not welcome among the settlor movement, nor among Likudniks and neocons generally, but their values are not progressive values, not American values. But for those concerned about the safety and security of Israelis and Palestinians, the many peoples of the Middle East, this was a speech that may save a million lives. It's true value will only be revealed as we move forward.
Here's Phil on Obama's speech: "so much of it was pitched to an American Jewish audience," Doesn't this statement perfectly illustrate the brilliance of Obama's speeches? Everyone thinks Obama is speaking directly to them. It happens every time. I love it.
from Obama's speech: "The first issue that we have to confront is violent extremism in all of its forms." Yes – and if you buy into this Jew-inspired mantra, you'll find yourself without a job, without emergency rooms, without schools and infrastructure, without a solid currency, and without hope. Your kids only alternative will be to take their Xbox 360 skills and play video games full-time, violently killing real people in far-off lands in the name of "confronting violent extremism". Then you'll be fed a new Jew-inspired mantra: "it's all China's fault because they destroyed our industry and our currency". Our slick President slouches off to Buchenwald when he should've gone to Jerusalem, where he might reflect on how many people Jesus was willing to kill in the name of confronting the evils of His time. Alternatively, he could reflect on how the Jews crucified and mocked Jesus because he opposed their system.
Seems to me it wasn't so much a matter of who the speech was "pitched" to but how much it was pitching what Obama manifestly isn't going to be able to deliver. Of course there wasn't a molecule of genuine substantive policy talk in the thing, but in the absence of same the message he gave in all its soaring liberal rhetoric—Obama seems to want to be Martin Luther King Jr.—is one of some new kind of fairness to be given to arab and muslim concerns. Well okay, but what's he gonna do about Israeli nukes while he's hammering Iran about it's alleged plans for same? And he can't even bring himself to go mano a mano with Israel about settlement *expansion* much less their existence at all? And yet … under him America is going to champion its right to tell the arab/muslim world how to conduct its politics ("democracy!") and how to treat its women. Nuts. Old wine in a new bottle. The arabs and muslims ain't no callow American college kids starry-eyed looking for some secular messiah. At best Obama is just riding the wave he got in the U.S. for somehow transcending politics and being this great moral clarion caller. At worst he's started believing it. Either way, he can't deliver what he so carefully tried to avoid saying (i.e., anything), but what his rhetoric seemed to promise anyway.
I am Canadian i found the Obama speech silly and worthless. The Arabs and others over there know its all about Israel. They need to see practical action to stop Israel in this or that. The ties of America too Israel are not solid. In fact most Americans rightly see Israel as just another foreign country that makes claims its abused. So in their kindness they care and the holocaust industry raises sympathy. However the American people are a moral people and will do whats right if the case is made to them. if Israel is not worthy of help and sympathy Americans will change their policies. It doesn't matter if a President says America is close to another foreign country. Its just talk. America is close or not based on moral and self interest matters. I see the Israel thing as unnatural and simply from Jewish influence, common sympathy for the past and for the present. All these things can be shown to be unfounded by appealing to morality and accurate interpretation of pst and present motivations and actions. President Obama has nothing to offer divided peoples over there when his election was based on nurturing division in America. Still he can only be better then Bush.
US official: We can find deal on West Bank settlements Herb Keinon, JPost, Jun 5 2009 Washington feels “an arrangement that works” can be hammered out with Israel on the settlement issue, a senior administration official told the JPost on Thursday, indicating the US recognizes some wiggle room in defining a “settlement freeze.” The official said, shortly after Obama delivered his speech in Cairo, that some of the comments reportedly made on the issue by anonymous officials both in Israel and the US had been “heated” and not always credible:
Israeli officials, meanwhile, were struggling to understand what precisely Obama meant when he said in his speech:
One diplomatic official said the construction of this paragraph seemed intentionally vague, enabling further discussion on the matter with the US. Middle East envoy George Mitchell is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday, to continue discussing the matter. The senior US official said Washington and Jerusalem were also continuing to have a conversation about a two-state solution, something Obama forcefully backed in Cairo but which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has still not endorsed. What this tells me is that sooner or later the US State Dept will recognise the Wall as "de facto border".
