Comments on: This Arab moment

By: Citizen

Citizen — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:19:15 +0000

Geez, I'm not even a semitic person; just a bland and pale average Irish-German American, you know, when we mix we are the part that our kids know nothing about, the other half having the victim narrative strangle lock? We are "just (working class) Americans." This told to me by my own children. I'm a bit confused at the moment, Mooser, help me out. Once, back in the day, I read this coffee table book called Family Of Man…

By: Citizen

Citizen — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:14:05 +0000

There's also the 6th degrees of separation, and the fact that humans share most of their DNA with monkeys or apes. I love your reading of the final will scenario, Mooser. God, what a concept for a book or play–somehow I think a play would be better. I can just see the script getting longer, longer, longer…. And of course nobody would finance it. Eraserhead had only a 20 page script. Can someone do the same with the other end of human reality?

By: Citizen

Citizen — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:04:35 +0000

@ Eurosabra "I am not a humanist, having been subjected to suicide terror." Are you suggesting there are no self-proclaimed humanists who have been subjected to suicide terror? Is this your version of " a liberal is somebody who has yet to be mugged"? Just asking. Please connect your logic dots. Thanks. I see an analogy in the refrain that everyone is all for free speech unless it's free speech they don't like. Of course, that's the only time free speech even matters. An eye for an eye, or eye for an eyelash–is easy; that's always totally understood by any tribe, civilized or not. Are you suggesting it's easy to be civilized? To be a humanitarian? Are you suggesting limousine liberals are the only ones in the ranks of declared humanists? Again, please clarify. I will add, it's easy to be for the proposed good if one does not have to pay a personal price. That's a given. It's called politics as usual.

By: tree_

tree_ — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:55:34 +0000

I am not making "absolutist claims", I am quoting from the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I am for the principles of the declaration and their implementation, regardless of who is affected, and that includes Arab countries as well as Israel. I'm am not aware of any Arab state that refuses to allow its former Jewish citizens to return as Israel has refused to allow the Palestinians to return, but if there is such a state it should allow them to return if they wish. My understanding is that Morocco, for one, which has lost a substantial portion of its Jewish population, has been encouraging their return for decades. As for compensation, if it is warranted then it should be offered as an alternative. However, as the the various organizations set up to receive compensation have shown, it is hard to even get the Jews who left to agree that they were refugees fleeing their countries rather than Jews seeking aliyah in Israel. If Israel is truly such a draw for Jews all over the world then it is rather silly to insist at the same time that Arab Jews came there merely because they were forced to come. Most of the literature that I have read, including that written by Israelis and Arab Jews, indicates that Israel had a major and direct hand in encouraging and facilitating the aliyah of Jews from Arab countries, through stoking fear and through enticement. Many times the return of Arab Jews was precluded by Israel's policies of immediately conferring citizenship on these Jews, which resulted in their lost of citizenship in countries that didn't allow for dual citizenship, and by placing hefty tariffs on travel out of the country in the 50s and beyond. On an individual basis those who truly fled persecution should have the right to petition for compensation, but it should not be a blanket assumption that all Arab Jews, or even necessarily the majority of them, qualify for compensation simply because they are Arab Jews, especially when they themselves insist that they came to Israel because of a "longing for ZIon". Do you think that Brooklyn Jews should be "compensated" if they choose not to return to the US from Israel? "I am not a humanist, having been subjected to suicide terror." Cop out. You are not a humanist because you choose not to be. There are plenty of humanists that have been victims of violence. Instead you embrace the tribalism that leads to such violence, and think you should somehow be congratulated on it. I am sorry for your pain and suffering, but it does not excuse bigotry, hatred and tribalism. And of course I am talking about the early 1950's, when Israel was not at war with Jordan or Egypt so it was not "an active war zone" as you claim. In fact, most of the hostilities were centered around the fact of Israel's refusal to let the refugees return in peace. This is a perfect example of the logical circles that Zionists tread. "Israel couldn't let the refugees back because there were still hostilities going on." Of course the reason that some hostilities were going on was because Israel refused to let the refugees return after the war was over, so its a perfect Catch-22 to justify never letting the Palestinians return. Israel and its apologists are full of those Catch-22s. It is certainly not "foolish" to seek to return to your home when you have lost everything and are hungry and downtrodden. For someone who constantly seeks sympathy for your troubles, you continually make remarkably unempathetic pronouncements. "Israel is not going to give citizenship to people whose intent is to undermine it." It isn't about the Palestinians' "intent". Most of them just want to live in dignity, equality and peace. Its all about the Palestinians' very existence. Israel at present is a Jewish supremacist state. Too many Palestinians and the supremacism will crumble into the dust it deserves. It could no longer pretend to be both Jewish and democratic and thus would lose its fig-leaf of legitimacy. That is the "threat" of the Palestinians' return.

