Bruce Wolman writes:
The indefatigable Helena Cobban has an important posting on her 'Just World News' web site this morning. She picks up on a report from Ha'aretz's Bradley Burston yesterday headlined, "Loving Israel by hating Obama" that says that settlers are prepared to destroy Palestinian land in response to pressure from Obama:
This month, as the American president visited the Middle East, the fashion [of expressing love of Israel by reviling Obama] turned ugly. On the Sabbath, Israeli television viewers were treated to the recorded-on-a-weekday observations of Arele, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron, grinning as he watched the progress of an arson fire burning Palestinian land near the Gilad Farm, an icon of the outlaw outpost movement.
Asked by Israel Channel Two Television reporter Shai Gal what would happen if Israeli forces tried to evacuate Havat Gilad, Arele replied, "At most, they'll demolish one measly shack, so they'll have something to show – that Kushon [a Hebrew slur equivalent to the "N" word] in the United States, in order to have an Etnan [the biblical term for a fee paid to a prostitute] to give him – if you [secular] guys know what an Etnan is."
According to Arele, the fire, in this instance a form of pre-emptive revenge, was the price tag Palestinians would be forced to pay each time Obama pressed Israel to "touch any settlement of any kind, any place in Judea and Samaria."
"This last point is very important," stresses Cobban. Palestinians on the West Bank are to be exposed to "pre-emptive revenge" for the settlement demands on Israel being called for from President Obama. The Palestinians "urgently need protection from this violence."
Cobban asks,
Can the very numerous Palestinian "security forces" who have been trained and armed by the US do anything to provide it – or are they too busy trying to suppress internal political opposition to Ramallastan in an attempt to help Abu Mazen "protect" the settlers?
It is not very often on this site that we ask readers to contact their Representatives or the White House, or maybe even Rahm Emanuel's office. But this may be the special case. Is the United States going to do anything to protect Palestinians from being harmed as revenge for the foreign policy decisions of the Obama administration?
As an aside, I was about to write on Glenn Kessler's heart to Dennis Ross this morning in the Washington Post, but again Ms. Cobban beat me to the punch. Check it out. It's amazing to what extent WaPo will protect a man that has completely failed at every peace process he ever directed.
Well, you know, Phil, frankly, to them, the rest of us are just savages, to be avoided if possible and exterminated if necessary. That's all we'll ever be. By the way, the Intense Debate servers are seriously erratic and getting steadily worse. Many comments disappear for two to four hours then reappear, as do whole threads and sub-threads. Many pages of comments fail to load. And this in addition to the fact that the whole site gives 'connection interrupted' to me and others about two days out of five.
Fix the comment system
The settlers are on the verge of putting the US in a very interesting situation: funding a group that wants to harm the President.
Intense Debate is kind of frustrating, yeah. It's in some ways a big improvement over the old comment system, but it's kind of flaky, as you note. Right now I can't see any comments at all on the "Obama: We're going to change the world" story. I also dislike the scoring, because having readers score comments has been shown time and time again to reinforce group-think rather than actually promote quality. I've seen the "Connection Interrupted" problem on Mondoweiss too. I find that I can fix it by deleting my browser's cookie for philipweiss.org and reloading the site.
How are those idiots going to convinced to abide by law rather than hooliganism, without collective punishment?
The fury with which the Zionists have reacted to the signals that Obama is sending that he will take concrete steps to accomplish the two-state solution — which in principle, the Israeli government has already professed to agree — goes to show the fundamental dishonesty through which the Zionists have always approached negotiations. They've never really intended to draw their borders, and barring an international imposition, never will. They're method has been to creep forward, acre by acre, inch by inch if necessary, decade after decade, until they have exhausted all opposition. But the further they go, the more difficult the slog, which has forced them to resort to ever more reckless and bold strategies. The liberal imperialist and Zionist engineered Iraq war was a bold stroke that the Zionists believed would spark WWIII and provide them cover for a quick and large land grab, but it didn't work out as hoped, so now they are retrenching back to their more methodical approach until the opportunity arises to engineer another massive war.
If Obama doesn’t ram through the two-state solution now, while the iron is hot, he is a fool and will be remembered as a failure whose weakness was the catalyst to Zionist-engineered wars to come.
Richard The settlers can not really be viewed as hooligans. They are given monetary incentives by the Israeli government for their criminality and are defended by the IDF. They are an extension of the Israeli leadership. The whole idea that there will be violence…there will be a bloodbath if israel tries to remove the settlements is a well-orchestrated ploy to stall any progress toward equitable peace. In truth, the Israeli government needn't even engage with the settlers, violently or otherwise. If they were truly serious about peace, all they'd have to do is withdraw IDF protection of the illegal settlements.
Of course, the settler attacking Palestinian property is "not representative" of israeli mentality, just like the thugs in Max's video are "not representative" of Israeli attitudes. Nor are the racists statements of Israel's leadership "representative." When it is found that 94% of the Israeli people favored the gaza massacre and 80% felt it did not go far enough, this is "not representative" of what israeli opinion is all about. So we can make a general rule. Whenever israelis are acting like Nazis, it's "not representative."
