You thought Gaza was under siege? San Francisco Chronicle says that the SF Jewish Film festival, oldest in the country at 29, is "under siege" for showing a documentary about Rachel Corrie and, worse, inviting the freedom rider’s mother to talk about the six-year-old case that will not go away, for a reason. An executive of the film festival stepped down over the choice, there has been a boycott, too. Chronicle:
At the core of the debate are questions about how broadly Jews can discuss Israel within their own community – and how Jews represent Israel to the broader world. It is also overlaid with accusations of the "new anti-Semitism," prejudice that is disguised as particular criticisms of Israel, the only Jewish state.
"The furor is much larger than this one film or this one speaker," said Peter L. Stein, the festival’s executive director. "It reveals a rift in our community that we all need to help understand and hopefully heal."
Good man, Stein. The new anti-Semitism. Yes, go to Gaza, where the people live under persecution, blockade, and siege, and tell me about it. The Chronicle passes along, as though it has any merit, the disgusting argument that Corrie naively helped terrorists–as if freedom riders aren’t always seized by conviction, as if she didn’t know what she was doing there, as if the house demolitions do not dispossess innocent people, and… as if Americans would not also resist the conditions of occupation, as Gazans do in countless ways.
The reason that I am not all that excited about Rachel Corrie, is that the responses that it tends to invoke are the raging, rather than the thoughtful and effective.
We don’t need a mass movement to agitate AGAINST Israel. We need support for Obama’s mediation, in the forms that it actually does add to his backbone.
Encouragement more than goading.
How does asking for justice to prevail amount to goading?
Only because the extremists keep screaming, “You’re goading me! You’re forcing truth on me!”
Yes, The Corrie family needs to provide restitution to Caterpillar for the damage their daughter did to the good name of the company. That the darwinian award winner chose to die (after all, only a moron would be unable to escape the clutches of a bulldozer traveling at the lightening speed of 6 miles per hour) for the publicity generated for those who support islamic fascism and terrorism is just sickening.
Well put Saxon,
How ever did that pesky Corrie manage to trick the driver into driving the Caterpillar bulldozer over her, and then reverse back over her skull? After all, he was travelling lightening speed of 6 miles per hour, and we know that brakes don’t work at that speed.
And all of that name of those who support Zionist fascism and terrorism. Just sickening.
The bulldozer didn’t drive over Rachel Corrie, If it had her brains would have been splattered all over the place and she would have been dead instantly. As the pictures afterward show, she was mortally wounded but not dead when her “friends” from the ISM got to her.
She was killed by the debris pile the Bulldozer was pushing. BTW, the freedom riders were not protecting weapon smuggling tunnels. Rachel Corrie was.
The driver training school in Israel apparently missed the part about the brake pedal, unless of course, what they were really taught was that if you run over a Pal or any other Goy, remember to reverse back over the body to confirm the kill. remembert o put on ear muffs so as not to hear the goy with a bullhorn alerting you to her presence.
Needless to say, had the driver made an honest mistake, he woudl have stopped his vehicle and gotten out, then expressed remorse or some degree of grief for what happened. In most civilized countries, that is what you do when you run over someone’s pet.
It proves that Corrie missed step one of the “how to stop a bulldozer by standing in front of it” manual. Step one: Make sure the driver can see you.
No, the reason is that you are a pompous ass.
On the other hand Richard, I become very excited when someone like Rachel can evoke so much rage in the Jewish community – suggests she was on to something if it’s caused “raging” in your elitist community. Makes one ponder – what is it about Rachel Corrie’s words that scare the crap out of you all and reduces great Jewish thinkers to call for censorship?
If one follows your logic Richard, just as you’ve tried to dismiss Rachel Corrie with this post, you too can be dismissed, since the opinions you express here also tend to invoke “raging, rather than the thoughtful and effective”.
Its not fear. You get your rocks off on Jews or Israelis being afraid. I get that as the voice of solidarity.
My point is that if it is the desire of the activists to seek to improve the lives of Palestinians, that raging HINDERS that effort.
If Rachel Corrie as a cause celebre maps out a viable path to reconciliation, and motivates activists to pursue that path, then it succeeds.
If Rachel Corrie as a cause celebre causes activists to be distracted from the efforts that actually accomplish improvement, then it fails.
Its easy to switch the question to insult or dismiss me, but that is the wrong question.
We honor Patrick Henry for being a great American patriot when he said, “Give me liberty or give me death!” But Rachel Corrie, at the age of 23, had already moved beyond this self-centered demand when she stood her ground in front of the bulldozer, in essence saying, “Give them liberty or give me death!” She was a decent human being first and foremost; her religion and nationality were irrelevant. This point of view is very difficult for tribal-oriented minds to understand.
Actually what she said was “leave that weapon smuggling tunnel entrance alone or ?” The “or” may have just been “or I will get out of the way”, then she got stuck in the debris pile. The video is clear, the bulldozer wasn’t near a house when Corrie was buried in the debris.
The bulldozer didn’t did indeed run over Rachel Corrie. That’s why she died. People have survived being impaled y two train carriages before dying of mortal wounds.
There were no weapon smuggling tunnels to protect. That was Israeli propaganda. The same lame excuse theyused to attack Gaza.
If the bulldozer wasn’t near a house when the driver ran over Corrie, then he must have seen her long before she got close to him, or he got close to her. At some point, she must have approached the vehicle.
That debbunks the theory that the driver could not have seen her.
The reason why you are not all that excited about Rachel Corrie, is that you are a
hypocrite and refuse to recognize it. It’s not a question about a mass movement to agitate AGAINST Israel, but one to agitate AGAINST what Israel has been doing for a long time, supported to the max by US taxpayer dollars and special deals, and much to the weakening
of the USA’s once reasonably earned reputation as a big force for universal humanitarian values. USA soldiers never died in two world wars imagining they were dying for what
Israel has shown by deed what it’s creed is. The old “band of brothers” Spielberg likes to film must be rolling over in their many graves, especially since the neocons
laid the PNAC groundwork for our current all–powerful dispensation. You do
Rachel Corrie a terrible injustice in your indifference to her–did you ever read her emails and correspondence? What a faker you are Witty. If the little Dutch Jewess had
lived, she would have been a major backer of Rachel Corrie.
You mean the little German Jewess, don’t you? Or does the truth not play a factor in any of your comments concerning the Corrie Suicide?
Those American died for the same reason israel survives. As an example of democracy over the forces of fascism, Germanic and Palestinian.
How do you know that Corrie Suicide, when there was no investigation into her murder?
do you think it was thoughtful and effective for her to be mowed down by a bulldozer?israels thoughtless and ineffective actions need to be put in focus. individuals who make apologies for israel when it comes taking the life of people like rachel corrie need to be constantly reminded of this it appears…
Rachel Corrie assumed the bulldozer driver was civilized enough not to drive right over someone blocking his path. She thought his compassion would always supersede his tribal solidarity.
@Duscany
She may well have assumed that. If so, she was right in that assumption. Unfortunately, she also made at least one, maybe two other assumptions. The first was that she assumed the driver could see her through the armor plating of the bulldozer, she was wrong. No matter how civilized and compassionate you are, if you don’t see someone in front of you, you aren’t going to stop for them.
The second assumption that she may have made was that she would not get stuck in the debris and would be able to get out of the way of the moving pile.
The assumptions she made were reasonable. She was wearing bright colored clothing, and therefore visible. She was using a bullhorn, therefore assuming the driver was not deaf. the other ssumption was hat the driver knew where his brrakes were and that he woudl stop, rather than proceed to run her over.
No matter what mistake you make, if you are indeed civilized and compassionate, you will stop after you have hit someone.
We don’t need a mass movement to agitate AGAINST Israel.
Why not? Israel is carrying out a heinous campaign of creeping ethnic cleansing and colonization in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that endangers US national security. Who are we supposed to agitate against? Norway?
We need support for Obama’s mediation, in the forms that it actually does add to his backbone.
“Add to his backbone” to do what exactly?
Encouragement more than goading.
My first career interest was strategic political intelligence and the use of political police as tools of governance. I have a very deep appreciation for stability, and I am a firm proponent of gradual social and political change. However, gradual moderation of a process unhealthy to the stability of a state is always constrained to one degree or another by the external (in a system sense) environment in which it may occur. One should take as long as one can, but there is always a time limit before other forces render moderate intervention ineffective.
Also consider in this abstraction the accuracy in strength of application of the pressure any actor can exert upon a situation. There is no such thing as ‘fine control’. This kind of politics is like having to undertake major surgery with kitchen knives. You do the best you can to save your patient, but your tools suck, and you know it. The tool of ‘encouragement’ has, in my opinion, long past become ineffective. The pathology of the patient (Israel) has become too dire (Israel too far along the political trajectory to Apartheid fascism) for such gradual steady measures. Such measures may have worked if American Jewish institutions had supported them twenty years ago, but it is too late.
The tool of ‘goading’ is now necessary. Let us be realistic and call a spade a spade: it is American Jewish political and politically-active social institutions, the Lobby, who constrain President Obama’s capacity to solve this conflict. He will have to have their united support for the high degree of force with which ‘goading’ will have to be applied to Israel. Only American Jews can apply and facilitate the application of enough pressure with it to save Israel as both a democratic and Jewish state, i.e. to remove the colonies from the OPT. This will inevitably cause a degree of division within the American Jewish community that will make many very uncomfortable. I think that this is unavoidable if there is to be even a small chance of success. Half-measures and hoping for the best will ensure failure. If American Jews who value the widespread acceptance of Israel as a civilized state do not now step up to the plate, then it is, on a time scale of several decades, at best doomed to become a pariah like North Korea. I think you (pl) are too timid, from an understandable fear of the danger of social schism, to make the kind of change in leadership of Jewish social and political institutions necessary for success, but I wish you the best of luck and hope you prove me embarrassingly shortsighted.
Obama is doing the right thing.
Specifically, the settlement expansion is the tipping issue. If settlement expansion continues, then it is apparent that Israel’s intention is to expand. If it stops, then it is apparent that Israel’s intention is to reconcile.
