By Max Blumenthal
The Israeli government has repeatedly announced plans to forge ahead with plans to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank in direct opposition to President Barack Obama’s demand for an absolute settlement freeze. On May 27, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leveled strong criticism at Israeli policy, telling reporters that President Barack Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions.” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev responded by declaring that “normal life” in the settlements would continue, using a phrase that is code for continued construction.
With neither side exhibiting willingness to back down, the stage is set for a contentious clash between Israel and the U.S. over settlement policy. At the center of the maelstrom is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the hawkish Likud Party, who has highlighted his unique understanding of the United States – he is MIT educated and speaks flawless English. Supporters of the settlement movement are an integral part of his governing coalition. How Netanyahu navigates between his far-right constituency and increasingly insistent demands from Obama will not only determine the fate of his government, but also the fate of Israel’s “special relationship” with Washington.
A gathering of the settlement movement’s leading figures in Jerusalem on May 22, documented in this exclusive Mondoweiss report, revealed the unprecedented influence of the settlers on Israeli policy. The event, a ceremony for the presentation of the Moskowitz Foundation Prize for Zionism, was organized and bankrolled by one of Netanyahu’s closest confidants and backers, the American casino tycoon Irving Moskowitz. For over a decade, Moskowitz has funneled millions in profits from his California-based Hawaiian Gardens casino, where he has been sued for exploiting undocumented workers, into settlement construction projects in the West Bank, including Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. He has also funded several neoconservative think tanks including a research center named after Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, who was killed while leading the Entebbe rescue raid in 1976. Moskowitz and Netanyahu have remained close since he established the center.
In 1996, Moskowitz convinced Netanyahu, in his first round as prime minister, to open a tunnel adjacent to the Temple Mount, a controversial act that led to several days of rioting and 70 deaths. Four years later, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the tunnel set off the so-called Al-Aqsa uprising, the opening salvo of the Second Intifada. Now, Moskowitz’s imprint on the West Bank’s landscape is most clearly reflected in the expansion of the settlement called Kiryat Arba, a hotbed of Orthodox Jewish radicalism located high above the occupied city of Hebron.
Kiryat Arba founder Noam Arnon is the recipient of the 2009 Moskowitz Prize, an honor that included $50,000 in cash. After receiving his prize before a cheering crowd of two thousand settlers, Arnon complained to me, “We think that somehow the Arabs have taken over the international media and the international mood, and they convinced the world to believe that there is a Palestinian people and these people deserve to have a Palestinian state -- which is totally untrue.”
Despite the fanaticism of Arnon and his followers, who routinely rampage through Hebron, vandalizing Palestinian homes and attacking local residents (often under the watch of the Israeli army), they are not isolated as a rogue element in Netanyahu's political world. Indeed, several of notables stood on stage to present Arnon with his prize. They included Professor Moshe Aumann, who won the Nobel Prize in 2005 for his work on understanding conflict through game theory, and Uzi Landau, the Israeli Minister of National Infrastructure. (Landau’s party, Yisrael Beiteynu, has introduced bills that would compel Arab citizens of Israel to take loyalty oaths and which would criminalize open discussion of what the Palestinians call "Nakbah," or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding). Also in attendance was Benny Begin, a leading Likud member of Knesset and the son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the first Likud prime minister.
After the ceremony, Landau mingled easily with settlement leaders, who beseeched him for support. Though Landau’s bodyguard attempted to prevent journalists from approaching him, my journalistic colleague Jesse Rosenfeld managed to ask him about Obama’s call for freeze on settlement construction. Visibly irritated by the mention of Obama’s demand, Landau issued an unequivocal statement. “Those who say, or are trying to suggest that Arabs can build anywhere and everywhere, and Jews can’t –it’s something that should be totally rejected.”
Since arriving in Israel, I have observed the battle over settlement expansion from an on-the-ground perspective. On May 16, I traveled with the Israeli peace group Ta’ayush to Hilltop 26, an illegal hilltop outpost constructed by settlers from Kiryat Arba – not an aspect of “natural growth.” Four angry settler youths confronted us upon our arrival; within minutes, a squadron of Israeli border police officers, soldiers and a Kiryat Arba security team were on the scene. The army swiftly issued a “closed military zone order,” ordering us to leave within five minutes or be arrested. While the soldiers initially allowed the settler youth to stay, the presence of international media apparently prompted them to briefly remove the teenagers while allowing their outpost to remain – an act that underscored the army’s collaboration with settlers to stifle the activities of peace groups. (See the confrontation in my exclusive Daily Beast video report here.)
