The Jerusalem Post has given me a new theme: Israel's delegitimization is reaching American culture in a whole new way. I first heard this pronouncement at AIPAC, from Howard Kohr, who gave a Shakespearean speech saying that a "Predicate for Abandonment" of Israel had taken hold every where but in the councils of power in Washington– so AIPAC members had to stop it there.
Now JPost is getting the news, interviewing U.S. professors who say Israel's image is changing rapidly and Israelis and the lobby are in denial.
From the JPost, here is Nina Tannenwald of Brown:
"I've been struck by the way the Israeli self-narrative of a besieged underdog, no longer resonates to outside observers," she said.
"That was a narrative that I think had a lot of truth earlier on in Israel's history, but I think there's a widespread perception that that self-narrative doesn't resonate with the outside world, given that Israel is now the world's 14th or 15th most powerful military country," she continued. "And so there's a disconnect between how Israelis see themselves in their situation, and how observers outside see it, and that is a disconnect that needs addressing."
…"I think there is a common theme among Israelis [that says], 'We're a small country, we're the only democracy in the Middle East, look at all these Islamic countries around us,' and we know that trope very well. I think there are more nuanced analyses among Israelis, but there is a dominant trope among the government leadership, among the traditional, very strong pro-Israel supporters in the United States, where this [underdog] narrative dominates, and I think it needs to be updated."
It would be nice if one person in the article had said simply to the Israelis, this is not some meta-, postmodern paradigm shift. It is based on real conditions. And when you slaughter 300 children, there are real consequences.
Now here's the latest evidence. ATime Magazine piece by Tim McGirk from Jerusalem on the mistreatment of children in Israeli prisons that may well violate UN conventions.
Walid's story is hardly unusual, judging from a report on the
Israeli military-justice system in the West Bank compiled by the
Palestine office of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, which works closely with the U.N. and European states. Human-rights groups in Israel
and elsewhere have also condemned the punishment meted out to
Palestinian children by Israeli military justice. Most onerous, says
Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem, is that
inside the territories, the Israeli military deems any Palestinian who
is 16 years and older as an adult, while inside Israel, the U.S. and
most other countries, adulthood is reached at age 18.
The
report states that "the ill-treatment and torture" of Palestinian child
prisoners "appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,
suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command."
The group's director, Rifaat Kassis, says the number of child arrests
rose sharply in the past six months, possibly because of a crackdown on
Palestinian protests in the West Bank in the aftermath of Israel's
military offensive in Gaza.
The
Geneva organization's report alleges that under Israeli military
justice, it is the norm for children to be interrogated by the Israeli
police and army without either a lawyer or a family member present and
that most of their convictions are due to confessions extracted during
interrogation sessions or from "secret evidence,"
usually tip-offs from unnamed Palestinian informers. If so, the
practice may violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which Israel
ratified in 1991. In response to TIME's queries, a lawyer for the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) said that under "security legislation" and Israel's
interpretation of international law, no lawyer or relative need be
present during a child's interrogation.
Tuesday, 30 June 2009 Dear Friends, We just spoke again with our people aboard the Spirit of Humanity. The Israeli Navy is continuing to try and intimidate the ship, and is actively jamming its radar, GPS, and navigation systems in direct violation of international maritime law. This jamming is extremely dangerous and directly threatens the welfare and safety of everyone aboard our civilian ship. Because their instrumentation is being jammed, they are using compass & paper to attempt to navigate. They are in international waters & they believe their location is approximately 110km off of the town of Hadera. Everyone is tired but determined. They are not being deterred by the Israeli aggression & are continuing toward Gaza. Please help them. http://freegaza.org/
Time magazine announces the sky is blue.