So, even if it takes some pressure from Obama to get Israel to voluntarily cease settlement expansion, even temporarily, then that will be a good result.
Obama can only accomplish ANY compromise from Israel IF Israel concludes that its ultimate security is not in any danger from US actions, or from a status in the sequence of getting from here to there.
Israelis and Palestinians both generally hold conditional conclusions. Its not that they ARE right-wing, its that in the face of what they see, the prefer defense (including offense) over reconciliation. So, if they see willingness to reconcile, or even to establish law in the regions that the PA controls, then that will further the trust and actions that result from gradual increases in trust.
I KNOW that one of the objective experiences that Israelis add up to conclude what they do is the tone and content of dissent. When dissent is disciplined and limited to a specific policy or practice, it will not offend (existentially) and will be looked into, hopefully to a level of satisfaction.
If dissent in threatening, hateful, prejudicial, and contains demeaning generalizations, it will be opposed (not just ignored).
Its real. If you want peace, get there. Don’t just convince yourself that your efforts accomplish anything. LOOK.
“to save Israel as both a democratic and Jewish state, i.e. to remove the colonies from the OPT.”
The colonies in the OPT are irrelevant to the question of whether Israel is or can ever be a democratic state, and removing them will do nothing to make Israel democratic. The question is whether a state can be democratic when the very basis of its establishment and its identity explicitly excludes a portion of its citizenry.
@Richard Witty
It isn’t that black and white. If the settlement expansion continues, then it is apparent that _absent a peace agreement_, Israel’s intention is to expand. That doesn’t mean they don’t intend to reconcile. They may well have intentions that depend on the circumstances. Expansion if the Palestinians won’t make peace, reconciliation if the Palestinians will make peace.
That isn’t unusual. Typically countries keep on with acts of war while pursuing a peace treaty, until a peace treaty is signed. Sometimes there is a lull while negotiations go on, but not always.
The settlement expansion continues because it was planned before Israel was even born. Ben Gurion made that quote clear when he wrote that Israel would accept the UN partition initially, but that Israel woudl never be bound by it.
Tzipi Livni told us that Israel does not want to reconcile, hence Israel’s belief that peace is not in Israel’s strategic interests. That is why there will not be reconciliation, because it will come at the cost of ending expansion, and probably dismantling the settlements.
Israel has been keeping on with acts of war while pretending to be interested in peace, hence the policy of changing the fact on the ground. It’s like committing theft while everyone is watching.
Witty:
What “thoughtful and effective” responses have you made in connection with Rachel Corrie’s death?
The Rachel Corrie topic evokes many emotions for some simple reasons.
It exemplifies and exposes Israel’s fundamental practice of denigrating the victim. While Israel are able to get away with it when it comes to Palestinian victims, Corrie was white and American as apple pie. It would be one thing to insist that she committed suicide, but Israeli propagandists have gone so far as to insist her alleged suicide was driven by a publicity stunt to attack Israel. It is about as deranged as the suggestion that the inmates t Guantanamo Bay, who were on a hunger strike, were conducting asymmetric warfare against the US.
Israeli propagandists have only made the matter worse by their deranged reaction to the very mention of Corrie’s name. The reason Israeli propagandists can be goaded so easily is because they are obviously very uneasy about this murder and haven’t accepted Israel’s complicity. This psychosis is very similar to eh denial that alcoholics exhibit, by blaming all those around them for their problem.
Had Israel’s propagandists behaved rationally, even after the fact, this topic would not be remotely as toxic as it has become. Israel’s psychosis over this woman’s name has elevated her to sainthood. If she really had committed suicide, then why be so infuriated by any reference to her and her death? Why is it that Israel would rather suffer such PR setback than simply admitted it did wrong?
The murder of Rachel Corrie is very similar to the attack on the USS Liberty. On both occasions, Israel exhibited barbaric behavior, but rather than accept responsibility for these crimes, Israel and it’s propagandists attack those who dare to bring up these topics as anti Semites. While this may have worked in the past to quell criticism, it stirs a deep sense of distrust and resentment towards Israel.
@Shingo
I’m not sure “as American as Apple Pie” applies to people who go to foreign countries and burn an American flag there. You have a free speech right to do so in America, but we still don’t see the people who do it as “American as apple pie”.
In some ways Corrie and the Liberty were similar. In both cases, Americans died because of faulty information on the part of Israelis. The Liberty because it was mistaken for an Egyptian ship, Corrie because the driver didn’t know there was someone in front of him.
The reason the people who bring these up are anti-Semites is because they assume that any time a Jew does something it is out of malice, never mistake. Americans have killed Americans and Canadians in Afghanistan in friendly fire accidents. Israelis have killed Israelis in friendly fire accidents. Accidents happen but ironically, to the anti-Semites, Jews never make mistakes.
Compared to mass murder, burning an American flag is hardly an issure adn seeing as it;s ot even a crime in the US, you are making a lame argument
So we agree that Corrie and the Liberty were similar. In both cases, Israel deliberately killed Americans and either tried to cover it up, or dismissed it as a mistake. The Liberty was never mistaken for an Egyptian ship as we have records of the conversations between the pilots and Israeli command proving otherwise. Corrie was killed by a driver who was not only blind, and deaf, but indifferent to the fact he’d just run her over. Mist people with any compassion will stop their vehicle when they run over a pet. Not so this Israeli.
The problem with Israel is that is makes way to many mistakes and it’s behavior after the fact is consistent with cover up and denial. The the same thing had happened to Corrie in the US, the driver woudl have given a public statement expressing his grief and remorse. The family of the victim would have been allowed to speak publicly and there would have been an admission of responsibility. Wherever Israel is caught lying, it’s apologists simply lash out with charges of anti Semitism. Attack is the best form of self defense only if used sparingly.
When Americans have killed Americans and Canadians in Afghanistan in friendly fire accidents, there is either a public admission or a cover up. In the case of Israel, it is always a cover up.
If this had been an honest mistake, it woudln’t provoke such an over reaction from Israeli propagandists. Since her death, not only has the topic become increasingly heated, but we’ve heard all kinds of rumors, like suggesting Corrie was pregnant with to a Palestinian and that she commited suicide because she was suffering depression yada yada yada. But the reality is that the Corrie murder strikes a nerve because it exposes the true ugliness and sickness of the Zionist midset. Like so many who’;s tried to take on Israel in one form or another, Corrie dared to stand up to Israel and therefore she had to be eliminated.
There has to be accountability. Corrie is run over, she and her movement are blamed. Israel attacks the USS Liberty – a tragic mistake. The Neocons lead the charge for war in Iraq, in the end, they blame Bush and continue to pontificate – Freidman today ridiculing the extreme Islamists for advocating warmongering policies that don’t resonate with the masses, where his whole column could be applied to his own cohort if “Islamist” were replaced by “Neocon.”
Israel invaded Gaza, slaughtering over a thousand innocents, including hundreds of children, while rabbis taught soldiers that not slaughtering was stupid, cruel and un-Jewish. When news of these teachings got out, they pretend it wasn’t known, but continue the same stuff amid two-faced dissembling whenever it is exposed. Israel continues to build settlements, while denying it is occupying and suppressing Palenstinians because they are in the way.
You want encouragement? How’s this: let’s encourage all the Neocons to shut up already. If they won’t, let’s goad them into leaving town, by painting them in tar, dousing them with feathers, and carrying them out on a rail.
Killing about 400-500 “innocents” many of whom were being used as human shields by Hamas, like the 15 members of Nizar Rayan’s family (4 wives and 11 children) who died when he tried to use them to shield his weapons. Oh, and 700 terrorists were killed also.
BTW, the Palestinians include in their “civilian casualties” Nizar Rayan himself, a senior Hamas terrorist leader who personally ordered terrorist attacks and sent his son to die as a suicide bomber.
I have not seen any of the posters here address that issue when talking about “civilian casualties”. So I ask you, do you think Nazir Rayan was a civilian? Or do you think the Palestinians are counting terrorists as civilians?
It was more like 900 “innocents” that were killed by Israel. 1,300 in total and 60% were civlians.
Whether any of then were being used as human shields will remain a mystery, seeing as Israel chose to ban foreign reporters from entering Gaza. Surprise surprise!!
Given that Israel’s previous claims of human shields was debuked in Lebanon adn teh feact that recent reports have revealedd it was Israel who were using Human shields, we can safely assume the official Israeli version of events from Gaza was also a lie. Need I remid you how reports have previously debunked Israel’s version of events?
Amnesty and HRW Claims Discredited in Detailed Report
link to ngo-monitor.org
Human Rights Watch: Troubling Report
link to nysun.com
Israeli ‘human shield’ claim is full of holes
link to thenational.ae
So according to Israel, 700 terrorists were killed, but again, that is likely to be a lie too. As we have seen in Iraq, it is too easy to label any dead corpse a terrorist after the fact. It’s not like there were any foreign journalists there to verify it is there?
Even if it were true that Palestinians include suicide bombers in their tally, which is false, that woudl only comprise a tiny percentage of fatalities. of course, there re no reports of suicide bombing attacks in Gaza during Israel’s siege, so heaven only knows why thom botehr sto taise that non sequiter.
So Thom, if you are still wondering why you have not seen any of the posters here address that issue when talking about “civilian casualties”, there’s your answer.
Nazir Rayan is the only case you have been able to raise in the last few weeks, adn yet you expect us to accept your argument that this is illustrative of the other 900 civilians who died.
Are the re any other irrelvant points you would like to raise?
Here is the “dangerous person” herself in her own words, this is what the Zionists fear –
INTERVIEW
The truth
So when did Rachel understand that something was awry in the world? When did she come to understand that people all over the world are the SAME, and not some horrendous “Other” that needs to be demonized for whatever purposes?
I’M HERE BECAUSE I CARE
–”The Chronicle passes along, as though it has any merit, the disgusting argument that Corrie naively helped terrorists–as if freedom riders aren’t always seized by conviction, as if she didn’t know what she was doing there, as if the house demolitions do not dispossess innocent people, and… as if Americans would not also resist the conditions of occupation, as Gazans do in countless ways.”
as if this is a justification for her bones to be crushed under a bulldozer, as if the driver who crushed her bones was an executive executing a court decision against her bones to be crushed in public, as if we, naah, the author, is an idiot.