I was unimpressed with Obama's speech – It was vague and didn't say anything new. Yes, the fact that he was actually addressing the Muslim world directly was impressive, but he relied to much on gimmicks like saying Salaam and quoting the Qur'an. The speech proper, had little substance and for the importance Israel/Palestine has to the region and to Muslims as a whole, he didn't say anything that was worth listening to – It was the same two-state, non-violence mantra with nothing about how they were actually going to bring this about.
I was impressed with Obama's speech, and impressed with the deliberateness that he asserted to Netanyahu that expanding settlements was an unnecessary continuing provocation. Words ARE actions, and any assurance that the US will not abandon Israel, but only for substance, not for fear, is HELPFUL.
Do you mean that all Muslims should rise up in direct confrontational anger to earn respect? What do you want them to do? A fair reading of USA history is that most blacks did not rise up violently; they just tried to get by, and it was not until some whites got involved in their behalf in a big way that slavery ended, and then, full Civil Rights were eventually won. The principles of equality and justice assume respect.
Your conclusion is exactly what the Israeli regime is now working towards–the term settlement(s) will be used in futuro to mean only those pockets on one side of the wall.
We love you Phil! Sometimes it seems like you are the one sane man in the universe. America's next civil rights movement has begun. It's not about land, it 's not about "peoples". It's about EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW, as engraved on the front of our Supreme Court. Freedom riders, Jews and non-Jews chained together in Jews-only roads and apartment blocks, legal challenges to segregation, do it yourself media showing the daily acts of civil disobedience and protests that happen every day in the territories. The progression of human history for the last 300 years will not stop. The new generation will create, and will see in our lifetime, the end of oppression and incarceration of all those born the wrong religion in Palestine.
I guess Phil ran out of anything intelligent to write. So he takes a swipe at American Jews, the people he loves to hate, and insists that Obama's speech toward the Muslim world was actually directed toward "the jooz." I am sure that Obama had his entire domestic constituency in mind when he addressed the Arab world. And I am equally sure that Phil and his like are disappointed that he didn't just lead the hall in some sort of "Two Minutes Hate" chant against the evil Zionists and their evil American supporters. Personally, I have more respect for My President than that. And while he has to always keep in mind the opinions of, you know, his CONSTITUENTS, he was also sincere in the message that he wanted to convey to the Muslim world. I am proud of My President. Phil attributes bizarre conspiracies to him.
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Joshua, when you use quotation marks, you should use them to actually quote the person you purport to be quoting. Phil spells "Jews" in the normal way. I have never come across anyone, in fact, who spells them as you do.
Wow, I wish I could say your hatred for Jews shocks me, but it doesn't. What else are the Jews responsible for? Definitely global warming, rap music, broccoli, tattoos, global famine, spiders, reggae music, and Britney Spears. Anon, Thank you, you and ilk like you made the Jewish state a reality!
Look at Egypt and Jordan. Saudi Arabia. Now, I'm not trying to imply we are – as Americans – inherently more courageous. Not at all. But no one will respect Arabs and Muslims if they do not rise up and fight back. The fact that Egyptians were happy w/ Obama's speech is depressing. It just shows you how colonized they have become. It's like in the US where minorities are using the same tactics as the Jewish Left did in past decades. All this talk about racism and blah blah. The simple point to make is that it's THEIR land and THEIR country. Their destiny. In Palestine, the basic point to make is the same. The Jewish Zionists came to Palestine and stole the country from the native population. What has the resistance become reduced to? I don't want to judge Hamas and Hezbollah. They are reactions to Jewish Zionist aggression. It was the Israelis who committed rapes and murder and stole from the Arabs. It was the Israelis who bombed mosques and schools and cafes in Historic Palestine before Israel was founded. It was the Zionists who brought terrorism to the Holy Land. Everything the Arabs do now is a reaction to Western imperialism – which is ALL Israel is. I fucking hate seeing those Egyptian and Jordanian protests against Israel. What a bunch of phonies. They have their own problems with that pig Mubarek and the puppet King. Same for the Saudis. What a bunch of fucking clowns. When I look at pictures of Palestine before the invasion, it makes me realize how much potential these people have. They weren't third world AT ALL. They have been reduced to their current state because of the Zionists. All this fucking talk about Jewish suffering is