By: Mooser

Mooser — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:08:46 +0000

"Arab Moment"? Lots and lots of people from the Middle East (and all over lesewhere) have been coming to America for at least a hundred years. I would get ready for at least an Arab Afternoon, or maybe even a whole Arab Weekend. My youngest sister's best college friend was an Arab-American girl from a locally prominent Arab family, owned upstate NY department store. Watch out, it might even be a whole Arab Month! I, for one, welcome our new Arab overlords, and volunteer to compare all the best Middle eastern foods, for a start.

By: Mooser

Mooser — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:46:26 +0000

I'm not sure if this is correct, but I prefer to believe it is: You and the person furthest from you on earth are, at most, fifth cousins. And not even once removed, whatever that means. So if all men are not quite my brothers, they are sure as hell in the family, and will attend the reading of the will with great interest.

By: Mooser

Mooser — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:43:57 +0000

." A long way from Erica Jong writing that Arabs are animals." I tried to read "Fear of Flying". I don't think she has much room to talk.

By: ThorsProvoni

ThorsProvoni — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:00:31 +0000

Maybe if Zionists returned the country and property that they stole, Palestinians would not want to blow up the criminal racist murderous genocidal invaders, interlopers and thieves that infest the Palestinian homeland Under Nuremberg Law, Palestinians have every right to blow up any Zionist colonial settler anywhere in Stolen and Occupied Palestine, and as a signatory to the International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide they USA should aid Palestinians in that endeavor.

By: Eurosabra

Eurosabra — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:51:56 +0000

I assume you are for the repatriation/compensation of Arab Jews rendered apatride by their governments at any date since the creation of the State of Israel as well. And starting with the modification of the line "those resident in Palestine, not being Jews" in the Jordanian citizenship law. You make absolutist claims only when it undermines Israel. I am not a humanist, having been subjected to suicide terror. They should not have tried to return, knowing the risks. It is possible that Israel could have extended its ex gratia offer of 100,000 returnees to anyone returning unarmed for domestic purposes, but to cross a border in an active war zone is foolishness, as many Israeli civilians murdered by security services or raped and murdered in the West Bank by locals in the post-war period discovered. ("See Petra and Die", to paraphrase Goethe's potential take on that type of thrill-tourism of the 50s.) Israel is not going to give citizenship to people whose intent is to undermine it, although more Palestinians have received citizenship by family reunification in Israel than there are native-born Arab Jews still holding their citizenship of origin.

By: ThorsProvoni

ThorsProvoni — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:01:10 +0000

There is no reason to believe that Palestinians would not have been willing to live in peace and mutual respect with Jews willing to respect Palestinian human and democratic rights. Genocidal Zionists began the ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of Palestinian villages, whose inhabitants were not involved in violence and simply wanted to farm their own land, right after the UNGA voted for partition. Racist Zionist apologists like Ali Baba use pilpul to twist the plain meaning of the text of the Right of Return Resolution to give Zionist genocidaires license to commit any atrocity against Palestinians as part of the ongoing Zionist program of genocide. When Palestinians react in anger, racist Zionists say, "See. They do not want to live in peace with us" and then claim they have no obligation to repatriate Palestinians. In fact, as a signatory to the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, the USA probably has the obligation to remove the genocidal Zionist conglomeration and probably to obliterate it if it resists. However one looks at issue the Palestinians must be repatriated either so that Zionists can prove that Zionism is not an ideology of genocide or so that the USA and other anti-genocide states can fulfill their obligations by removing or by obliterating the criminal conglomeration of Zionist genocidaires and by restoring the victims of Zionist genocide to their homeland.