On May 25, Ta’ayush member Joseph Dana detailed to me the continued development of Hilltop 26. Since I visited the outpost, Kiryat Arba settlers had wired it with electricity and established a security perimeter. Two days before, Dana and two other Ta’ayush activists were arrested by Israeli army officers for returning to the area to document conditions and not leaving rapidly enough. After interrogating the activists in Kiryat Arba police stations – “Why are you always creating chaos here?” Dana said the army commander angrily asked him – the commander ignored two calls from left-wing members of Knesset for the activists’ immediate release. In the end, Dana and his colleagues were released under the condition that they not return to the West Bank for two months.
Two days after I listened to Dana’s story, he called me with unexpected news: the army had dismantled Hilltop 26. Netanyahu had issued a list of 26 illegal outposts he planned to demolish -- an unsuccessful tactic to mollify the Obama administration -- but Hilltop 26 was not among them. Dana attributed the sudden demolition to intense coverage of the controversy, particularly my video for the Daily Beast and an editorial he authored for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz. “It seems like the government was so embarrassed by all the media coverage, and even though they tried to prevent us from even going to Hilltop 26 to document what was happening there, they decided they had to take action,” Dana told me.
The demolition, however, has sparked a furious backlash from the fanatics of Kiryat Arba. According to Dana, the settlers have initiated a new round of violence inside Hebron – already, an elderly Palestinian man has been beaten. And while the settlers hatched plans to rebuild the outpost, the following call for retribution appeared on a Kiryat Arba web forum: “The destruction of outposts and their surrender is the first step in the bigger scheme… we will not be silent any longer! We will not silently abided by false declarations, promises and temptations… Bribes blind the eyes of the righteous. We will stop the cleansing at the source.” The battle over Hilltop 26 appears to be just beginning. So does the struggle between Obama and Netanyahu.
Guess what. You can never achieve an ethnically pure state. All countries are mixed. That's why you have to give legal equality to all people, regardless of their religion or race. Because a system that suppresses some people to benefit others only causes, can you guess? Violent struggle, one group against another, in perpetuity. Americans are cluing into the fact that Israel is creating its own enemies. Israel can destroy itself with its zero-sum game idea of security. But Americans are waking up, and we're not going to pay for it anymore.
Not much to add to this in terms of the content of this piece, although one wishes that it more widely known that the settler movement is led by ethnic supremacists, paid for from US sources, feeds and grows on racism, idealizes ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide, and does so with explicit support of the Israeli political establishment. But it's good to see this documented here and hopefully a few new eyes will be opened. I'm also writing to express my happiness to see MW now producing video and working with Max B… I look forward to more of this!
Where's the news story here? Apart from that fact that Max Blumenthal has shown his illiteracy about the facts – for example, Netanyahu recieved a B.S. degree in architecture and an M.S. in Business Administration, both from M.I.T. – not Yale, or that Sharon visited the same tunnel that set off the riots under Netanyahu (Sharon actually visited the Temple Mount, which is above the tunnel), or that this act is what set off the "al-Aqsa Uprising" which became the "Second Intifada" (Maxie is actually balling up two languages here: intifada is "uprising" in Arabic, and the Palestinians refer to the entire mess as the "al-Aqsa Intifada". But apart from that, where's the news? We already knew that Irving Moskowitz made his money in casinos…. so? And we're aware that the residents of Kiryat Arba are nasty people (and the 500 or so Jewish settlers in the qasba of Hebron are even nastier!). And it's never been a secret that Prof. Aumann supports the settler movement or the Uzi Landau is a right-wing freak. So, where's the news Maxie?
Mr Moskowitz helps Israel in all sorts of ways, he even chips in when the IDF passes the hat around. :-) "…An organization belonging to the Moskowitz Foundation, headed by far-right American millionaire Irwin Moskowitz, gives money directly to Israel Defense Forces units, flouting IDF regulations, Haaretz has learned… http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1086469.html
Too bad there are Arab states in the middle east who consider themselves to be ethnically pure. But America will continue to support Israel. Maybe anti-semites are waking up, but everyone else in America is awake and knows exactly what they are doing.
Gosh, you had to throw the anti-semite word in the second line Wolfman. Pretty poor argumentation. You guys sure have devalued the currency of that word, which once had a real and serious meaning, but has been deformed by abuse by people like you. What if the person who wrote this isn't antisemitic at all? She's not, she's one of millions of Americans who are pro-Jewish and pro-Justice. And we all know it's just a slur you throw at everybody who believes, like Phil, that equality before the law is the only reason people don't fight to the death in every society. People who understand that injustice causes conflict. I've lived in 3 Arab states and in Israel, and I can tell you it's better living as a non-Muslim (a Jewish American in fact) in Lebanon, Jordan, even Egypt than as a non-Jew in Israel and the territories. It's the same myth they used to tell us about South African Blacks, and how they were better off under apartheid than in any African state. Turns out it was all false, including the income level statistics which UNDP documents in its Human Development Reports.
One shouldn't discuss Kiryat Arba without mentioning the shrine to Baruch Goldstein, and in fact a film about that would be instructive. I gather than not only is it a place of pilgrimage, but it is even a site for lovers' trysts. Maybe they regard his grave as a fertility emblem.