So the West commits disasters against a people, and to redeem its own disasters, it supports and protects those people in committing more disasters against a third people. Just so utter and disgusting disregard for the other.
I accept your argument, Corrie, knowingly, died deliberately assisting terrorists.
Happy?
Corrie, was knowingly and deliberately murdered by agents of the terrorist state of Israel.
Jeez, now it’s the “new anti-semitism”, oooh, I see…the “old anti-semitism” was wearing out. When is the “new and improved anti-semitism” coming out. Of course, it could not be a natural reaction to EVIL.
Pancake girl is now a freedom
rider? Jesus, Phil.
‘Bout sums it up. If we lay down in front of them the Zionists will drive their panzers over us while singing Martin Luther King’s praises. Might as well fight back, and I ain’t talking metaphors here.
What happened at the festival is just a microcosm of what is going on in the community. You see, we will not be held hostage by a moneyed elite in the states that wants to hide behind antisemitism to smother the suffering they are inflicting on the Palestinians. They think they have hijacked Judaism successfully as they commit atrocities in our name, and do not realize that we are going to rise up and overthrow their oppressive power centers.
The reason why such a small film about a 23 year old women causes such a furor is because the atrocities are so glaring and immense, that just the smallest amount of light undoes them before a watching world. They have claimed themselves as the heirs of the Holocaust by building monuments and constant harangue, while they make the survivors eat dog food! They are only interested in their image to perpetrate their atrocities and advance with impunity.
Well, we have had enough of them, and do not care what they bank and the “influence” that they have, go to hell. You do not represent shit, you deserve to lose everything you think you have – you deserve to be reduced to the pauperism that you have reduced the Palestinians to, and you need to serve time for war crimes – not the Palestinians you imprison for no reason whatsoever, because they exist. Not in my name.
Corrie’s death proves that no Ghandi could help the Palestinians. The vicious spite of the Zionists plumbs depths even the British Raj wouldn’t descend to.
It proves that Corrie missed step one of the “how to stop a bulldozer by standing in front of it” manual. Step one: Make sure the driver can see you.
Oh, and while it was punished later, a commander in the British Raj ordered a mounted machine gun to open fire on an actually unarmed crowd.
Again,
Your repeated thesis is that resistance furthers.
I think that is a failed approach. In my observation, compared to the effective approach of Obama and skillful members of the international community that simultaneously eliminate obstacles to peace (including concerns of Israel), and assert Palestinian national and individual needs, the solidarity approach fails.
A liberal Zionist acquaintence today sent me a copy of an interview in Z magazine with Noam Chomsky. He was asked about solution, rather than about what irritates him.
The article convinced this liberal Zionist that Chomsky was a credible thinker, whereas in the past, he had dismissed Chomsky and Finkelstein as primarily negative, indisciplined in their scholarship, indisciplined in their public presentation.
And, the point of that, is that even as they hold important experience, witness and research, their METHOD of presentation, resulted in the dismissal of their own arguments.
So, you have a problem with Rachel’s METHOD of presentation? That she actually thought her USA citizen would assure her own life while she civilly protested with empty hands the bulldozing of Palestinian homes? Well, it’s true she was no Malcom X; anyway, Witty, you castigate armed HAMAS action. So, what’s a caring person to do? You think Chomsky or Finkelstein have done more than the frail Rachel, an everyday American barely past her teens, for the cause of Justice? Spare us your
dry tears, wrapped as they are in your totally sheltered and gated US special community.
I have a problem with your and many others’ method of presentation.
Over years dissent that repeats which side it is commenting on, becomes partisan, rather than principled.
Method is always the last refuge of scoundrels. When they cannot answer the fully of undeniable facts they go to the “way” it was presented. Or, in some instances they become a pendant – does he/she live there, does he/she speak whatever language, did he/she cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s? Did they smile when they wrote or spoke? Were they sufficiently calm? People are dying daily, fuck you.
The method of communication DIRECTLY affects how it is perceived (by the object of dissent, and by society at large).
If fear is intended through some threat, then that will be responded to. If urging effort to find an alternative is conveyed, then that will be responded much more positively.
Rachel Corrie was a naive, young activist hoodwinked into supporting and covering for Palestinean terrorists in Gaza. Kind of like MondoIdiots. You know the type.
I dare you guys to try a stunt like that in ANY Arab country. Hey, try that in the USA, even.
Whose naive? Netanyahu plays Jews like Jim Jones played blacks.
Who are you talking to Jake? Has anyone on this blog EVER supported ANY Arab country’s regime? Does the USA government give any Arab country a blank check the size of the total check given to whole continents by the USA? Does Israel have the most valuable commodity in the world to offer us? Cheap, in indeed any OIL? And we are well aware that the Israel Firsters infesting both our principle political parties are
on the loose with their Big Brother planning and usurping our basic freedoms. We fight them for the same reasons we fight Israel regime actions. Of course, being in Jerusalem, Jake, how could you know those truths?
America puts its money where its mouth is. That is why America wholeheartedly supports Israel.
Citizen,
Supporting any Arab regimes at MondoLies? What was that silly party going to Hamastan in Gaza all about?
The US sends an extraordinarily corrupt and vicious EGYPT as much as it sends Israel. And doesn’t even gets goodwill in return.
The US actually sends soldiers to DIE to protect Arab regimes.
MondoLies ignores the harsh realities and pursues the silly dreams of it’s antisemitic friends. All the time.
@Jake
“The US sends an extraordinarily corrupt and vicious EGYPT as much as it sends Israel. And doesn’t even gets goodwill in return.”
No ignorant one. The formula is 1/3rd as much we give Israel annually in direct foreign aid as we give Israel. The retarded Egyptian tyranny regime however must
kiss Israel’s ass. It’s just another form of aid to Israel; we bribe Egypt to kiss Israel’s
ass–naturally Main Street Egypt knows it and has no gratitude. The combine foreign aid we give Israel and Israel’s lackey Egypt is more than we give whole continents.
“The US actually sends soldiers to DIE to protect Arab regimes.”
No. We send soldiers to occupy Arab lands or have bases there to protect Israel as PNAC laid out
long ago.
“MondoLies ignores the harsh realities and pursues the silly dreams of it’s antisemitic friends. All the time.”
“antisemitic” is just a gobblydegook term, like those Lewis Carrol invented for
Alice in Wonderland.
Indeed Citizen,
As we have demoinstarted, the US supports dictators and thugs, which is why Israel sits at the top of the list.
Yeah, the “terrorist” pharmaceutical doctors house she was defending. No, it was the terrorist she was defending the good doctor from, the one in the bulldozer – the ones who set up this whole murderous scenario.
Citizen: ” The formula is 1/3rd as much we give Israel annually in direct foreign aid as we give Israel. The retarded Egyptian tyranny regime however must
kiss Israel’s ass. ”
If you say that, don’t call ME ignorant. Egypt receives about as much as Israel does from the USA. MondoLies never complains about that. Interesting.
Furthermore, Egypt observes a cease-fire with Israel but it is hardly a friendly relationship. In some 3 decades of “peace” the Egyptian head of state has NEVER visited Israel (except for a few hours for Rabin’s funeral) while Israeli heads of states visit Egypt routinely. Your “kiss-ass” description defies the facts.
“We send soldiers to occupy Arab lands or have bases there to protect Israel ”
This is not true about Aghanistan, nor Pakistan, nor Iraq, nor Kuwait, nor Saudi Arabia, nor Lebanon… Hmmm, your statement is just not true. Nasty facts again.
As has been pointed out, if take away the loan guarantees and all manner of other pork, Egypt receives about 60% of that Israel does from the USA, and that’s only so that Egypt will make nice with Israel anyway, and as such is just an addition to the costs that Israel incurs on the US.
“This is not true about Aghanistan, nor Pakistan, nor Iraq, nor Kuwait, nor Saudi Arabia, nor Lebanon… ”
Aghanistan is not Arab, nor in Pakistan. US presence in Lebanon was to protect Israel of course.
Like I said Jake, if only you would read more.
Nice to know you’ve lowered your stanards of Israel ethics to Arab countries Jake. Of course, no Arab country claims to be a modern, Western style democracy either, so I take it you are admitting that neither is Israel.
Shingo, you ignore everything relevant. Perhaps you just want to be heard. I can understand that. No one listens to your babbling. Keep on lying. Shingo-style.
Jake, you fail to offer anything of relevance. Far more people are listening to my posts than you Jake, you obviously being one of them.
I think you’re wering your pony tail to tight. It’s putting pressure on your brain.
I don’t care for sandalistas of any stripe, but the same festival would no doubt have honored a film about Mitchell-Schwerner-Goodman.
The contradiction between Jewish-American veneration of St. Eleanor (Roosevelt) and her grandchildren, and of Israel cannot stand. I’m betting that St. Eleanor wins.
As for me, I venerate neither.
Witty sees no similarities between Mitchel-Schwerner-Goodman and Rachel Corrie.
He has a severe case of double standard.
Yeah, he’s more like Rahm Immanuel servicing IDF tank tracks in Israel while his country of birth was engaged in a war elsewhere, than
our American volunteers who flew with the Chinese against Japan before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, or than those American citizens who fought against Franco
in Spain. He’s no Hemmingway. He’s not even a Schwerner or Goodman. He’s just
a guy who believes in jewish “continuity” uber alles, alles im Welt.
It would seem Mr. Witty would have a case of the Jewish Supremacy/elitist thinking, which treats everyone who is not Jewish as expendable “goy” and/or irrelevant. Such is a perfect example is the reaction from some in the Jewish community towards Rachel Corrie and the vitriol her murder is met with, versus more empathy, understanding and color/race/ religion “blindedness”. It is sad to see any double standard as you put it. However it is something that needs to be addressed, just like any form of racism.
You don’t have a clue what I see.