grotesque. I just read that a Holocaust museum is being built in some Arab village in Palestine. How disgraceful. It's like in the old days when the colonists converted the Natives to Christianity. That's EXACTLY what's happening. Jews want everyone to internalize their suffering. It's a sign of defeat. You have to bow down to their Holocaust religion. Jewish suffering > everyone else's suffering. Do not question the Holocaust. Do not even think about criticizing Jews and Israel. This is all your fault. It's your fault we kill your children. It's your death cult, Islam too. I really have no hope in the resistance and in the Arab people. They seem to be content to win simply by videotaping Nazi Jewish Zionists abusing them. They want to win via PITY. So they will attract – like flies – a bunch of white liberal yuppies (which is what Medea Benjamin and ISM is despite their overwhelmingly Jewish roster) who are going on 'vacation' to see the 'noble savages'. It's just so sad. There is no Arab character – no Arab hero. I can't think of one. Maybe those Palestinian kids who grow up under the Occupation, throwing rocks at tanks because they aren't afraid of those fucking inbred narcissistic sadists. But then those kids grow up, get disillusioned, lose hope and probably join Hamas or whatever. Fuck Obama and Israel. Fuck the Holocaust Industry. I'm so sick of hearing about how we need to have mutual blah blah. Those pictures of an Israeli with the word's peace on their faces and hope on the Palestinian faces (in the style of those Obama posters) is so fucking sanctimonious it's sickening. How convenient is it for Jews to try to USE their Jewishness to mitigate the overwhelmingly Zionist character of the Jewish community. Anna Baltzer is a great example. Nice girl. Cares about the issue I suppose but she redefines her Jewishness as being about human rights and blah blah. SINCE FUCKING WHEN? Just look at how inundated we are in this country with imagery of Jewish suffering. How subtle it is that we see the Jewish perspective on everything. Will we ever see a mainstream movie about the Nakba? What about Deir Yassin? What about the Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian girls and killing their parents? Jews have money and affluence. Arabs have their religion. That's it. Guess which one will win. Western PITY is not going to save Palestine. It's not going to save the Afghans or Iraqis or Pakistanis or Iranians.
This guy seems a frequent lost soul monologuing on the old typepad comments. Can anybody explain how he manages to comment there? Does it work if I am not logged in? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Mr Weiss, The reason why you are a broken record is that you skip reality and loop back to the fantasy you have convinced yourself of. What you say does not make sense because you leave out critical parts of the melody. Then you can't figure out why mainstream America recognizes something not quite right in your tune. A problem here is that there is nothing profound in your writing, it is all shallow snake oil and boring, predictable misinterpretation. You have this pathologically high self-esteem, perhaps because the hate mongers that have gravitated to your side have pandered to your ego. I keep coming back because your desperation is so farcical it is like watching one of those cheap coming of age movies we all laugh at. I am certain that anything that challenges your flight from reality is perceived as a threat, so I will just keep talking to empty air for the rest of your readers to see. An Informed Reader Posted by: Michael LeFavour | June 05, 2009 at 07:59 AM ****************************************************************************************************************** If one looks at his judgment of Phil, it's actually quite interesting he keep returning. Unfortunately I can't tell him, that none of Phil's readers actually see what he write. But I decided to help him a little.
Look, Joshua, your view is not incompatible withPhils, an American president always has his own constituency in mind obviously. He speaks for them. Merkel managed to speak for me at Buchenwald. I can't complain. But you surely recognize that this is a paradigm shift considering the Bush admin? And he carefully took the wind out of the sails of his opponents. Well done, Mr President.
"largely unspoken" Bull…Have heard Ledeen, Frum, Bolton, Cheney, Feith, Addington, Judy miller etc repeat inflammatory and unsubstantiated claims about Muslim countries and Muslims that have fueled Islamaphobia. I have heard Jewish students at Ohio State University say the most racist and hate filled remarks about Palestinians that I have ever heard. attended a Palestinian march in Washi D.C. six years ago and did not Hear one Palestinian say anything close to a racist remark about Jews. Interviewed and audio taped hundreds of the marchers. I just think the media has not exposed some of the racism that permeates some Jews thinking and beliefs about Muslims. Your site and the work of many others (Archbishop Tutu, Carter, Vanessa Redgrave, Norman Finklestein, Edward Said, ARt and Peggy Gish, Ilan Pappe, Amy Goodman etc) over the last 50 years has exposed some of that racism.