It seems to me it goes back to 1967 and the occupation of the West Bank that began at that time, and the lessons learned from the USS LIberty incident. In that episode, Israeli forces attacked and attempted to sink a US intelligence ship monitoring electronic transmissions ongoing in the Six Days War in international waters in the Eastern Mediterranean. Although the attack was deliberate and intended to sink the ship with no survivors, presumably to prevent eavesdropping on covert Israeli operations, when the officers and crew heroically saved the ship, despite being torpedoed, napalmed, and so thoroughly shot up that most of the crew was either dead or wounded, the Israelis got to President Johnson immediately with the story that it was all a tragic mistake. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, including recordings of pilots objecting that the target was clearly American, and the fact that they were flying aircraft devoid of national markings (against international law), machine gunning of inflatable life rafts thrown overboard by the crew contemplating abandoning ship, Johnson and McNamara made the shameful decision not to publicly challenge the obvious lies, not to demand a real explanation and appropriate disciplinary action against those responsible, but to cover it up. It was chutzpah for the Israelis from start to finish, and America's shame its leaders fell for it. But that empowered those who'd ordered the attack, and sent a message the Americans were pushovers, to be exploited and lied to with impunity. The settlement movement has been more chutzpah ever since. A patent land grab from an oppressed population subject to an illegal occupation, all manner of fascist treatment of them, to and including torture and murder, all the while the Israelis are screaming that they are victims of intolerable terror practiced by the oppressed. When someone treats you with chutzpah, he is disrespecting you. It is essential that the lies and disrespect be called out, challenged, discredited, and the behavior clearly identified as unacceptable. A sharp slap in the face. Otherwise, you surrender complete power to the other to tell you any lie they want to. This is how ongoing Israeli chutzpah must be dealt with – called out and discredited, and its practicers shamed. Remember the USS LIberty.
We remember. We know you are lying. Every investigation clears Israel. We will never surrender to your lies. You remember, "you surrender complete power to the other to tell you any lie they want to. " It appears you have been discredited. Hope your face still stings.
I like that. Every investigation clears Isreal.Reminds me of the story IDF pointed out that the number of complaints against them is reducing. The explanation is simple: Just one organisation recorded that of 600 official complaints (2000-2008) it made against criminal behaviour of soldiers, NOT ONE resulted in prosecution. They all been "cleared". People given up wasting time on filing complaints. I assume if Madoff was in Israel, he would never face justice in US as he would be cleared by "internal investigation".
PS boat Humanity still on course to Gaza
US Army War College report on the Lebanon 2006 War didn't clear Israel Neither did the HRW report. Israel has been widely documented as being a regular human rights abuser. And there are reports on all sorts of aspects of the Occupation that condemn Israel as well. Yesh Din has published reports on the IDF's criminality in the OT and how they are never brought to justice for their abuses. When Israeli law makes it alright to steal land/homes or torture/kidnap (although I think the fascist scum got rid of these laws in 2000?) then there is no reason to take them seriously. Israel is an illegitimate and criminal State.
2000? You mean when Israel withdrew from So. Lebanon creating a situation which gave Hezbollah the opportunity to infiltrate Israel's borders, kill its troops, and get caught up in a cycle which would result in Lebanon 2006? or are you talking about something else?
I didn't know that Israel had withdrawn from Lebanon. I thought they were sill occupying a small part of it – you know like picking a scab so that it never heals. When it comes to Israel's borders – perhaps you could enlighten me as to just what they are.
That doesn't even matter Yoni, Israel regularly kidnaps Palestinian CIVILIANS and CHILDREN from their homes at random. And Israel occupied S. Lebanon. How many wars were there? How did Hezbollah arise? Israel starts all these wars and then cries Nazi/Antisemite/Holocaust when people fight back.
How about when they kidnapped the Speaker of the Palestinian parliament and held him in jail for almost three years in response to Hamas abduction of Shalit? I know the Palestinians abducted Shalit. But that is exactly what the Israelis did to the Palestinian legislator. How many nameless (to us) Palestinians have been abducted by the Israelis? Hundreds? Thousands?