Why would you lie about your own intuitive powers?
About Gaza: “as if the house demolitions do not dispossess innocent people”.
The only people I know of whose houses were demolished and who were then dispossesed are Jewish Israelis. They were expelled from Gaza with the hope that the Palestineans would appreciate getting one of their dream wishes fulfilled. Instead, the “Palestineans” became more hostile than ever, raining THOUSANDS of rockets on Jewish towns in Israel. Indeed, now even the Peace camp among Israelis no longer believes that peace is possible with such “peace partners”.
MondoLies gets confused about the facts. Routinely.
I have a feeling that Jake’s hasbara just convinced every Mondoweiss reader to rethink his or her position on the ethnic nationalist apartheid state.
“Rockets!”
“Rockets!”
Who knew the Palestinians had a space program!?
Are you refering the Palestinean demand that their territory be entirely, purely, absolutely free of Jews? Judenrein? Ethnically cleansed? As has been their tradition for many years? And which “peace-niks” somehow support?
Jake–
The official position of the PA is that Jews living in the West Bank are welcome to stay as Palestinian citizens in a Palestinian state.
“Are you refering the Palestinean demand that their territory be entirely, purely, absolutely free of Jews?”
No, we’re refrerring to the 2 state solution that requires stolen land to be returned to it’s rightful owners and illegal settlemetns to be dismantled.
And the definition of ethnic cleansing is the removal of one enthnic group at the hands of another. That wouldn’t be the case if Israel agreed to remive the illegal settlements.
But yes, ethnic cleansin has indeed been Israel tradition for at least 60 years.
Piney on the PA welcoming Jews to live with them. What a bald lie!!!! You should be a star “reporter” at MondoLies!
Shingo lies like crazy. As always.
If you want to liberate occupied Palestinean land, you would say something about Jordan, which occupies 3/4 of Palestine. MondoLiars have their obsession with Israel and Jews, though….
Palestine has been reagrded as the land from Jordan to the sea, so your insistnece that Jordan somehow occupies 3/4 of Palestine is wasted space.
MondoZionists have their obsession with Israel and Jews, though….
Yes, and Madoff was a good Jew. Good for Main Street, good for Wall Street.
The only people that YOU know Jake?
That’s harldy convincing. Of course, the settlers who were illegally in Gaza were now expelled but relocated and given bundles of cash (care of the US tac payer of couse) to relocate to the West Bank.
Of course, Israel couldn’t leave Gaza without a parting shot, so fired 7,700 shells into Gaza over the next 12 months (as many as the rockets fired by Hamas over 8 years), not to mention leaving everythign in theri wake destroyed as they were leaving.
Liars like Jake want us to ingore than and pretend that Gaza’s retaliation was unprovoked and purely hostile.
Jake then goes on to speak for the non imaginary “Peace camp among Israelis” as though an extremist like him would know about or even care about peace. The only peace Israel has ever cared about it spelled PIECE.
Shingo, all your “facts” are muddled. Thanks for clarifying for us your muddled stance.
As for the Peace Camp having lost hope on peace with the “Palestineans”, why do you think it is that the “Peace Camp” lost out in the recent Israeli elections? Because everyone thinks they are so right? Or maybe because the electorate now feels that the “Peace with the LovelyPalestineans camp” is all wrong?
ShingoFool.
BTW cite for 7,700 shells?
FYI Thom,
link to hrw.org
“The IDF has fired more than 7,700 shells at northern Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal in September 2005, creating a problem of unexploded ordnance in heavily populated areas.”
Rachel Corrie was not defending terrorists. Rachel was defending the people of Gaza who had long been under siege by the Israeli army. Rachel was murdered while trying to keep an Israeli bulldozer from destroying the home of a pharmacist. Wearing a bright orange jacket she bravely stood on a pile of rubble waving her arms while the Israeli destroyer plowed directly on to her.
Later the home of the pharmacist was destroyed, adding to the list of well over 11,000 Palestinian homes that the Israeli occupiers have destroyed since they took over the land in 1967. Within the rubble of the home there was nothing but the remains of the contents of the house. There were no weapons. There was no underground tunnel. There was only more justified hatred against the oppressor Israelis. BTW, in this Israeli destruction derby in Gaza, at least 2000 homes were destroyed. Google Earth shows an area completely devoid of homes thanks to Israel. And Palestinians are called terrorists?
Rachel was a hero and will be long remembered as one who wanted to confront injusice.
She did not take up a gun as have many settler thugs. She did not advocate violence.
Those who denigrate her and her supporters should hang their heads in shame.
Sorry, Corrie was a suicidal menace who knowing died assisting Palestinian terrorism. She died for the publicity. She advocated violence. Those who condemn her can walk proud.
Yeah. Damn near as meekly suicidal as Anne Frank, she was. Long live Krupp Steel, er, I mean Caterpillar Inc!
Or maybe they should just hang…
Don’t aplogize Saxon, it’s not your fault that you’re ignorant.
Corrie was murdered, by someone who was ordered to drive his bulldozer over her body twice. She advocated the right of people to keep their homes. After all, if destroying homes was no big deal, you shouldn;t have a problem with the settlements being bulldozed either.
Jake in Jerusalem – The Jewish Israelis who were removed from Gaza were in Gaza against international law. They had no right to be there in the first place.
Secondly, these group of colonists took over a third of Gaza, most of the water and made life miserable for the Palestinians of Gaza.
I have no compassion for them. They knew what they were doing and they suffered the consequences.
You know Jake, you can’t treat people for decades as the Israeli Jews have treated the Palestinians and expect to escape scot free. There are consequences, some of them not pleasant. Remember that when you sow hatred you reap hatred.
Don’t bother to lecture Jake. You need to know where he coming from: The world hates the jews, and always has, and this will never change. This eternal hatred is
solely due to a mental disease afflicting all non-jews from birth. Assuming this,
anything world Jewry allows is merely self-defense.
Citizen,
I don’t know about the world hating Jews but MondoLies is certainly a home to people with this inclination. I wonder who really has the mental disease?
The Jews in Gaza got there by stealing by means of war, which itself was a war crime seeingas it was a war of agression. As Teodor Meron, the Isrleai Supreme Court and the ICJ concluded, the settlemetns were a vilation of the 4th GC.
Sharon removed them hoping to DISENGAGE from the Gaza Strip, bu steal more of the West Bank, whcih is where the 8000 settlers moved to after beign generously compensated.
As for who is to balme for what went wrong in Gaza, you need only look in a mirror:
Zertal and Akiva Eldar wrong a scholarly account:
“After Israel withdrew it’s forces from Gaza, in August 2005, the ruined territory was not released for even a single day from Israel’s military grip, or from the price of the occupation that the inhabitants pay every day. Israel left behind scotched earth, devastated services, and people with nearly a present or a future. The Jewish settlements were destroyed in an ungenerous move by an unenlightened occupier, which in fact continues to control the territory and kill and harass it’s inhabitants, by means of it’s formidable military might.”
This is not to menton the 7,700 shells Isrlea fired into Gaza over the 12 moths that followed the withdrawl.
Jews in Gaza were most certainly there legally. There were Jewish communities in Gaza centuries ago. (Are you suggesting that Arab Muslims shouldn’t be inside Israel, either? Or is your apartheid one-way?) PM Sharon removed them hoping to DISENGAGE from the Gaza Strip. Instead, LIARS like here at MondoLies blame everything wrong in Gaza on Israel – when the govt of Gaza is squarely to blame.
As for water, Israel EXPORTS water into Gaza – to this day. Israelis were not taking water from Gaza but rather providing it. They still do.
As for treatment, I know, as an eye witness, how the Gazans were treated under Egyptian rule. I lived there in the 1960′s. Their condition improved immeasurably under Israeli rule. Now, under Arab rule, they have returned to decrepitude. Surprise! None of this is the fault of Israel. Oh, if you think that Gazan Rafiah is much worse than Egyptian Rafiah 1 km away, you don’t know anything about the area. MondoPeople LOVE to blabber on about things they know nothing about.
America should cut off all aid to the Israeli regime and to the Egyptian regime. Let’s save them from themselves, and save the world as a bonus!
Jake, if you are not going to address people in an intelligent way, why post at all. It must be some complex that is the make-up of you assholes in Israel, and some of the supporters here. Strength and genocide go together, and the Israelis are not missing a beat – you need to learn a few lessons. Instead of being an arrogant shit and denying the obvious, just go occupy some other fucking site – I know occupation is in your blood, grace someone else with your repugnant presence. If you think this is pressure you have seen nothing yet, wait till all of your trolls near the seat of power are vacated.
Now Jews can’t go to Gaza, legally. And people in Gaza are under siege. You consider that to be just fine, Jake – anything the State does is OK with you, because you, my benighted friend, are in thrall to your master, the State. Without it what would you be? Just a regular citizen, without special privileges because of your ethnicity. Oh, the horror!
v… I address the issues entirely with facts and logic. That you cannot abide this points to intellectual flaws at your end. Not smart, sonny boy.
I pointed out FACTS about the conditions of life in Gaza under Arab c.f. Jewish rule. Under Arab rule, both before and after Israel controlled Gaza, the Gazans suffered in every way. You can draw your own conclusions
Wonderfully put Jane,
The ploy that Jake and Eitan use, to insist that Israel is “the Jews” is not because the Jews need a State to protect them, but because Israel needs shield them.
It’s clear Israel provides no protection to Jews, much less that Jews even need protection, by the simple fact that not only do most of the world’s Jews prefer not to live in Israel, but that Israelis are leaving Israel at a higher rate than they are arriving.
What you have exposed is that Israel exploits Jews to hang on to a trace of legitimacy.
It’s pathetic isn’t it?
The settlers in Gaza were almost certainly there illegally and in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. There may have been Jewish communities in Gaza centuries ago, but they perished long before Israel came into existence. Sharon removed them hoping to steal more of the West Bank. And as Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar have told us, Israel is entiely to blame for the mess they left behind in Gaza.