Actually, the Wolfman is displaying the same arrogance that the Israel-first crowd has for the last 8 years under Bush. America will always fall in line. America's $3 billion in taxpayer subsidies for white phosphorous bombs to be used on women and children in Gaza. Anyone who says differently is an anti-semite. It worked for so long (at great cost to America's credibility in the eyes of the world), why should we believe AIPAC can't work its magic to corrupt Congress indefinitely. Hey, Israel is our "staunch ally," our "best friend in the region," the "sole democracy in the ME." As the famous quote from an AIPAC staffer went, he could get 75% of Congress to sign the back of a napkin with a single phone call.
Remember how Bush was called away from a speech by Olmert to tell Condi to abstain from voting on a UN resolution that she herself had co-authored? How about Lieberman's chuckle to the Russian media that "America will do whatever Israel wants." Yes, it a war of words, a war of ideas. But Operation Cast Lead changed everything. It called the world's attention to the atrocities being committed in a US-taxyper-funded aparthied that makes South Africa look like kiddie play. Obama was elected to mop up the stupendous mess the JPPPI-WINEP-AIPAC neocons made under "Clean Break." And that's exactly what the Israel first crowd is learning: we're undergoing a "clean break" from Israel's apartheid policies.
Thanks, very well done: David Jacobus, Jesse Rosenfeld, Max Blumenthal. We need more such really good journalism on the issue. Anonyme, yes I am very pleased that Germany is getting more and more colors. It feels a lot better. Americana, the way antisemite is used here is an insult to all people that suffered or died due to it. Is this part of the religious hope for the future? The origin of religion seems politics, Judaism in Israel seems to have come full circle. Religion barely covers pure political instinct. But what do I know? How about interviewing David Ohana? I think he is interesting? http://www.routledge.com/books/Political-Theologi... http://www.routledge.com/books/Political-Theologi... The Politics of Political Despair Escape from the political has many faces. Since Aristotle's and Plato's virtue (or the general good) via Rousseau's general will to Habermas' public sphere, politics has always been directed to the whole society – to the universal and not to the particular, to the objective and not to the subjective, to the general and not to the private. During the last generation in Israel, we have witnessed a phenomenon that can be defined as the "politics of political despair". The "pathology of cultural criticism", to use the expression of the historian, Fritz Stern, has many variants, but the common denominator is the despair in the universal, objective and general sphere in politics. The privatization and the sectoralization of Israeli society in the last generation have several disturbing manifestations. With the unraveling of the Zionist Ideology and the weakening of the social solidarity ethos, each group is concerned only with its own private wound. On the radical right, the politics of political despair has been manifested by the murderous act of Baruch Goldstein, the massacre of the Palestinians in Hebron, and the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by Yigal Amir. This phenomenon lies beyond conceptual categories such as "radical right", "political theology", "fundamentalism" and "political Messianism". The contempt of the radical right for the political establishment, the democratic rules, the decadent secular culture and the hedonistic capitalist society reveals a total alienation from contemporary Israeli society. They recall the Bader-Meinhof group in Germany or the Red Brigades in Italy in the 1970s. The "hilltop" youth in the occupied territories and the demonstrations that were held after the disengagement plan in the summer of 2005 were other variants, which are discussed in this paper. I also deal with the anarchist group, the young demonstrators against the construction of the separation fence in the occupied territories. http://www.routledge.com/books/Political-Theologi...
All you've done was prove how stupid your crowd has become. Most Americans know that Hamas got their collective asses kicked, again. Most Americans cheer. Die hard anti-semites just find new nonsensical reasons to hate Jews.
As they will give your grave a designation for the filtering of brandy.
One should mention the verifiable facts: Firstly, Silwan was a Jewish Yemenite village for hundreds of years until 1948 when they were thrown out by the Jordanians.. And secondly, Hebron is hardly 'occupied' since it has been inhabited by Jews for at least 600-700 years, if not more, with legal documentation until they were massacred in 1929,every man,woman and child. In addition to this, Jews, since the inception of Islam, were never allowed to enter the tombs of the patriarchs in Hebron but only up to the 7 exterior steps. There are no places of worship closed to Moslems or Christians today.
One should mention the verifiable facts: Firstly, Silwan was a Jewish Yemenite village for hundreds of years until 1948 when they were thrown out by the Jordanians.. And secondly, Hebron is hardly 'occupied' since it has been inhabited by Jews for at least 600-700 years, if not more, with legal documentation until they were massacred in 1929,every man,woman and child. In addition to this, Jews, since the inception of Islam, were never allowed to enter the tombs of the patriarchs in Hebron but only up to the 7 exterior steps. There are no places of worship closed to Moslems or Christians today.