Are you recommending collective punishment for the Jewish settlers? How about the same sort of collective punishment that Israel inflicts on Palestinians in the Occupied Territories? Perhaps send in a few IDF tanks and jets to blast their settlements back into the Stone Age?
Although I chose not to enroll in Intense Debate, I experience all the same problems Rowan & Craig11 report.
Bingo!
"This month, as the American president visited the Middle East, the fashion [of expressing love of Israel by reviling Obama] turned ugly." Compare: "In the case of Northern Ireland, once the decision to pursue peace was made, the constituency for continued conflict started disappearing not only in Ireland but in the diaspora as well. Irish Americans wanted President Clinton to put his weight behind the peace process. They applauded Ted Kennedy, Pat Moynihan and other Irish-American politicians for helping end the Irish "troubles." Those Irish-American groups that thrived on the conflict either changed course or shriveled away. That never happened after Oslo. The mainstream pro-Israel community here was ambivalent about Oslo right from the start. Almost immediately groups sprang up to "monitor" the Oslo process and point to its flaws. Pro-Israel speakers and spokespeople were able to bring crowds to their feet by spouting the tired old pre-Oslo rhetoric. And, contrary to the Irish-American support for politicians who backed the peace process, pro-Israel groups here deem the most extreme and virulent Palestinian-bashers as "staunch friends of Israel" rather than as people who contribute to Israel's problems. Many politicians (although in ever diminishing numbers) believe that the best way to be pro-Israel is to be anti-Palestinian and anti-peace." http://israelpolicyforum.ngphost.com/commentary/w...
"This month, as the American president visited the Middle East, the fashion [of expressing love of Israel by reviling Obama] turned ugly." Compare: "In the case of Northern Ireland, once the decision to pursue peace was made, the constituency for continued conflict started disappearing not only in Ireland but in the diaspora as well. Irish Americans wanted President Clinton to put his weight behind the peace process. They applauded Ted Kennedy, Pat Moynihan and other Irish-American politicians for helping end the Irish "troubles." Those Irish-American groups that thrived on the conflict either changed course or shriveled away.
Contrary to the Irish-American support for politicians who backed the peace process, pro-Israel groups here deem the most extreme and virulent Palestinian-bashers as "staunch friends of Israel" rather than as people who contribute to Israel's problems. Many politicians (although in ever diminishing numbers) believe that the best way to be pro-Israel is to be anti-Palestinian and anti-peace.
That's precisely I experience it. That's something new. It happens single comment sections. E.g. this one is unaccessible for me on Firefox but show on Internet Explorer.
I was a bit to fast add "as" in first, "only" plus "with" in third sentence.
No, he objects to collective punishment as practised by the settlers mentioned by Helene Cobban via Bruce Wolman. He asks how can they be convinced to stop it. Read it again.
They are like a Zionist Hezbollah: An informer army that does the dirty work a nation's army cannot. And I thought Israel believed that the state should have a monopoly on the use of force.
When your metaphor is "settler,",an updated version of Cowboys-and-Indians–you have no interest in aspirations of the Indians. And, yet, we are surprised when people take their metaphors literally.
Wow thanks for that cookie suggestion Craig! I was having the same problem with Firefox and that fixed it — didn't even think to try. To anyone else having this issue, I suggest you give delete the philipweiss.org cookie and give it a shot. I expect the issue with IntenseDebate was why I thought my comment on the Obama thread was deleted (sometimes when I look at the thread it shows up, others it doesn't, so it obviously wasn't deleted… ironic that I said I liked IntenseDebate so far lol) Unrelated, to the mods: I accidentally clicked "Report" on this; though I clicked "close message" without typing anything or submitting, I'm not sure if it went through or not, so if it did, please ignore.
Well…looks like the entire world is dividing into the crazy and non crazy. Just saw the news about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum….they say that is was a "lone wolf" distrubed man, not a group plan.. But now the pundits are talking about the "far right" and radical groups and so on. With the recent murder of the abortion provider Dr. Tillman ..it seems the we have too many in this country who are determined to force their beliefs or desires on the entire population by force ands violence if necessary. As for the crazy settlers…..Israel better take some steps of there will be some kind of bloodbath before it is over. Something should be done also about the US Zionist who are funding these settlers. They are supporting terrorism and should be teated the same as those who have been investigated and or imprisioned for supporting Islamic radicals.
'The whole idea that there will be violence…there will be a bloodbath if israel tries to remove the settlements is a well-orchestrated ploy to stall any progress toward equitable peace. ' The whole point of the settlements was to make 2 states impossible. Look at where they put the settlements versus the geography of the West Bank. In his wildest dreams Eshkol couldn't have imagined half a million people living in colonies in "Judea and Samaria". The Yesha projected has succeeded. End of story. Eshkol and co imagined that by now the Palestinian problem would have disappeared along with the defeated Palestinians who would slip silently into history. Zionism's fundamental problem is that the ideology does not consider the Palestinian attachment to the land. Zionists don't understand how someone living in a refugee camp in Nablus can be attached to a home in a slum at risk of demolishment at any time by the Israeli army .