The Israelis were not violating the 4th GC by establishing settlements in Gaza. The rules about territory only protect the territory of states that follow the Geneva Conventions. What, you think countries agree to the GCs out of the goodness of their hearts? The Palestinians don’t follow them, so they are only entitled to the protections of part II of the 4th GC, not part III (occupied territories).
Teodor Meron, Israe’s legal counsel on internationa law in 1967, stated that bulding settlemetns in the occupied territories was violating the 4th GC. Gaza was one of those occupied territories. Isrels Superme Court and the ICJ agreed.
The rules about territory not only protect the territory of states that follow the Geneva Conventions, but prohibit the seizure of land by states who are signatory to the Geneva Convention. Israel is one of them.
The Palestinians have not stolen land, so they have not violated the 4th GC.
They think by saying “new” antisemitism they will be able to pull out the ace that has generally worked in the past when anyone criticized the Israeli governments actions or the Israeli lobby in this country. Not working any more. This is a good thing for the state of Israel and real honest debate and change
Mondoweiss is part of the “new” movement bringing honesty and real news into the debate. Following so many folks who have been trying to shed the light for decades. Jimmy Carter, ARchbishop Tutu, Edward Said (may he rest in peace) Noam Cholmsky, Vanessa Redgrave etc etc
Thanks for all of your work…mondoweiss team…blessings
Kathleen, mentioning MondoLies and “honesty” in the same sentence surely challenges one’s moral integrity.
Yeah, Jake will get you in the in-crowd if he thinks you’re worthy.
Amira Hass was just arrested for going into Gaza to report there.
What is “the jewish community.” ??
I can pretend to know what that is, but really, i have no idea.
Could someone tell me?
Is it the jews who go to synagogue? Is it the community of everyone who happens to be jewish (which is no ‘community’ at all any more than the collection of people in the world who own a blue shirt is a community).
Maybe the whole idea ought to be scrapped. I’m jewish. Know what? It’s irrelevant. I get to say some stuff about israel which apparently non-Jews don’t feel comfortable about saying. Apart from that, ‘being jewish’ is meaningless. If I try to invest it with meaning, I nowadays always come up short. Frankly, it has zero bearing on my life. I think the same is true of Jews like Phil, though he can’t confront that reality, for reasons that escape me.
But being jewish must mean something, no? But what? Subscribing to the tenets of the jewish faith? Negative. Believing there is such a thing as “jewish values” which make a person better in some way? That is plainly untrue. Speaking hebrew? No. Going to the yiddish theater? um…no. Believing we are part of an elect…a cleverer brand of human? AH! My guess is that it is precisely this nonsensical notion which motivates rotten jews to lord their power over the Palestinians and likewise motivates good Jews like Phil to believe we have a special place reserved for us in the cosmic plan–that Jews exist to fulfill some unique destiny. Old habits die hard. Persecution no longer unites us. Fealty to Israel doesn’t unite us, (if we’re sane). Hebrew doesn’t unite us. Jewishness is dissolving. Perhaps it’s time top leave the whole concept to the tribal zealots of Israel, who believe that the totality of their being is inextricably bound up with something called ‘being jewish.’
The more I think about it, the more preposterous the idea becomes for me.
Lovely, many, many non-Jews are not aware that Judaism is, for whatever reason, a de-centralised religion. Very few are aware to what extent it is decentralised.
Very few people understand that anyone, any group, can do whatever they wish, and call it “Jewish”. They may not get anyone to join them, but there won’t be anyone to stop them. And there is no place, even, for someone to check on whether a group’s policy or actions are in line with Jewish religion. There is no Jewish Vatican, no Jewish Salt Lake City.
If that one misunderstanding could be cleared up, that Zionism was the policy and actions of the individuals and groups involved not in any way an expression of Judaism, a tremendous about of confusion could be cleared up.
The moose is loose!
yes i agree, though I have no wish to reanimate Judaism any more than i wish to throw my hat in with Zionism. If i reject both outright (which seems the proper stance, vis a vis modernity and fundamental morality) then what about me is Jewish? My so-called heritage is Jewish, but what of it? I’m no more at home in a synagogue than I am at a Klan rally or a Bonnie Tyler concert. I adore certain Jewish writers while loathing others. Most, I’m wholly indifferent to. is there something inherently jewish about Schoenberg’s music? Or is he an ass-kicking composer who merely happened to be jewish. Berg wasn’t jewish. or was he?
It seems clear to me that charges of anti-Semitism perform a dual function. the first function is typically stressed, namely the silencing of any discourse critical of israel. But there is a second function to these charges—a desperate effort to reunite a group of people who actually have next to nothing in common with each other any more—the Jews. Charges of anti-semitism seek to remind all jews that we ARE united. We’re united by the fact everyone has an irrational hate for us and wants to kill us.
Of course, the idea is sheer lunacy but this lunacy is actually comforting to Jews who have no identity apart from being jews. Their personae are so weak, they never became fully fledged individuals so they cling to this group identity like survivors at sea grasping at whatever bobbing wreckage of the hebraic aircraft they can get hold of.
So what’s the difference between what anybody claiming to speak for Jews says
and the “Jewish Religion?”
Luther disconnected being Christian from being a Papist. Many sects of the Mormons
have weaned themselves from the classical dictates of Mormonism.
According to the narrative, Jesus claimed to speak for real Jews. Saul of Tarsus (St Paul claimed to speak against those he had formerly sworn allegiance to, local official
Jewry. He did so because he saw “the light on the road “to Damascus.
What’s your litmus test for being a real Jew? For being a loyal follower of “the Jewish religion?” At least, tell us what some of your signs to look for are.
Thanks lovely I enjoyed your post. You show some alarming signs of being a well-adjusted person.
I was christened a Presbyterian but nobody in the family, including my parents, ever showed much interest in the church. One time we went but the minister being so frigid freaked us all out and we could never again pluck up the courage to repeat the experience.
“What’s your litmus test for being a real Jew? For being a loyal follower of “the Jewish religion?” At least, tell us what some of your signs to look for are”
How the hell would I know? I worry about my relationship with God and my religion, and possess neither the knowledge or inclination to judge anyone else on their religion.
My point is, when someone, a Jew, or jewish organisation, says something is “Jewish” whether it’s marriage-style or Zionism, there is really nobody who can say “No, it isn’t” Many non-Jews assume that certain positions are espoused or denied by the Jewish religion, because individuals or Jewish organisations have represented them as such. But there is no central authourity, and this creates vast and important misunderstandings when people say “Zionism is Jewish”
As it turns out, anyone who has the chutzpah and the influence can hi-jack the Jewish religion, as the Zionists have.
hi mooser
but i really don’t see that as distinct from any other religion. David Koresh claimed he was following the letter of christianity, as did jim jones, marshall applewhite, and puff daddy, I believe. The essence of islam is one thing according to Rumi and another according to Abu Nidal.
the difference with Jews is that there is near-unanimous support for Israeli terrorism among mainstream jewish organizations. That’s what’s incredible. It would be as though every single mosque in America supported Al Qaida and solicited funds for jihad. That is the unique sickness of the Jews—something we refuse to deal with.
Citizen – What is sad is that after World War 2 and the horrors of the Holocaust much of the world had an incredibly sympathetic feeling toward Jews. But Israel by its brutal treatment of the Palestinians, has squandered those good feelings. It is time that people like Jake understand this and stop defending the indefensible.
Jan,
It isn’t “brutal” treatment of “Palestineans”. Pals have greater freedoms of press, speech, movement, sexual choice, religion, etc. in ISRAEL than they do anywhere else in the M.E. Surprising but true. And going back to autonomy, Pals are suffering again. What a surprise.
It is LIES that are causing antisemitic sentiment to increase. MondoLies (which is a profit-making venture, incidentally) is one of MANY propogandistic organs which promote hatred of Jews. Face the facts, Jan.
The US supports Israel unconditionally and with a free check annual and a matrix
of special deals, all benefitting Israel at the expense of the USA. We don’t do this with any other nation, not even Canada. All Americans realize we only support the dastardly Arab regimes because we are dependent on them for the most valuable commodity in the world, cheap Oil. At least there’s a trade off, not a rip-off. Our
government continually says we blindly support Israel so because we share values–
nobody ever claims that we less blindly support any Arab regime because we share their values. Jake LIES. He is a paid hasbara agent of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Antisemitism is discrimination against a particular group. It is, as all forms of adverse discrimination are, potentially deadly and must be confronted and denied any power.
To equate criticism of Israel, its policies and its actions, with antisemitism is at best misguided, and at worst, dangerous to the Jewish people.
One of the problems with Israel’s assertion that it represents the Jewish people is that it sets those people up as a scapegoat for retaliation because of the harm caused by the State. Your State, Jake, by its actions, endangers the Jewish people as a whole.
Your lies, Jake, in which you equate the two, endanger the Jewish people as a whole.
Stop using the Jews as scapegoats. Stand on your own, as an Israeli. Understand the actions your State takes, and defend those actions, without dragging into the argument the status of a people who are diverse and spread across the globe.
They do not need a State to provide them, as individuals, protection.
It’s Israel’s brutality and contempt for human right and international lawthat is causing antisemitic sentiment to increase. Face fact Jake.
The oddly-named Citizen: “Jake LIES. He is a paid hasbara agent of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.”
1) Please point out anything that you find to be non-factual. Gotcha, huh?
2) Please remind them to send me my paycheck. Haven’t received anything yet…
Oh, about paying for comments…..
Who is funding MondoLies?
Who is funding Max BlumenLies?
Who is funding the web-designers and server farms?
Then let’s see who’s paying for propaganda….
Jane: The disproportionate, dishonest and disingenuous criticism of Israel is most definitely antisemitic in nature. That you cannot see this testifies either to your own bigotry or to your own ignorance. The two naturally go hand-in-hand so if you suffer from one, you will likely soon suffer from the other, as well. And MondoLies will only aggravate your condition.
1) Please point out anything that you find to be non-factual. Gotcha, huh?
Not really. Where shodl we start? Hwo about your conspiracy theory that the US Liverty was spying for Egypt?