I mentioned this before: Democrats pressure Barack Obama on Israel Ben Smith, Politico, May 2 2009 A key defender of Obama’s Mideast policy, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), is seeking to narrow the administration’s definition of “settlement” to take pressure off Obama. Wexler, an early Obama ally and a staunch defender of his Middle East policy, said in his view, the settlement freeze should apply only to settlements outside Israel’s security fence, or wall, and should exclude territory that appears likely to ultimately remain part of Israel. He said:
Thank you Phillip and Max for your important work. Travel safe. folks should be pushing hard against the I lobby. Israel will benefit in the long run. Call your reps. Support Obama's demands FREEZE THE SETTLEMENTS. Go further ISRAEL OUT OF ALL OF THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES
I remember Irving Kristol's 1970s WSJ columns attacking progressives (the New Class in his terminology) for concern about the environment and air pollution. It was practically a solicitation for funds on behalf of the Jewish Zionist Neocon movement and quite effectively offered modern Jews as servants of the most reactionary industrial interests in the same way that Jews offered their services to the Polish aristocracy in the vicious and exploitative arenda system.
He's a dud, with a pretentious undertone that has never had many friends. 'Shallow snake oil' who says this? He doesn't know where to get good ziocane.
Issues with Obama’s Speech Summary: Holocaust and Ashkenazi Genocidalism Now that we have more access to Russian, Polish, and Soviet archives, any discussion of the Holocaust is completely inappropriate unless contextualized by the history of ethnic Ashkenazi financial crimes, sabotage, radical violence, targeted assassinations, mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Forbes: Zionist ethnonational Financial Warfare Transnational Zionist political economic oligarchs skim a good chuck of that subsidy described above into their pockets in addition to what they suck more directly out of the US economy. These oligarchs like Saban, Bronfman, Adelson, the Krafts, Peretz, etc. are Netanyahu’s real employers. If Obama wants to change Israeli behavior. He need only add the IDF to the list of terrorist organizations on the basis of the Gaza rampage — there is more than enough documentation to do so. Then the US government could start arresting the oligarchs for aiding and abetting Zionist terrorism. Seizing all the oligarch’s assets and all the assets of Israel advocacy organizations would defang the Israel Lobby. I do not understand why ordinary progressive Jews, who do not have multiple millions of dollars in the bank run interference for the oligarchs, who view ordinary Jews as canon fodder to defend plutocratic revenue streams. Yet we can be sure that the arrest of the Zionist oligarchs would change American Jewish attitudes toward Israel and Zionism even quicker than the arrest of the Rosenbergs changed American Jewish attitudes toward the Soviet Union and Communism. Why Not Remove Zionist Interlopers? What is sauce for the goose is gravy for the gander. Because Neocons acting as a Jewish Zionist special interest formulated policies that forced millions to become refugees, an even handed US foreign policy must treat the removal of criminal Zionist conglomeration from the ME as a completely valid option that would stabilize the ME and benefit US interests. Summary Continued pandering of American Jewish racism, extremism, and genocidalism will poison any effort to build a new relationship either with the Muslim world in general or with American Muslims in particular. In order to repair US relations with the Muslim nations, to undo the economic mess created by Zionist ethnonational economic warfare, and to rejoin the society of nations as a non-rogue state, the US government must slap Zionists down hard, and Obama must start with the traitors in his own administration.
@ Mona, Go back to the kitchen and cook.
If President Obama's speech was being primarily pitched towards the Jewish American Zionists, that would explain why I personally saw it as lacking in a number of areas that I feel would have been more effective in regards to the Arab and Muslim world…I took the time to reread it, and while it did offer words to be hopeful about, it still did not get to the crux of the matter, which is that U.S. policies in the region have never considered or understood the collective will of the Arab/Muslim people which is why they choose to continue resisting rather than acquiescing to these misguided policies…
We run interference because there are so many people like yourself Thors . Its a defense mechanism towards people like you who blame the Holocaust on the Jews, blame global warming on the Jews and anything and everything else when you see fit. We are sick of being your scapegoat for the worlds problems. Your hatred and hatred like yours created the necessity for a Jewish state, my advice to you…… deal with it.
Rowan, not sure I can agree with you there. The wall basically took most of the arable land and the sources of water. Wexler can meddle all he wants into the I/P scenario, but the land-grab needs to be rewound back to pre-1967 borders. Otherwise, it violates the Arab peace plan, which is the one Obama's focused on.