And then there's the shrine for Arafat, who had the distinction of being the only person to address the UN General Assembly with a .38 strapped to his belt (although I'm pretty sure that he only shot people in the back). Lest we forget, he personally ordered the murder of Ambassador Cleo Noel. I gather that not only is his grave a place of pilgrimage, but it is even a site for lovers' trysts.
As they will give your grave a designation for the filtering of brandy. Does anyone have any idea what if anything this is supposed to mean? I think an interview with Berel would be interesting. It would be a great case study in Judaism as pure negativity.
Thanks for the report on these American-Israeli zionists. It shows they have conflicting interests to each state, which is not always the case.Sheldon Adelson was working his hardest to have Obama not become president. Similar to Moskowitz, his success is from the casino. Adelson intended to spend 250 million against Barack Obama. It's funny how Sarah Palin and her Israeli flag-wearing stunts turned out to be a albatross for her and McCain, not to mention the foot in mouth disease they both displayed. The writing was on the wall for these poseurs – esp Palin..
What a load of crap. I have lived and worked in several Arab countries and they are all horrible. I have good friends who are Egyptian Coptic Christian and their lives are so bad all they want to do is leave.__Israeli Arabs can go any where they want to live, but rarely leave Israel.__Pro Justice? What a laugh. Where is the justice to gays and woman and minorities in the Muslim world?
The production values were purely amateurish.
I know Israeli Arabs who life in Germany, are they exception to the rule? Quite a few actually.
He is suggesting you are an alcoholic, I guess. Not very convincing.
Zubeida: Female, Israeli born of Jewish mother and Arab father and forced to flee to the US for fear of my father. Did he beat your mother and rape you? What wonderful story. So you are an expert now on Arab man? All animals?
"…Silwan was a Jewish Yemenite village for hundreds of years until 1948" According to this account that is not strictly correct, "The greater part of the village (Siloam/Silwan -mk), the older and better built section, belongs to Moslem fellahin who cultivate the well-watered gardens in the valley and on the hill slopes opposite, but a southern part has recently been built in an extremely primitive manner by Yemen Jews, immigrants from South Arabia, and still farther South, in the commencement of the Wady en Nar, is the wretched settlement of the lepers. How long the site of Silwan has been occupied it is impossible to say. The village is mentioned in the 10th century by the Arab writer Muqaddasi."</> Orr, James, M.A., D.D. General Editor. "Definition for 'SILOAM; SILOAH; SHELAH; SHILOAH'". "International Standard Bible Encyclopedia". bible-history.com – ISBE; 1915. According to the wiki, the Yemenite Jewish "refugees" arrived at Siloam in 1882. "In 1882, a group of Jews arrived from Yemen, fleeing the persecution there. Initially, they lived in tents. Later, when the rainy season began, they moved into the ancient burial caves on the east side of the valley. In 1884, the Yemenites moved into new stone houses on the eastern slope of the Kidron, north of the Arab village, built for them by a charity called Ezrat Niddahim…"</> I quote "refugees" because the Ottomans took control of Yemen from 1832 onwards and they had a fairly evenhanded policy towards indigenous Jews although they went to some pains to apply restrictions specifically to immigrant Jews who could act outside of Ottoman jurisdiction by claiming "Capitulatory rights". Perhaps they were "refugees" from the British controlled region around Aden, but I don't know of any British policies along those lines. They seem to have been part of an early Zionist settlement initiative. It was around this time that Hertzl was trying to buy Palestine from the Sultan for $20million! The Ottomans opposed the efforts of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish immigrant community in Palestine. They saw the attempts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine as being detrimental to the stability of the region ( and you could argue that history has vindicated their view). Jews could still emigrate to other regions of the Ottoman empire. A bit of the history, "…the Ottoman government turned its attention to another aspect of Jewish settlement in Palestine, the question of land sales to the Zionists. The Ottomans tried to prevent the Zionists from acquiring real estate in Palestine. The law declared that "subjects of foreign governments are allowed to take advantage of the rights to possess property within or without towns in every part of the Imperial dominions with the exception of the Hejaz lands, in the same way as Ottoman subjects."' Having realized this, the Turkish government on 5 March 1883 passed a law especially designed to stop Jewish settlers from obtaining any land in Palestine… …Although the Zionists failed to accomplish their political objective of acquiring a Charter for a proposed Jewish state, they managed, despite Ottoman intransigence, to penetrate and settle thousands of their followers in Palestine. By 1908, the Jewish population of Palestine had risen to 80,000, three times its number in 1882,… …The failure of the Ottomans to prevent the establishment of a Zionist foothold in Palestine must not be placed squarely on the shoulders of the local authorities.During the period under consideration, Palestine was governed by exceptionally honest and competent administrators who earnestly administered the Porte's regulations. The wide gap between the theory and practice of the Ottoman policies was attributable to the intervention of the Powers on behalf of the Zionist colonizers. Of all the Great Powers, Germany and Russia had genuine interests in the promotion of Zionist policies. As Herzl told Wilhelm II and W. K. Plehve, the exodus of the Jews from these countries, from the domestic point of view, meant that the Socialist movement would be deprived of its leaders and supporters on the one hand, and anti-Semitism would be sapped of its impetus on the other. With respect to external considerations, both the Germans and Russians must have thought that these Jewish elements, once placed under their protection, would prove themselves useful agents for the enhancement of their respective spheres of interest at that part of the Ottoman Empire… – The Ottoman Empire, Zionism and the Question of Palestine http://www.scribd.com/doc/8104532/The-Ottoman-Emp...