2) Please remind them to send me my paycheck. Haven’t received anything yet…
You’re not even a good liar Jake. All you’re doing every time you post is making Isrle look bad. You’ll have to do better if you want rewards.
The disproportionate criticism of Israel is proportionate to Israel’s crimes and comtempt for human rights, decency and international law.
Your insistence that the scruitiny Israel receives is antisemitic in pure cowardice and sleaze because you are ultimately here to defend the indefensible. That you cannot admit this is evidence of your either to your own bigotry or to your own ignorance. Israel, after all, is an aprtheid, and criminal enterprise, and you forgive and excuse it’s every crime without condition.
Like I said, not only are you a liar, but a very bad one. Stop making Israel look so bad.
link to commentarymagazine.com
it’s gotten so bad commentary no longer allows comments! they should change the name to “ary”
Yeah, you guys just keep it up with the “Pancake girl” shit. That’ll draw a whole new generation of affluent, educated and progressive Americans to support Israel in its every move.
I realise it’s all about the continuity of the Jewish race and all that, but once in a while you Zionists might check in with the rest of humanity, so you can at least tailor your Hasbara.
Pancake girl? Great name for a suicidal supporter of Islamic fascism and Palestinian terrorism.
Got to put my thinking cap on, to come up with something that I can call you. Something that will show how you exemplify support of fascism, something that will demonstrate the true nature of terrorism. Something that concertizes the blind support of a State while ignoring the harm caused to the people who make up the State.
You believe the State, don’t you – your motto must be something like “The State uber alles…”
Who else but a Zionist propagnaist would get such a macabre peasure in denegrading a girl who lost her life standing up for someone’s human rights? Can anyone really doubt that Zionism is indeed a sickenss of the mind?
The stiff-necked race doesn’t have to tailor anything. We know it all. That’s why we’ve been kicked out of so many countries over the centuries. We never learn. Life is a cabaret. We own it until we don’t. Happens every time.
The land is Palestine, the state Israel. A good argument for separation of church and state.
What? You mean learn something from the Goy founding fathers? Perish the thought. Not unless we can claim the credit.
The land is not palestine. If anything, it could be called Syria Philistinia.
The land has been Palestine since the Romans. Call it what you want, it belongs to the Palestinians.
The Jews who wonder why only Israel’s shortcomings get noticed and criticized might take a look at their own responses to the criticism.
France gets criticized… remember “freedom fries”… and so what?
Israel gets criticized and the sky is falling.
Mary-lee,
Is anyone trying to take Paris away from France like President Hussein-Obama is trying to take Jerusalem away from Israel?
Silly argument Jake–
Paris did not annex any territory outside the borders of France.
How can one take real estate away from a squatter? And didn’t France give up its colonies?
Piney-Loser.. what a pair.
Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish state way back a thousand years before Jesus.
Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state today.
The Islamo-Fascists and the Arab world want to take away that capital. So does US President Hussein-Obama.
If they tried that on Paris, you bet the French would get upset!
Jerusalem was built by the Canaanites before Judaism was even contemplated.
It belonged to people before the Jews came from Iraq, and has belonged to people since.
Unlike the French who built France, the Jews never built Jerusalem.
Shingo is confused again.
If , as Shingo claims, “the Jews never built Jerusalem”, then what is President Hussein-Obama jumping up and down about???
Shingo’s weakness with historical sequences, timelines and facts are legendary on this site. A laugh a posting.
I am not confused Jake,
President Hussein-Obama never claimed that the Jews built Jerusalem.
“Shingo’s weakness with historical sequences, timelines and facts are legendary on this site. A laugh a posting.”
Translation: Shingo is right so I’ll stall for time. I wonder if insults will look convincing?
Read my comment again and Shingo’s and see why ShingoBrains is really confused. What a riot!
“Read my comment again and Shingo’s and see why ShingoBrains is really confused. What a riot!”
Translation: I stil can’t think of a talking point, so I’ll just continue with my trademark incoherent rambling.
Rachel Corrie is Zionist kryptonite. It’s easy to take Muslim Arabs, unfamiliar to Americans, and depict them as Terrorizers. A little blonde hippie girl … not so much.
Except Zionists are impervious to kryptonite.
Just as we are impervious to hate-filled little blonds who commit suicide to further the aims of Islamic fascism.
Yeah, we know how your type is impervious to idealistic, good-natured little blond shiksas. Your type has left many novels about it; maybe you should read a couple ignorant one–you might even see who’s seething with racial/ethnic hatred.
Idealistic and good natured do not jibe with burning an American flag.
Since when have you been so sentimental about the American flag Thom? The American flag was clearly of no consequence ot the pilots of the planes that attacked the USS Liberty, or the torpedo boats that soon followed.
good one shingo.
But don’t you feel a little guilty shooting (filthy) fish like saxon/jason/etc in a barrel? I can’t feel good demolishing their arguments. They’re so fucking DUMB
Jake, Barack Obama is not trying to take Jerusalem away from the Jews. Actually the city belongs to the three major religions in the world – Christian, Jewish and Muslim. To my way of thinking Jerusalem should have been declared an international city, not belonging to any religion but shared among the three religions that call Jerusalem home.
Since that is not likely to happen, the only alternative is for Jerusalem to become the capital for two peoples, the Israeli Jews and the Palestinians. I have no problem with Jews living wherever they want in Jerusalem or, for that matter, anywhere else in Israel/Palestine provided that Palestinians can live wherever they want throughout the land of Israel, including the West Bank settlements.
As far as accusing Mondoweiss or other groups that point out Israeli crimes of adding to anti-Semitism that is a load of horse hockey.
There are many of us who are Jews who abhor anti-Semitism but understand that it is Israel that is creating this anti-Semitism. There are many of us who feel that both peoples, Jews and Palestinians, have a right to the land. As for me, and maybe for others, I have come to the conclusion that the Palestinians who were forced out to make room for European Jews are Hitler’s last victims.
Jan writes:
“As for me, and maybe for others, I have come to the conclusion that the Palestinians who were forced out to make room for European Jews are Hitler’s last victims.”
I wouldn’t put it quite that way. Instead, I’d say that Nazism was never really defeated. It was instead, appropriated by the Israelis. They are a continuation of Hitler’s program of ethnocide. Nazism changed its orientation and found a new target for the final solution: the Palestinians. The mentality is otherwise almost identical. Instead of the Einsatzgruppen, we have the Mossad, the IDF and the border police.
If we believe that there was some justice in laying waste to Germany because of Aryan Nazism, then it is only hypocrisy that suggests the Israelis are not entitled to the same treatment. Their Nazi empire should be obliterated. Indeed, they are a far greater threat to world peace and security than the Germans ever were, because the Israelis are nuclear equipped, and their program of murder and athnic cleansing has been going on over 60 years—-not 12 years.
Not to mention that they call their exploits “compassionate” and “humane”. Chutzpah the Nazis never dreamed of.
Thanks for making the distinction between hatred of Jews just for being born Jewish and hatred of aggregate evil acts done by Jewish groups acting in the name of all Jews. Palestinians are Hitler’s last victims only in the sense that what obviously has been the most influential Jews acting collectively in the name of all Jews have applied
Hitler’s view of the World and his zero-sum principles to the Jewish-declared Other.
Jan,
If Jerusalem belongs to Christians (who invaded and stole it from the Jews) and to Muslims (who invaded and stole it from the Christians), then that doesn’t speak well of your values.
If Jerusalem belongs to the three major religions, then New York City belongs to the world. Go trying to explain to City Hall that they don’t really have a right to collect on parking tickets or taxes because the city belongs to everyone.
You make no sense.
New York was build by Americans. Jerusalem was built by the Canaanites.
By your logic, Jews have only ever been tourists.
Shingo, you are confused. As always. Facts seem to have no impression on you. Pathetic, isn’t it?
“Shingo, you are confused. As always. Facts seem to have no impression on you. Pathetic, isn’t it?”
Translation: Does no compute. I was brainwashed into believing that Jerusalem was built by the Jews so this is new information. I must check with the Hasbra mother ship to download the elatest taling point to counter this argument.
Note that the bulldozers were working inside the “wall” in the press conference tape that “v” provided us. Remember that this press conference occurred two days before Rachel’s death and two days before V.P. Cheney made his national t.v. appearance stating the U.S. was going to war with Iraq. Rachel speaks of farmers being rounded up, water wells being destroyed and all the while, in the background the Israeli equipment is working in a Palestinian neighborhood. Israeli security pre Iraq war was a huge U.S./Israeli concern (the Israelis were told to pull out their gas masks) and their was a direct phone link between Washington/Tel Aviv. This press conference shown on Arab t.v. would not have been appreciated by Cheney who hated dissent or by the Israelis who had a long history of complaining to the U.S. about the ISMers.
Jake in Jerusalem- you are really your own worst enemy. I mean, you are playing into a guy like Phil’s hands by saying such ridiculous stuff. regurgitating these cliches and all the ad hominems and whanot. I can only guess you are in a right wing bubble over there in israel because it doesn’t translate well at all. your kind of rhetoric is very very unfashionable at the moment here.
But nothing is fashionable on the forum except anti-semitic rants and raves.
Why do use archaic neologisms like “anti-semitic”? We don’t know what you are talking about. Please explain by example and in detail what you are ranting about.
Lester,
Phil MondoLies has built a website that EVEN LIBERAL LEFTISTS now consider an antisemitic hate-site. When Phil and his fellow criminal liars post the most ridiculous things, I simply post verifiable facts, historical truths and inescapable logic and references that debunk their hate-filled lies. Like a bunch of cackling flat-earthers, Jew-haters at MondoLies start squawking in protest at real facts.
I’m not trying to win any popularity contests here. Jew-haters only love other Jew-haters. That’s not me, sorry to disappoint.
I will however point out the truth. I will never apologize for speaking the truth. And if you and MondoLies doesn’t like that, then YOU have a problem, not me.
You’re such a liar Jake, it’s hard ot keep up with you bile.
It’s sp much fun watcin gyou and the other Zionist facists continually trash this blog, while finding yourselves unabel to tear yourselves away.