The Zionist bully boy enforcers are out in force on this Daily Kos diary shouting down those objecting to what Israel did to this ship: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/29/22392... .
If that isn't snark, it certainly is a good imitation.
Israel made a COMPLETE withdrawal from Lebanon. Even the unfriendly UN decided that, officially and finally. Note that Israel's complete withdrawal from Lebanon brought not peace, but Islamo-Fascist Jihad that has since killed hundreds. Note also that Israel's complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip brought not peace, but Islamo-Fascist Jihad that has since killed hundreds. Does anyone see a pattern here? Anyone learn anything?
You guys don't know the difference between 'kidnap' and 'arrest'. Real MondoPeople you are.
You have misrepresented the USS Liberty case, MondoStyle. I won't get into it here in detail (it comes up so often, I'm sure you can find my recent posts on this elsewhere at MondoLies.) The USS Liberty was spying on Israel in the middle of a mortal war in which Egypt had declared that it will "finally push the Jews into the sea". Data from the Liberty was being supplied from US President Johnson directly to Egypt's Nasser to maintain the status quo. Johnson didn't want a clear win by Israel but rather a stalemate. This is why Nasser refused cease-fire proposals until the Liberty was put out of commission but begged for a cease-fire the next day. More in next posting.
The Pentagon and the White House both denied any knowledge of the ship; they later pretended that they thought it was nearer Europe than the Middle East and alternately that they thought it was in the Far East, in the Phillipines Sea. Israel didn't attack the Liberty until they had confirmation and re-confirmation from Washington that this couldn't possibly be a US ship. You also lie, outright, on Israel's intentions on the Liberty. There was never any intention of sinking it or even killing anyone. Israel could have sunk it and killed everyone if she wanted to. You also lie outright on the number of people killed and injured. The rest of your posting runs in the same vain. MondoLies. Typical.
COMPLETE except for that tiny little piece of territory where the boundary is not clear cut. You know the one – where Israel turned down a request that it be put under UN control until after the border has been drawn.
Jake is lying through his teeth. I urge everyone to google the USS Liberty incident and the context of same. What is true without a doubt is that Israel attacked the ship knowing it was American, designing to sink it, and that President Johnson and McCain's dad, for two, installed a total cover up and muzzle on the incident, thus making US sailors totally expendable in the interests of Israel. Doppler is correct in stating this was the moment that Israel knew for sure it could wag the US dog with the Israeli tail. JFK would never have allowed such a cover up. Of course he would never have allowed Israel nukes either, that being, along with a reform of our financial structure, what he was working on when he was murdered.
What? What about Witty's Rule Of Law? Yet I bet Witty was in favor of Ginsberg's version of disparate impact. That's a sincere liberal Zionist for you.
Yeah we do–kidnap is what the Israeli's have done to 11,000 Pals without weapons, and arrest is what the Pals did to one IDF trespasser with a gun. We see the poetry, Jake.
RE:When someone treats you with chutzpah, he is disrespecting you. It is essential that the lies and disrespect be called out, challenged, discredited, and the behavior clearly identified as unacceptable. A sharp slap in the face. Otherwise, you surrender complete power to the other to tell you any lie they want to. This is how ongoing Israeli chutzpah must be dealt with – called out and discredited, and its practicers shamed. Remember the USS LIberty. Remember 9/11.
too late, the truth is already out there. heh.
I always wondered why he was murdered. perhaps there were more clues than have seen the light of day. To me, the big question for all the conspiracy theories always was motive. Never enough of one. Certainly not the mafia angle, nor the cia.