I think that the following piece touches nicely upon this lack of the U.S. getting their policy in the region right: The myth of a 'Muslim world' By Ramzy Baroud EXCERPT: "…David Schenker, writing for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy website was honest enough in explaining the significance of Obama's speech in Cairo. He pointed out that Iran is a major issue that Obama and moderate Arabs have in common. His explanation is straightforward: "Tehran's progress toward a nuclear weapon and its provision of material and ideological support for moqawama, or resistance, across the region is of grave concern to Washington and its moderate Arab allies." According to the poll cited above, only a fraction of Arabs surveyed seem concerned by the Iranian nuclear program. This leaves Iran posing one major "threat", its support of resistance. It's ironic that resistance, which is a universal right for any oppressed individual or collective, is being dealt with as a "grave concern". This explains, in part, the lingering illusion that continues to mar US foreign policy, and also highlight the common strength that Arab and Muslim masses continue to wield, their ability to resist. Amid the democracy programs that have appeared and disappeared in recent years – George W Bush's Middle East democracy project being one – none was an outcome of genuine and collective movements in Arab and Muslim nations. Such genuine movements, although in existence, are unpopular in Washington, for they seem inconsistent with US interests. This leaves one last aspect of collective self-expression, again, resistance, in all of its manifestations. It's the root causes of Arab and Muslim resistance that are most deserving of analysis and understanding, as opposed to mere dismissal on the grounds that it's a "grave concern"….." http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF02Ak04...
What do you want? it's a start to say the least. The Democratic [majority] party has got him. If 1/3 of the Democrats disagree and think Obama is speaking 'harsh' toward Israel, the Republicans will back these Democrats. They need an edge and would be happy to oppose the president. And if Obama says too much against Israel, the Anthony Weiner lackeys come out and attack him.
I do not know why you are being so hard on Mona, who does have a point….If the Arab people as a collective majority do not learn how to respect themselves by sacrificing for their rights, they cannot expect others to respect them and their rights.. I think that Stahl, "It's just so sad. There is no Arab character – no Arab hero. ", should do more research of the Arab/Muslim world before he makes such sweeping, based on ignorance claims about it…
I know this guy from another forum and I have had my own experiences with him…
I remember Irving Kristol's 1970s WSJ columns attacking progressives (the New Class in his terminology) for concern about the environment and air pollution. It was practically a solicitation for funds on behalf of the Jewish Zionist Neocon movement and quite effectively offered modern Jews as servants of the most reactionary industrial interests in the same way that Jews offered their services to the Polish aristocracy in the vicious and exploitative arenda system.
SETTLEMENTS = SEGREGATION Is anybody aware of the legal restrictions on mixed-race (oh, i mean mixed-religion) housing in Israel and the Occupied Territories? The word is out, dudes, and the word is segregation. Let's see more stories about Palestinian families trying to move into Jews-only housing blocks. Americans are waking up to what this is.
Adding the IDF to the list of terrorist organizations and desiginating the State of Israel to be a terrorist state solves this problem quite neatly because there are a lot of non-Jews in the FBI, CIA and the US military that are chomping at the bit to begin wholesale round-up of Zionists and seizure of their assets for aiding and abetting Zionist terrorism. The designation would kill two problems with one stone by purging Zionist subversives and by clawing back the $5-6 trillion of which Zionists have defrauded the US government in ongoing Zionist ethnonational financial warfare.
"Iran's progress towards a nuclear weapon" is a deliberately and dishonestly ambiguous phrase. There is no evidence (except the fabricated laptop, and even that doesn't actually and explicitly prove it) that Iran ever sought a nuclear weapon. The IAEA has no evidence from its continuing and wide-ranging inspections of any such program.
I remember Irving Kristol's 1970s WSJ columns attacking progressives (the New Class in his terminology) for concern about the environment and air pollution. It was practically a solicitation for funds on behalf of the Jewish Zionist Neocon movement and quite effectively offered modern Jews as servants of the most reactionary industrial interests in the same way that Jews offered their services to the Polish aristocracy in the vicious and exploitative arenda system.