You have never posted verifiable facts and debunked your own lies by getting caught in your own cicular logic. Mind you , your conspiracy theories are always entertaining.
No one here has ever atacked Jews, but being the coward that you are, you hide behind Judaism like a human shield, in a desperate attempt to manufacture a veneer of credibility.
You shouldn’t ever apologize for speaking the truth. When do you expect to start?
Shingo, if you have something useful to contribute to the discussion, do so. Otherwise, you are retarding all of human culture. Now wouldn’t that be an achievement for Shingo?
Jake, if you have something useful to contribute to the discussion, do so. Otherwise, you are retarding all of human culture, which is relfective of Zionism in general.
“I wouldn’t put it quite that way. Instead, I’d say that Nazism was never really defeated. It was instead, appropriated by the Israelis…”
Or, yet another way to phrase it: the victims have become victimizers. That’s a common phenomenon on an individual level, why shouldn’t it hold for the group, in this case Jews?
If you look at modern Zionism in this light, it’s not really surprising that Jews would adopt the mentality of the Nazis –for the most part, the stuff works. So witnesses and survivors opportunistically employed Nazi techniques wherever they themselves could benefit from similar behaviour (Palestine –mostly because it was the softest of targets), and every success (from the founding of Israel to the widespread manipulation of American government/media) helped establish a hateful tradition that’s been passed down like a generational virus to the point that it now sustains a genuinely hateful culture –modern Israel.
It has become an axiom:
focus your hate on your enemy long enough and you become that enemy
Unlike Virginia Woolf’s persona in *Three Guineas*, I do have access to academic sources, and certainly wish that everyone who reads and comments on this site (not just the academics) had easy access to those sources too. Case in point, an article on the so-called “new antisemitism” — “Between Antisemitism and Islamophobia” by Matti Bunzl, who has this to say on the question debated here — and also puts it in the context of Herzl’s original intentions:
QUOTE
The old and new anti-Semitism, however, are radically different phenomena, although perhaps not from the point of view of the victims. Violence, after all, is violence; and the concerns of Europe’s Jewish communities should give one pause, regardless of the source of the threat (see EUMC 2004d). But such considerations should not preclude careful political and historical analysis, especially given the flaws in the available explanations of the new anti-Semitism.
What separates the new from the old anti-Semitism is its overarching project. The traditional modern form of anti-Semitism was designed to effect the exclusion of Jews from the national body. This could take a range of forms, from the polemical assertion of Jews’ fundamental incompatibility with the nation to their genocidal eradication. In all the variants of this old anti-Semitism, Jews were construed as intrinsic outsiders to Europe’s nation-states, interlopers in a fantasy of ethnic purity.
Insofar as the new anti-Semitism is perpetrated by right-wing extremists, this cultural logic is still at work.
But when one approaches the phenomenon from its Islamic component, one sees a wholly different project. When young, disenfranchised Muslims attack French Jews, they do not do so in the interest of creating an ethnically pure France. Nor are they asserting that French Jews do not belong in Europe. On the contrary, they are attacking Jews precisely because they see them as part of a European hegemony that not only marginalizes Muslims in France but, from their point of view, also accounts for the suffering of the Palestinians. In the Arab world, Israel, after all, is understood first and foremost as a European colony. To explain Muslim violence against Europe’s Jews as the extension of an anticolonial struggle is no defense of the phenomenon. But it makes clear how radically different old and new anti-Semitisms really are. Whereas the former sought to exclude Jews from the nation-states of Europe, the latter targets Jews precisely because of their Europeanness.
There is a terrible historical irony here. In the conception of Theodor Herzl and other Zionist leaders, it was the Jewish state that would resolve the tensions between Europe and the Jews. The Zionist state itself was to be a thoroughly European entity, of course. But those Jews who remained in Europe would also experience a transformation. No longer the stateless parasites despised by the old anti-Semitism, they would receive new respect as members of a viable national community. The existence of Jews in Europe would be enhanced, in other words, by their connection to a quasi-European nation-state. Over the decades, Europe’s Jewish communities have often seemed like satellites of Israel, in fact, and that may well have mitigated traditional anti-Semitic sentiments. Now, however, the connection has become a liability, as the Zionist promise of Europeanizing the Jews is haunted by its own success. As young Muslims target Jews as expatriates of a colonizing state, they confirm Zionism’s ultimate achievement: Europe’s Jews have finally become European.
This analysis, then, also speaks to the question of anti-Zionism. Alarmists often focus on the issue in their warnings against the new anti-Semitic threat. But their assertion that anti-Zionism is nothing but a permutation of the old anti-Semitism is plainly false. To be sure, certain ideologies underlying Islamic violence against Europe’s Jews do combine opposition to the state of Israel with systemic hostility against all Jews. But only a truly lunatic and utterly insignificant right-wing fringe on Europe’s political spectrum shares this particular set of antipathies.
UNQUOTE
Yes, Europe’s Jews have finally become European. The test of virtue or not is always power. However a closer look at European history reveals that the role played by the
Jews was that of economic middleman, between the upper and lower goy classes. Although the European Jew might have had to kiss the ass of the Goy elite, the goy masses had to kiss the ass of the Jews. The Goy elite protected the Jews and gave them privileges beyond what the Goy masses could even imagine. The purely Jewish narrative illustrated what happens when when the Goy masses have finally had enough of this joint venture by the elite Goy and the Jews always exploiting the
Goy masses. When the elite Goy wastrels could no longer get enough profit to pay their bills owed to their Jew hireling managers, they always loosed the pogrom dogs
to divert the Goy masses under the classic Jew scapegoat banner. Medieval? Not really, the USA is just the latest example; what remains is only the tipping point,
when enough Americans fully realize what AIPAC is in their political system; at that
point, we will see a repeat of history, and later, nobody will be the wiser. The selfish goy king is dead, long live the new one.
the zionist propaganda campaign continues to tie being jewish with zionism, and it has been exposed as the political tool that it is and no longer works – but they keep trying …
criticizing zionism and israel is intellectually honest, is noble, is merely relaying the facts, and is actually necessary for anyone with a conscience
The zionist propaganda campaign is so successful because jews overwhelmingly support it. There is NO MOVEMENT WHATSOEVER that I can see of Jews attack the synagogues and Jewish community centers all over the country which are the funding sources and principle allies of the Israeli murder machine. Jews should be denouncing and deserting these houses of horror en masse, but they are not. THAT is why jewishness and israel are so strongly linked in the public’s mind.
as phil reports regularly on this site there is great discomfort in the U.S. jewish community over these issues – but they need to transform that discomfort into action – which means they need to assert their power over israel and compel responsible leadership over there that no longer undermines U.S. interests – for too long the U.S. jewish community has been the banker and lobbyist and mouthpiece for zionist propaganda and israeli regional objectives and out of necessity that is changing as the israeli-mafia-state and murder objectives of zionism have played themselves out and now put all jews everywhere at risk and have put the U.S. at serious risk and embroiled it in wars of israel’s interests now ours
Jewishness and Israel are linked in the goy mind because they are linked in the jewish american mind, and made public all the time. When goys do it they are called “anti-semites,” while when jews do it they are called good jews.
* correction … NOT ours
“Islamic violence against Jews..”
Small wonder the author has trouble identifying the cause of something that doesn’t even exist! Post of the violence these days is directed against Europe’s recent immigrants, particularly, Arab. That is certainly where all the racist politiocal rhetoric is coming from, whether in haider’s austria, belusconi’s italy or merkel’s germany.
I also disagree with the assertion that the zionist program has maf=de true Europeans of the continent’s jews. On the contrary, they are becoming increasingly associated not with their homeland of Europe (where Jewish culture developed and reached its zenith) but with the gangster state of israel.
Where would “Judaism” be today without the larger reach of Gentile European and American
minds? Stuck in the Talmud. Like Witty, an accountant scurrying amongst his hand-me-down bins for where to put the money in, the better to serve his clients in tax evasion.
Judaism will still be condemning you.
And decent Jews will continue condemning the lunatic cult of judaism.
link to haaretz.com
No problem, being condemned by an abstraction that can mean anything at all.
You don’t speak for Jews Saxon.
Lame, “citizen”.
‘The reason that I am not all that excited about Rachel Corrie, is that the responses that it tends to invoke are the raging, rather than the thoughtful and effective.’
I’d like to respond to such a statement in ‘thoughtful and effective manner’ but I’m afraid the rage it causes precludes that possibility. You are a Jew first and a human being second Richard.
Are you capable of feeling sorrow about Rachel Corrie? Does your ethnocentrism permit sympathy for her parents? Can a modicum of respect for Rachel Corrie’s words and actions find it’s way thru the thicket of tribal myopia?
‘San Francisco Chronicle says that the SF Jewish Film festival, oldest in the country at 29, is “under siege” for showing a documentary about Rachel Corrie and, worse, inviting the freedom rider’s mother to talk about the six-year-old case that will not go away, for a reason.’
The thing that shits me most upon hearing about these sorts of heavy-handed Zionist interventions into the sphere of our culture is that none of the bastards doing the sieging ever seem to be identified. Who are these people? Name them so we can shame them. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Sadness for the individual, for the family.
Rejection of the idea of her as a cause celebre.
Criticism of ISM for taking advantage of an idealistic young girl, in way over her head.
Richard, you forgot to mention how the Bulldozer was rigged so if the driver stepped on the brakes, the entire machine exploded, killing everybody in sight! So actually, by hitting Ms. Corrie, the driver SAVED hundreds of lives! Yeah, Richard, that’s the ticket!
Every notice how Richard is always ready to blame the slightest immoderation in tone by anti-Zionists for continuing the violence and making progress impossible, but has never once found it within himself to criticise anyone who posits themselves a pro-Zionist, no matter how murderous their talk?
I don’t worry any more, since I’ve been reading Mondoweiss. I used to worry about Zionists, but not no more. They have got to be the most rhetorically self-destructive bunch of schlimiels I have ever seen in my puff.
The only real question is how much they will hurt themselves and others on the way out.