"I have lived and worked in several Arab countries and they are all horrible." Oh! Ok. Well, I used to be pro-human rights and international law for Palestinians and Israelis, but now that I know that you've lived in Arab countries and they are all horrible, I guess I'll go join CUFI. Thanks for letting me in on this important information.
What about the 500 something destroyed Palestinian villages? Are you an expert on their history too? Do you know the locations and names? And secondly, Hebron is hardly 'occupied' since it has been inhabited by Jews for at least 600-700 years, if not more, with legal documentation until they were massacred in 1929,every man,woman and child. How about dividing up the area again, all the documented Jewish space gets Jewish again, and all that has been Palestinian/Arab before gets Palestinian again? I am being cynical, in case you do not notice.
"Every man, woman, and child." Not true. I've met survivors of the 1929 massacres, who told stories of being hidden in houses by their Muslim neighbors to protect them from the individuals who committed these heinous acts. And these Jews who lived in Hebron–who were Mizrahi and spoke Arabic–are not at all related to the settlers in Hebron, who come mainly from the United States. In fact, one of the survivors of the 1929 massacres sued some of the Hebron settlers for laying claim to property as "Jewish" property, arguing that the property wasn't theirs at all, but rather belonged to his family. This sort of essentialism, in which property is considered "Jewish" or "not-Jewish," smacks to me of anti-Semitism.
Also, your last statement is incredibly deceiving. There are places of worship closed to Palestinians. As a Western Christian or a Western Muslim, the holy sites in Jerusalem are wide open–but not for Palestinians.
>>>Israeli Arabs can go any where they want to live, but rarely leave Israel Gee, I wonder why that might be….maybe because if they leave even once, they know they'll never be allowed back in — to their homes, to their neighborhoods, to their families??
Did I say anything against Arab men? It is obviously a cultural diff which caused the riff. Maybe you were raped and beaten by Arab men but not I.
Too bad there are Arab states in the middle east who consider themselves to be ethnically pure. Please name them. But America will continue to support Israel. Yes we will, but the kind of support Israel gets is changing very quickly, or do Netanyahu and Arnon have their panties in a twist over nothing? Support in America is ending for financial and political subsidization of ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories resulting in blowback onto the United States. An end to the dispossession of Palestinians, a fair and just final-status agreement, and a stable, independent, and sovereign Palestinian state is now a critical US interest. Changes in the political environment are based upon the continuing spread, in spite of our myopic MSM, of a more accurate understanding of the history and current events of the I/P conflict, and the acquisition of knowledge is essentially irreversible.
Yes there were survivors but very few. There is even a book of photographs of the atrocities and fortunately there are always a few good souls around. But if I am not mistaken from 1929 until 1967 there were no Jews allowed in Hebron.
It's times like this when I wish you still had a rpeview button. :-)
Take this guided tour (slide show) of historic Palestine, pictures still speak louder than a thousand words.
"Mark Regev responded [to the Obama administration] by declaring that “normal life” in the settlements would continue, using a phrase that is code for continued construction." Basically, Regev told the Obama administration to go to hell. And unfortunately, there really isn't much he can or will do about it. The Israel lobby has been strongest in the Democratic Party for decades, the Neocons emigrated from the Trotskyite Left, were ushered into the Democratic Party by Scoop Jackson and spent decades there, and then slowly made their way Right into the GOP in order to facilitate the Iraq war. But now they are two-stepping back into the Democratic Party to join with their fellow Jewish Zionist Neolibs to continue to facilitate the anti-Islamic "Af-Pak" war. [cont’d]
Also, in the last election, the Democrats elected more Jewish Zionists to the new Congress than ever, and Jewish Zionists (well under 2% of the US population) now comprise around 11% of the Democrats in the House, and around 20% of the Democrats in the Senate(!). No, left-liberalism has never had the moxi to stand up to Political Judaism and in fact has partnered with it in the plundering of America on behalf of Israel for decades. Liberals simply crumble whenever someone suggests they're being "anti-semitic" by objecting to Israeli fascism, and respond by electing ever more Jewish Zionists to the upper ranks of the Democratic Party. As a consequence, liberal fascism is becoming a reality, only not in the way that Jewish Zionist Jonah Goldberg claimed. Ironic, isn’t it, how big government “liberals” are bringing fascism to America. Communism and fascism always were first cousins.