mr. weiss feels that president obama was trying to teach american jews not to hate arabs. let's analyze the thought. there are two forms of those who hate arabs. those who hate them under the influence of a recent headline and those who hate them more permanently than that. there are two types of american jews. those who voted for obama and those who voted against him. i assume that if 80% or so of american jews voted for obama, these are not those who hate arabs on a permanent basis. so there is no need to convince them. then there are those who voted against obama. do you think obama traveled to cairo to attempt to convince american jews who voted against him of anything? i think not. so all that remains is that obama was trying to convince those jews who at times temporarily hate arabs. but those are people who are carried away by their emotions at particular moments and the cool soothing words of obama spoken in cairo on june 4th of 2009 will not help alleviate anguish if, god forbid an arab uses a bulldozer to run over people in downtown jerusalem or something of the sort. so he isn't trying to convince american jews of anything. rather he seems to be laying the groundwork for a more thoughtful atmosphere, so that over the next 8 years when a real opportunity to push for a peace settlement arises, those who support him in principle will be there to support him when push comes to shove. nothing to do with hatred whatsoever. but assuring them that they should allow hope to overrule fear, if those two emotions are the ones competing for their hearts.
Some posted this weeks ago from the Harry Truman Library. Edwin M. Wright discusses the early influence of Zionists in a stealth takeover of the State Department. His father was a missionary and he could speak Turkish and Armenian. But he tells the story of the growing Zionist influence in government. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/wright.htm#...
Phil, I think Israel (and the world) has got a bigger problem. I just came upon this video that coupled with what Avishai wrote on Wednesday paints a rather troubling picture of what lies ahead:
Sure, but that's just not going to happen.
If Palestinians were Israeli citizens your argument may have some validity, but they are not, they are an occupied people and will be occupied until their leaders can negotiate a 2 state solution with Israel. Occupation sucks, royally, that is why after Sadat and Begin made peace the first thing Israel did was relinquish Gaza and the Sinai, only problem w/ Gaza is Egypt didn't want it back. Israel finally did the right thing and disengaged, but that wasn't enough to stop the violence out of Gaza.
Well okay, but what's he gonna do about Israeli nukes while he's hammering Iran about it's alleged plans for same? Didn't he address the issue indirectly? Didn't he say, I am paraphrasing, some of you rightly complain that we should some have the right to posses nukes other's don't? To go on to general disarmament.
seems we agree. Besides I think he offered–to borrow your favorite term–a balanced approach. I love his statement that there will be no two messages, one in private one to the world. But if he wants to get tougher with Israel, he has to remain honest. It's simply not true that the whole problems the Arab world have with the US is related to Israel and Israel only. Thus getting tougher with Israel and opening a space for communications with the Muslim world means he has to show them concerning what problems he has to remain firm. As an American president I have to protect my people ( I am paraphrasing) This shows in which limits their expectations concerning the US shoud remain. More student exchange, scholarship for Muslims is not a bad thing either. Although, yes it is not really new. It was very important he admitted that American interference in Iran wasn't always benevolent. Has any American president before him ever done this? Concerning Bush, this was a paradigm shift.
I suppose Obama is "focused on the Arab peace plan" in the sense that, at a minimum, he and his advisers (specifically, Clinton's State Dept.) will want to help Saudi King Abdullah finesse his way out of it. But the decisive influences on Obama, Clinton, and the US Congress will settle for de facto recognition of the Wall as the border. No less. That's why Sharon built it. He knew this day would come.
various links: IDF declares Nablus area a closed military zone to keep out left-wing activists http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/04/1... Obama Admits to US Role in Iran Coup, President Admits to US "Role in the Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Iranian Government" http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/04/1... Iran nuclear showdown at 'decisive point': Obama http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/04/1... US reassured Jews ahead of speech http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/04/1... 10 Comments on Obama in Cairo – Still Accumulating, Not Expending Capital http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/04/1...
When I look at pictures of Palestine before the invasion, it makes me realize how much potential these people have. They weren't third world AT ALL. Thanks for the laugh, and when you say invasion you are talking about all the Arab countries invading the newly founded state of Israel after United Nations approval of that state, yes?
@ Thors, But diaspora Political Judaism in America historically primarily offered its services left-liberal Establishment causes in exchange for money, power, and support for Zionism. Given the nature of organized Jewry in Israel, this obviously is not out of any heart-felt "progressive" values (other than as a means of breaking Christian moral authority) but rather out of expedience and necessity because the former Christian establishment was generally not interested in having it on board, prior to GW Bush. Organized Jewry reveals its true, racist, right-wing authoritarian-Statist nature in Israel, but clearly it will happily employ left-wing authoritarian Statism when that's the path of least resistance, as Bolshevism shows. In my view, this puts American Statist liberals willing to collaborate with organized Jewry in the diapora on the same low-down level as GW Bush and Stalin.