Israeli jets violated Lebanese air space every day before the 2006 war. You can read that in UN documents. Is that significant in any way? They feel free to fly anywhere, they have no regard to soveriegnty because as far as they are concerned only they own it. They drop bombs on people, shoot thousand of missiles over borders and murder entire families and just people anywhere, like folks having a picnic or a day at the beach, driving in their cars going to visit grandma, or asleep in their beds, in one pop, *poof* people are wiped out, grilled like BBQ chicken, that doesn't get reported by mainstream media. And for some reason most of the victims are children. yeah I see a pattern alright. Israel is still trying to eliminate Hizbolla so that they can get to Iran so it's not like that is over. Israel doesn't really give anything back unles they have succeeded in dominating the situation to their own advantage and nobdy else. They dropped cluster bombs in S. Lebanon too for the children to stumble into for later. Yeah I get the pattern. Like regular disappearing teenageers from Palestine. Israel should be eliminated on principle alone.
Israel took out the settlers as it prepared to give Gaza the ol' shock and awe that seems to be habitual since 9/11. First 9/11, then Afghanistan, then Iraq, then various places in Palestine which I forget now, there was so much going on, then Lebanon, then Gaza. Speaking of patterns…. I know I am probably forgetting some too. But I have enough to make the connection. Point abcdefg I don't know why we allow them to keep going!
Guess the Lebanese will have to end the 1948 state of war if they want an unambiguous, peaceful border. It must be awful to wage a useless war for 61 years in hopes of extirpating your neighbors.
You have failed to provide either fact or logic to back up your claim about me "lying through [my] teeth". I heartily endorse a search on USS Liberty with the warning that MANY antisemites have jumped on the bandwagon of the Liberty story. Be critical of what you read and use reason. (This may be asking too much of typical MondoReaders…) The truth IS out there if you can think straight… More in next post….
Answer these questions: Why would Israel knowingly attack it's major superpower ally during a war? Why did the US Embassy in Tel Aviv tell US citizens they could not be evacuated during the Six Day War because there were no US forces nearby? Why did the Pentagon deny any knowledge of the ship being anywhere near the Eastern Mediteranean? Who was in control of the USS Liberty at the time (hint: it was not the US Navy). Why did the US Sec of Defense recall air-cover TWICE on that day, after the Liberty reported it was under attack, leaving it to it's own devices? Why has Congress steadfastly refused to investigate the Liberty affair? Why did Egyptian Pres Nasser refuse ceasefire talks before the Liberty affair and plead for a ceasefire the next day? What the hell was a US SPY SHIP doing in the middle of a hot war zone in the first place? Why was the Liberty monitoring and recording Israeli military communications traffic? Who precisely was the US spying on and for what purposes? More in next posting…
The inescapable conclusions support everything I have ever written on this topic. The US was spying on Israel for the benefit of Egypt, so as to have the war end in stalemate instead of an Israeli victory. When this treacherous deal between the Johnson administration and Egypt could not be covered up (because there were now dead and injured Americans, both US Navy personnel and NSA operatives), then the White House and Pentagon cooked up a story about how the Liberty was there accidentally and orders for it's removal from the Gaza coast were "accidentally" routed to the Phillipines, instead of the Med. This why McNamara recalled air-supprt – you can't support a ship that isn't there, and he had to pretend that the US still had no ships in the area. The previous poster is both ignorant and raving. I dare you to face the facts.
You reference is to Sha'aba farms. (If you actually KNEW anything, you might have mentioned it by name.) It was the UN itself that declared Shaaba NOT to be part of Lebanon. This was merely an attempt by Hizbullah (Iran's proxy terrorists in Lebanon) to keep the war going on forever. EVEN THE UN agreed with Israel on this one – and that is surely a rare event.
Correction required here: The border between Lebanon and Israel had actually been PEACEFUL for decades after 1948. Lebanon did not join in the previous Arab wars with Israel. It was only after Yasser Arafat's failed attempt to liberate Palestine from the Jordanian Occupiers in Black September 1970 that Arafat moved to Lebanon and began raids and attacks on Israel. Arafat then began the Lebanese civil war that killed a quarter million people. In 1980, General Ariel Sharon went into Lebanon and kicked Arafat out, sending him packing, gunless, to Tunis. The Lebanese (Christian and Muslims alike) have had and would like to have peace with Israel. It is the Islamo-Fascists like Hizbullah and the chronic Jew-haters like the Palestinean terrorists who keep attacking Israel, hoping for everlasting Jihad for the greater glory of Allah.