"Those who say, or are trying to suggest that Arabs can build anywhere and everywhere, and Jews can’t –it’s something that should be totally rejected.”>>>>>> Oh please reject the US and Obama Isrealis,please,please.!….heheheheh
Faris, you're right they are doing an amazing job: PW and MB.
Wow you have all kinds of wacky Zionists leaving their absurd comments here, ya'll are doing a great job pushing their buttons. Bravo alayk!!!!
:-) I'm a Muslim. Muslims don't drink alcohol.
Don't worry, moonkoon — that was very informative!
But America will continue to support Israel. Maybe anti-semites are waking up, but everyone else in America is awake and knows exactly what they are doing. A couple of years ago, this sentence was usually followed by a threat, e.g. "You better get used to it", or something similar, which admittedly puzzled me then. But now watch this. Antisemites are waking up. To what, Jewish power? What is he telling us, he is part of the power elite, compared to us losers? But pray tell me, what is he doing here? Is this comment section really a place for the powerful? Do we implicitly have a definition of antisemites now? An antisemite is everybody that questions Israel's and it's unique power to define US foreign policy and what happens in Israel and with the Palestinians? ******************************************* Please note, I am not against the US supporting Israel, I only wonder how? Via the next war against Iran? And what will be next then?
The more you keep dragging your so-called 'libertarian' theories in here, Ed, the more apparent it becomes that they are utterly irrelevant to the issues this site and its habitués are dealing with. The laboured way you continually attempt to link them looks more and more preposterous. If I were you, I would give up trying altogether.
Moskowitz needs to be investigated, tried and, if convicted, sent to prison for 65 years just like those Holy Land Foundation folks. Gamble with his life in a court of law.
Rarely does not mean never. Must we include a dictionary every time we post so that you do not come up with bullshit? Or do you feel you must post whatever crap passes as answer in front of your mind?
Saudi Arabia is one. Do your own work for the rest. So far, you've done little in the "acquisition of knowledge" department. You remain quite ignorant.
Invite the Coptic Christians to settle in Israel.
I think an interview with Ed Berkley would be a waste of time.
While I will only have 10 minutes, at 18:30 today GMT (2:30 PM US/Eastern) I will take part in an Iranian PressTV news discussion of Obama's trip to ME and may address Zionist extremism and subversion represented by Moskowitz and his ilk if such analysis turns out to be relevant to the session.
It would seem that LeaNder22 wants to be raped and beaten by Arab men.
Noam Arnon: "We think that somehow the Arabs have taken over the international media and the international mood, …" I've heard this song and dance before, and it's no less ugly the second time. Arabs are semites. Mr. Arnon is spewing an antisemitic global conspiracy theory.
Americans are not cheering. When they are not looking for jobs, they are seeing Madoff et al. No American wants to spend or die for Israel. Pretty simple. And for good reason.
Atta boy, Jacobwolfen–show us what you got, so we know our enemy.
Isolate the fanatics. Do so by reporting their own words and actions. America's stomach for this stuff will quickly turn over, if we hear enough lame or zealous rationalizations for racism, ethnic cleansing, property theft. You guys get the Pulitzer Prize for blogging the forbidden truth.
Max is simply very, very good. He has a wonderful non-reverential approach and humor. This was very professionally done for everyone sick and tired of the usual stereotypes in the field. You don't like the sting, the punch he has, do you? He should have been awestruck with admiration? And now I have to leave.
Rowan, you gentile Lefties have always been blinkered by Political Judaism, going all the way back to the Soviet Union. Haven’t you figured out how Judeo-fascism works yet? It infiltrates the body under the guise of a more “scientific” approach to government, the attainment of social justice, and “progressivism,” but then it immediately begins going to work on behalf of its own Jewish supremacist agenda. Think of it as if the Nazis were to set up shop in, say, S. America and wanted to exploit and enslave the local and native populations. They could do it with an iron fist, or they could do it more or less the way the colonialists did, by insinuating themselves into the population only partially through force, and then gating themselves off from the natives the way the Israelis have in Israel and Political Judaism has in America [cont'd]
Political Judaism has insinuated itself into America, exists as a wealthy elite in gated communities and in the left-liberal establishment, collaborates with locals to enslave the country via Wall Street, Hollywood and Washington, couldn’t care less about American sovereignty any more than the colonialists cared about sovereignty in the countries they infiltrated or the Zionists care about sovereignty in the Levant, and so agitates for open borders in America, (but not open borders in the wealthy gated communities in which it dwells)…I could go on and on. But the main point stands: left-liberals are too blinkered and implicated in Political Judaism’s supremacist enterprise (even if they refuse to own up to that fact) to ever really do anything about it, or even want to.