I wonder how he manages to post. I just tried to tell him, listen this is not where the fans and antagonists of Phil, Adam and their friends are. You have to disallow the intensedebate.com Javafiles, than you don't even see their is another comment section. You must feel its completely lonely here. But I couldn't tell him. I get the familar typepad error page. Maybe I had to figure out exactly what feeds to allow and disallow.
What forum? Marion.
god forbid an arab uses a bulldozer to run over people in downtown jerusalem or something of the sort. How many years did nothing like this happen? How many years did Israel pretend it wanted peace and tell us it's all the Palestinians fault? He carefully picked up that parts of the narrative he shares even with the neocons, but he never descended to the Pipes, Horowitz et al hate propaganda. That's the difference. The moral high ground has been misused as a propaganda tool, and that was the confusing part of the story. Responsibility. Everyone has to take responsibility for his actions. Israel too. The Holocaust should never be allowed to legitimatize injustice to others.
to the informed reader: good thing you let us know you are informed. I wouldnt have known based upon your rant without any substance. Your post is nothing but a personal attack. Not very original. The other day I was thinking that these tactics that pro-israeli debaters use (ad hominem and other below the belt tactics) are a bit similar to the tactics israel itself is using in order to grab more and more land. The end always seem to justify the means, lying, attacking, cleansing, building walls and debating in immoral fashion, anything goes, right, informed reader? All moral standards go out of the window when israel is concerned….
Before the arrest of the Rosenbergs American Jewish politics tended to be leftist and pro-Soviet or at least Soviet sympathetic. There are many reasons for this tendency, but 1953-73 is a transitional period, during which the growing wealth and intellectual dynamism of the Zionist faction gives it dominance. This development was practically foreordained by the economics if I wish to skirt a Marxist analysis. Even without the red scare and McCarthyism, it made a lot more sense in terms of potential monetary gain to base corrupt Jewish American social networking around commitment to Zionist ideology and the Zionist state than around commitment to Marxist ideology and the Soviet state.
Ed, you perpetually chase this 'libertarian' moonbeam and ignore reality. Let me put it to you this way: if somehow 'the state' were magicked away, the plutocrats and tycoons would immediately create their own police forces, territorial militias, and expeditionary armies — a new 'state' in all but name, except that it would lack even the rudimentary humanitarian checks and balances provided by the so-called 'democratic' system. One doesn't have to be a 'leftist' to see this — it's obvious, common sense.
Either that or the allied conquest of the Levant, with help from Zionist detachments, which paved the way for militarized colonial settlements that eventually conquered Palestine and expelled most of its inhabitants.
Norman Finkelstein made a similar point on a certain Lebanese TV program. He got a bit paternalistic, asking, "how can you expect people to respect Arabs if you don't respect yourselves?" Except what are they supposed to do? Most people have a hard enough time trying to exist, let alone fight military occupiers and secret police. Maybe if the people of the Arab world waged a mass suicidal assault against the Saudis, Hashemites, Mubarak, gulf rulers and their American backers, they could turn to abolish the usurper state and bring the refugees back to their land. But the consequences for resisting are real, and one of the time honored strategies for subjugating people is to crush them just enough, then give a little breathing room. You can't ask people to sacrifice the little room they have, you have to respect the choice they make for themselves (To be fair to Finkelstein, he would agree with this). That's why people in the "free world" owe it to occupied people to resist their own end of the subjagation. Maybe it will take a mass suicidal assault here, too.
The Detroit News and Faith forums…
Yoni, you made no response to the specifics in my post. Why don't you try again?
A laughing fool whose knows fuck all about history…
Actually, Jews bought land from the wealthy Nashabibi and Husseini clans. They didn't steal it you, brainless nitwit. This is a well known fact to anyone with a historical background in Middle East affairs. These rich Arab families sold the land for $1000 an acre, essentially stealing the money of Jews, for land that needed A LOT of work before it could grow anything. Israeli soldiers raping Palestinians? Hmmm, that's a new one, because the Palestinian's were the ones raping Jewish women when they committed the Hebron Massacre in August of 1929. Keep spreading your lies, you pitiful excuse for a human. FUCK YOU Strahl.
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