I'm ignoring you, Joe. Does your Mommy know you are posting here?
I defy you to provide a single report from a trustworthy source that the US was passing on to Egypt intel gotten by the USS Liberty.
I see quite a number of little Nazis on these pages, Joe in Kansas, Strahl, Mythbuster, planetmichelle, just to name a few; and believe me guys, given my place of birth I know what I'm talking about. The good thing however is that nowadays, after the establishment of Israel, Jews are no any longer willing to swallow your anti-Semitic crap. Hopefully, they will teach Palestinians and their supports a lesson, something of a kind that Russians, Americans and Brits taught us more than 60 years ago. Good luck Israel!
I have supported Israel in the past but how far will the world let Israel go to crush the Paletinians and keep them in concentration camps with limited food, almost no medical supplies and half the houses destroyed. This is not a nation looking for peace but one that want to force the Palestians to leave or die and then take over all the land.
You are all a bunch of paranoids. That includes you Jake. The Liberty wasn't spying and the Israelis didn't know it was a U.S. ship. The orders for U.S. shipping to stay out of the area had been sent out but not received by the Liberty. The U.S. having ordered its ships out of the area told Israel that none of its ships were in the area. With "no" U.S. ships in the area the Israeli intelligence mistook the Liberty for an Egyptian ship. It's called "friendly fire". It happens in every war. The U.S. bombed Canadian troops in Afghanistan and U.S. troops in every significant war we have fought. The attack on the Liberty broke off as soon as the Israelis realized it was an American ship. Like most conspiracy theories, this one turns out the be just incompetence. Of course, the conspiracy theorists will come up with some convoluted and insane evil reason why the Israelis would start the attack, but then not finish it.
Try to keep your facts straight. I looked up "600 complaints" and Israel. What came up was 600 complaints by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel against interrogators, not against the IDF soldiers. So they gave up on filing complaints against interrogators. As for prosecution of soldiers, IDF soldier Wahid Taysir was convicted of shooting one of those ISM volunteer human shields. I guess the fact that the "one organization"
Israel pulled the settlers out of Gaza in August 2005. Hamas won the elections in April 2006. Israel didn’t even impose the blockade until June 2007, when Hamas took over completely in a violent attack against Fatah. Israel's attack against Gaza started in December of 2008 over three years after they pulled the settlers out. If the Israelis were evacuating the settlers in preparation to attack Gaza, they sure took their own sweet time about it. So my question to you is: Were you ignorant of these facts, or are you just a liar?
To be fair, "captured" is the appropriate word for what they did to Gilad Shalit. He was a soldier, in uniform, they were enemy soldiers. Of course "war crime" is also what they did if they weren't wearing uniforms. Oh, and "war crime" is definitely what thay are doing in the way they are treating him.
ROFL. I think you are lying about supporting Israel in the past. Plus, they obviously have enough food since they aren't dropping dead of starvation. The number of houses destroyed is way fewer than half. Oh, and they aren't in camps, concentration or otherwise. They live in cities and towns. The only reason they call them "camps" is for propaganda purposes. You know, to dupe the stupid.
Pres. Obama should go on television and call on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons. How can we credibly call for the same from Iran.
If you mean Gilad Shalit, he was in Israel when they captured him, not the West Bank. Or did you already know that and think that it is fine for there to be Arab and Muslim countries, but not for there to be a Jewish country?
Israeli filth from the toilet call them "conspiracy theorists" To the rest of the world, they are known as THE ENTIRE CREW OF THE LIBERTY—EYEWITNESSES TO THE CRIME
Hitler said"I am leaving a few jews alive so that you will know why I killed them."Israel seems hell bent to prove him right.