Congratulations, David Jacobus, Jesse Rosenfeld & Max Blumenthal! Well done. Hope a lot of blogs pick this up. Does Irving Moskowitz get to send that money to the settlers tax-free? When you guys get back to the US, could you follow up on that point?
moonkoon, you can edit for quite some time, if you subscribe to intensedebate. Once you are locked in you have an edit option. It's quite convenient actually. You can't edit forever but quite a while. And it doesn't take much time to subscribe, neither to lock in.
Gosh, it's not as if American were extensively polled on this issue, and these polls aren't available on the internet. Jacobwolfie needs to be careful, or someone will drag out the relevant data. I'm pretty sure it says that "most" Americans are not cheering on Jacob's views.
Gosh, Jacob. With that mixture of Hasbara and pure clover honey you put out, it's a wonder that America isn't 100% percent behind the ZIonists. People love being castigated while being begged for money. But you know what occurs to me? Is Jacob basing his conclusions about American support on all the Christian Zionists who are going to the "Holy Land on Hasbara tours? Yeah Jacob, you just count on them.
It's hardly implicit. It's been enforced for decades and all Americans who work in professional fields have towed the line; otherwise they'd have no careers. The zionists don't want anyone speaking who would adjust their stove dials when the prescribed temperature and time turned out incorrect.
It's really difficult to find any commenter on this blog more intentionally ignorant than Jacobwolfen.
Actually, what we really need to do, and I intend to do it, is set the Jacobwolfens against the Richard Wittys. I am very confused by how far apart their views are. Shouldn't they be congruous? I mean Richard Witty's calls for "normalisation" and "recounciliation" look sort of ridiculous if they have to be carried out by Jacobwolfens who nurse such bigotry against the Palestinians. Why such a wide divergence?
Ummm. Is there a skull cap-wearing counterpart to Horst Wessel in all of this? The reverse of course, a Jewish hero to replace the German Nazi hero of old….
That's interesting. I had the impression from some earlier comments that you were into Western hermeticism. Was that an earlier interest that led you toward Islam?
Yes, that's true. I explored all sorts of what I expect Ed would call "occultic" things. Partly, I wanted to understand Judaism better. It always had a certain mystique which I was curious about. I don't know if I regret it all now, or not. In a way, it's useful to have "been there".
I still think that the neocons — and William Kristol especially — were instructed by someone to foist Palin onto McCain to make sure he lost. It's mysterious, high-level, way above party politics, this sort of scheming. But it worked, if that was the intention. And Kristol has been sort of let off.
Slightly OT….
Whoops. Forgot the link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM...
I really wouldn't call myself a "Leftist". It's true I have no time for patriotism. I accept nationalism with a distinctly small 'n' as a natural sort of thing, but I don't glorify it. The only really "Leftist" thing about me is that I think Marx was right about the falling rate of profit, which means I think that capitalism is self-destructive even without usurious banks. I don't share the materialist worldview, obviously, but Marx's materialism wasn't really particularly "Leftist" — it was a standard 19th century empiricist attitude, equally compatible with bourgeois liberalism, and it still is, as witness the atheists who fill the popular chat columns and chat shows with recycled 19th century arguments against religion even today (though they never seem to mention Judaism, only Christianity and Islam) .
Whoever put this slide show up that shows what Palestine looked like in 1948, thank you! Everyone should watch it: http://picasaweb.google.com/montreal.palestine/Pa...
that's bit of a roundabout way of looking at it? You missed the neocons or self-declared neo-neocons celebrating her. It was quite a sight of Palin adoration I thought it wasn't such a stupid strategy, admittedly, but I am very, very pleased it failed. Do you secretly believe in the everything-is-controlled by the same forces scenario too? Sometimes strategies fail, indeed. Obama's was simply better. But that was my hope after watching the horrible Kerry campaign approach.
…don't forget Jerusalem Jake.
No. I think that he is suggesting that they piss on your grave.
Well David, you are partially correct. The Jewish community of Hebron was mixed – Sepharadi-Ashkenazi.
Do you secretly believe in the everything-is-controlled by the same forces scenario too? It's called the "Synarchist thesis". Not usually, but sometimes things sure look fishy.
You real name's Zubeida? That's a very uncommon Afghan name. Just curious.
Isn't gambling prohibited to Jews? A lot of these settlers are very religious types. How do they reconcile that with their religious beliefs?
No wonder there so angry. And then they're called terrorists.
A slideshow of Palestinian money, coins and stamps for those who say Palestine didn't exist, like that guy in the video. http://picasaweb.google.com/montreal.palestine/Pa... The money is printed in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, reflecting life in Palestine before Israel usurped every bit of land. Ahmadinejad is right. What did these people have to do with the holocaust?
Saint Baruch Golstein, American jew–he's like the hero, he of whom the Nazis loved, the flag held high. Good marching song….