Rachel Corrie was “in way over her head,” but Richard Witty is right in his element as an apologist for nearly a century of Zionist ethnic cleansing. He belongs on the hasbara frontlines. 100 years of Palestinian dispossession he inherently comprehends, as a retired East Coast accountant who sent his kids on a Birthwrong trip to colonized Palestine.
Rachel is hardly a cause celebre…..Rachel is now a spirit waiting for justice. In the film “Rachel” the investigator states that the body was gone and the site was cleared….what sort of investigative team allows the site to be cleared….in the death of an foreign national….when it was clear to the soldiers on the ground that there would be problems ahead. In the film, the pathologist states he knew that the Israeli courts had stipulated that an American consular official must be present…as the Corrie family had requested, but he did the autopsy anyway. How many years did it take for Emmett Till to find justice and his soul to rest in peace?
Rachel wrote and spoke clearly and accurately about what she was seeing. That, I believe, is why she was dangerous to both the Israelis who wanted to make a move undercover of the Iraqi war and to the Americans who did not want any Arab countries to respond to the American invasion of a Mideast country. If, as Richard believes, Rachel was in over her head it was because she downplayed her importance….There were people listening to her, observing her nights at the internet cafe, watching her press conference on Arab t.v. If she was in over her head, it was not because of her understanding of what was happening on the ground in Gaza. Rather, it would be in not understanding the “national security” argument used in the 2003 White House and by Sharon’s National Security team. Sharon stated it clearly when he stated that Rachel was dead because she was there. He did not state she was dead, Richard, because she was in over her head.
What kind of investigative team forces someone who isn’t dead yet to stay there?
Excellent post, Glen. Unfortunately, these Nazi vermin have been emboldened. They are not hiding their inhumanity, but flaunting it. They publicly brag about having a play about Rachel Corrie’s life shut down in New York City, or having a school for Arab children in NY closed down.
Just imagine Obama meeting with the parents of the murdered American citizen, Rachel Corrie–a hero for our age. Imagine the impact that could have. NO! But he’ll invite stupid henry louis gates to the white house to talk about his meaningless altercation with the police. This is the sort of sick society we live in.
I think disdain at Rachel Corrie and her work can be better understood when you take into account that many in the jewish community are exposed to communal belief of jewish exceptionalism. Richard Witty is certainly more comprehensible if you make that adjustement:
Take for example writing of Raphael Mahler in Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment, where he discusses that the Rabbi of Izbica taught that Jews are innately good, even when they do evil deeds, simply because they are Jews.
Gentiles are innately bad, even if they do good deeds.
These principles also apply to the Rabbi of Izbica’s teaching with regard to the Jews and the gentile nations … Just as God chose individuals from among the Jews in accordance with His will, bestowing the light of His Torah upon them in greater abundance than upon others, … so did He select the Jews to be His chosen people. …
But all these differences among the gentile nations with regard to each other are as nothing when compared with the abyss which exists between them and the Jews.
Even “the good qualities and the beneficent knowledge” of gentile nations, which are
reflected in their wealth and possessions, are there in exile, since idol worshippers do “the reverse of God’s will”; but when the Jews have one of these qualities, then God’s will is fulfilled through it, for the Jews are the “instrument by which God’s will is implemented.” …
So beloved are the Jews in the eyes of God that even if they do deeds like those done by the Gentiles, they are good precisely because they are the deeds of Jews.
Even the wicked among the Jews have goodnesss at the root of their lives, for it is only their acts which are not good, and those can be amended through penitence.
However, the root of the gentiles is bad and their acts are evil, even though they seem
good “in their outer guise,” as in the outer shell of Amalek, who “stretches forth his cloven hoof, as if to say, I am a clean animal.” The quality of the Jewish people is that of Aaron, kind and peaceful, whereas the quality of Edom is one of murder, as it is written (Gen. 27:40): “And by the sword shalt thou live.” It is true that it is stated (in Mal. 1:12): “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?—but this resemblance is merely external, for “God is aware that they are not equal.”
From
Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment: Their Confrontation in Galicia and Poland in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1985), page 307.
Eva: “many in the jewish community are exposed to communal belief of jewish exceptionalism.”
On the contrary, Jews just want to be treated like anyone else. Without the hyper-criticism, discrimination, lying and pointed hate-mongering.
Eva discriminates against Jews and then accuses Jews of wanting to be discriminated against. Hitler spoke the same way.
That might be true of Jews, but from the beginning, Isrealis have stated that they are exceptional and above the law.
Ben Gurion and Golda Meir both stated that no other country has the right to pass judgement on Israel.
Dozens of Rabbis have stated that Israelis are not bound by international law.
Thoke like Desrchowtiz argue that the onyl moral thing to do is send Israel all the money and arms it wants and let is do whatever it wants.
And of course, any criticism of Israel is anti Semitism.
So you see Eva, Isrelis just want to be treated like anyone else, only much better.
Do you guys inquire into your self-talk? Don’t you want to question your own assumptions?
Or, is your basis of friendship that you agree on who to lambast?
Your guesses at my attitudes are hysterical. But, the tragedy is that you willingly demean others that differ from your opinion and approach.
You might think it tragic that we don’t share your taste for trivializing murder and denegrading the name of innocent victims of violence Richard, but then again, that’s just us.
You want to play let’s be grown up and move beyind the unplesant details. Well, we’re not going to let you Richard. Behind the superficial facade of your civil discourse, lies someone who doesn’t want Isrl to be held to account and it’s grarignly obvious.
Its a distraction. You then avoid doing the work that will result in a Palestinian state at viable borders, and improvement of their economy and society as a whole.
There is no volume of anger that will accomplish what finesse and skillful communications will.
Richard, you are your own worst enemy here. If you showed half the willingness to criticize the rabid Israel-defenders in the US then your complaints about some of the rhetoric here would have some weight. But you consistently carp and trivialize every legitimate point that Phil makes. There are people in this thread who have viciously attacked Rachael Corrie and you don’t say a word. You have nothing to say about people in the US who justify Israel’s war crimes. For you, the only mistakes in tone that matter are those made on the anti-Zionist side.
The weird thing is that you set yourself up as someone full of empathy and willingness to listen, but your entire approach here contradicts that. After years of this one-sided self-righteous preaching with no evidence that you’ve made any positive impact, one would think you’d sit down and reassess your approach and maybe question your own biases a bit, but you never do.
Rachel Corrie will be a household name within a year. There will be a remembrance day commemorating her sacrifice for the Palestinian cause, observed by groups of peace from around the world.
The hasbara crew, especially the newest addition to the MondoTruth website, Jake in Jerusalem (round of applause, please) is in hissy-fit mode because the world has finally risen up against Israel’s crimes aganist humanity in Gaza. For J-in-J, any impediment to the ethnic cleansing of what in his mind will soon be a Greater Israel, is “anti-semitic.” Which is precisely why the anti-Semitic canard has lost all of its electrical charge.
The “new” anti-Semitism is criticism of a nation — Israel — for running a South African like apartheid in the M/E, funded by the US, the EU and multinational corporations. It becomes a petty, petulant and un-intellectual response to valid criticism. And worse, it makes it seem like the other side really has no argument for its conduct.
Oscar,
Rachel Corrie was in the news a coupla years ago. I don’t think she’s gonna become any more famous anytime soon.
As for “ethnic cleansing”, compare what is on the Israeli side of the border and what is on the Arab side of the border and tell us honestly (if you can!) who has always practiced “ethnic cleansing”. QED.
The rest of your arguments are similarly ridiculous.
jake in jerusalem- like I said, your own worst enemy. you aren’t helping your cause. your right wing inertia stops at your country’s border. when it lands here it just looks silly.
Lester,
I don’t know about right-wing inertia but when Jihad lands there, you won’t think the situation is silly at all.
Come to think of it, as President Hussein-Obama shows more and more that he really is just a community organizer from Chicago trying to solve a centuries-old and incredibly complex conflict within two year, then you might understand better.
On the other hand, Leftists have a long historical tradition of doing all the wrong things and then refusing to accept blame for them. Jimmy Carter is an example. Maybe Lester is in the same boat.
Well put Jake,
George Bush, for example, left the US and the world is such great shape and all he did was apologise.
In a few months, Iraq will be on fire. Lebanon and Egypt will probably follow.
Nobody will care about a stupid red haired girl who tried to stop a bulldozer with her face.
For whoever stated on a recent thread here that Israeli jews and Egyptians (the top elite only) get nearly the same in US foreign aid:
Here are the top 16 recipients of U.S. foreign aid for 2005:
1. Israel 2.58 Billion
2. Egypt 1.84 Billion
3. Afganistan 0.98 Billion
4. Pakistan 0.70 Billion
5. Colombia 0.57 Billion
6. Sudan 0.50 Billion
7. Jordan 0.48 Billion
8. Uganda 0.25 Billion
9. Kenya 0.24 Billion
10. Ethiopia 0.19 Billion
11. South Africa 0.19 Billion
12. Peru 0.19 Billion
13. Indonesia 0.18 Billion
14. Bolivia 0.18 Billion
15. Nigeria 0.18 Billion
16. Zambia 0.18 Billion
Of course the formula is still the same for Israel and Egypt (so long as the tyrannical
Egyptian regime kisses Israel’s ass). Obama recently rubber stamped Israel’s welfare dole for the next decade. He never said it was tied in any way to the settlement freeze issue.
I’m disheartened by the invocation of a cause celebre as means of dissent.
Its just too Pavlovian for my taste, too much like 1984.
I liked her presentation in the film that V.. presented. She seemed well-meaning, committed to goodness.
I took issue with her description that there was no “cycle of violence”, the apparently disciplined renunciation of that term, in favor of the reference to the relationship being one of oppression.
I don’t know if she was aware or not of the degree and manner of Hamas terror on civilians over the then live 15 year period.
Its a LOT to ignore. I don’t see how a peace activist could frankly.
Rachel Corrie appeared in three posts of Phil’s today.
A citation by an activist rabbi, a citation by a politician.
The heat is on. Is that good?
It’s good because most Americans never heard of Rachel, same as they’ve never heard of the USS Liberty.