"Oh, I can picture the scene as if it were happening before my eyes: Strapped to a chair and forced to read a year's worth of Weekly Standards out loud while having the audio version of the complete works of Norman Podhoretz piped into her ears, poor pistol-packin' Sarah was no match for her neocon interrogators, who ironed all those right-wing populist quirks out of her malleable mindset. Now, Sarah, repeat after me: jury nullification is nuts, forget about Alaskan independence, and always, always remember, you hate Ron Paul! And of course Bill Kristol is right there in the middle of the action, as the Telegraph informs us: "Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party, and Washington think tanks say Mrs. Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007. That was when the annual summer cruise organized by the right-of-center Weekly Standard magazine docked in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, and the pundits on board took tea with Governor Palin." http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13457
Oh, you mean Horst Wessel. Yes, I see your point.
Hehe, Gideon tried to paint me as an alcoholic because of my Irish name after my first post on this site (maybe it was the second or third). I remember being surprised at his anger and nasty tone. I do drink … about a glass of wine per month. It is not quite in the same league as the old Bolshevik response to criticism, accusations of insanity followed by psychiatric incarceration for the recalcitrant, but there may be a pattern here. I do not agree that "Judaism [is] pure negativity". One can make a case that extremist Zionism is pretty negative, but one can make that case as easily with most extremist movements. I have not observed an anomalous (with respect to other people in similar situations, inasmuch as one can try to calibrate) degree of negativity within Judaism itself, and certainly nothing that is no warranted by their long history of persecution. Frightened and angry people generally have poor judgment, no matter who they are.
Ed is right on target. You are just a feeble hag, dreaming of the word "jewess" in your old Ivanhoe book.
What a weirdo. Most people when they try to insult you at least have the sense to choose something that you will understand so the intended degree of enmity is properly conveyed.
Rowan, I am pretty sure I & many other readers here have no clue as to what your analytical process is. Kindly give us a clue, for example, tell us some of your key assumptions and/or principles of human action, especially human political action. Thanks.
Clearly he is an antisemite! Hitler Nazi Holocaust ! Joooooos!
Why do you display your ignorance for the entire world to see? Your parents are already ashamed?
Ask the WWII Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the spiritual father of the Palestinian people.
Apparently not. Jews own casinos and use their rip-0ff operations to fund settlements against USA and UN law. It's basically kosher OK with such Jews since those they materially rape are sub-humans. That means non-jews.
Now I understand the name. Did your mother flee with you? Just wondering.
Do you even know how the Mufti is treated in Palestinian discourse? "However, [Britain] did not destroy the bridge which it had always maintained with the class led by the Mufti, and it was in this field and at this time in particular that the British played a major role in maintaining the Mufti as the undisputed representative of the Palestinian Arabs. Their reserves of the leadership on the right of the Mufti were practically exhausted so that if the Mufti were no longer regarded as the sole leader, this would "leave no-one who can represent the Arabs except the leaders of the revolt in the mountains", as the British High Commissioner for Palestine said.89 There can be no doubt that this, among other reasons, contributed to keeping the Mufti at the head of the leadership of the Palestinian nationalist movement in spite, of the fact that he had left his place of refuge in the Aqsa Mosque in a hasty manner, and had been in Damascus since the end of January 1937." http://www.newjerseysolidarity.org/resources/kana...
None of the Jewish settlers in Hebron today are related to those who left in 1929 (incidentally, about a hundred Jews who fled Hebron returned a few years later, but they were evacuated again in 1936).
Sorry, David, but based on your track record, you were never pro-human rights.
One wishes that the lies you spread went further?
Read your own damn history before you cast aspersions on groups and people you weren't around to see the truth of. ==================================
To see the pictures of the medal that Lenni Brenner sent, go here: http://randompottins.blogspot.com/2007/05/coin-wi...
"Moskowitz is using millions of tax-free dollars generated by the Hawaiian Gardens bingo to back right-wing militants in Jerusalem. In at least one case, the pass-through foundation Moskowitz employed to transfer the funds told the Internal Revenue Service that its non-profit purpose was to fund educational and religious programs in Israel – it said nothing about backing militant settler groups intent on taking over Arab neighborhoods." from a lengthy report entitled "Gambling on Extremism: How Irving Moskowitz took over a small California town to bankroll Israel’s anti-peace settlers," available at http://www.stopmoskowitz.org/gamble.pdf
I don't think Rowan is saying that Judaism is pure negativity, only that Jacobwolfen's version of it is. (On the other hand, Adorno might have been open to celebrating a Judaism of pure negativity – though probably a different kind of negativity than that implied by Rowan:))
this is a new twist on support for terrorism… i wonder if the whack jobs in the usa will put a stop to it, or even better obama and clinton formally charge Irving Moskowitz for going against stated us policy at present???? i doubt it very much… money is all that talks in usa politics still….