Talk about unreconstructed, the New York Times book review section today is a real doozy. Between celebrating the Israel of today and yesteryear, along with resuscitating the specter of the "Islamofacist" boogeyman, it really hits all the marks. But here is one passage from Jonathan Tepperman's review of A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel that really put me over the edge:
Truman’s remarkable perseverance is recounted by the Radoshes in readable prose, with good anecdotal color, a general sense of fair-mindedness (except perhaps toward the Arabs) and impressive detail. . .
Nor do they do quite enough to substantiate their claims that without Truman’s help, Israel might never have come into being or have survived its first few years. After all, the real work of midwifing the nation wasn’t done in Washington conference rooms but on the rocky soil of Palestine itself, where a ragtag bunch of European immigrants fought to establish a new country.
In 2009 is it too much to ask that a phrase like "a general sense of fair-mindedness (except perhaps toward the Arabs)" not appear in an article dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Forgive me for saying so, but at this point in history "fair-mindedness toward the Arabs" is all that really matters given the decades of skewed and ignorant history that has been propagated about the Israel/Palestine. Any serious discussion of Israel/Palestine should be considered incomplete with out it.
Sadly, this shoddy, biased view of history is displayed in Tepperman's review itself. The second half of that quote above - "the rocky soil of Palestine itself, where a ragtag bunch of European immigrants fought to establish a new country" - is an excellent example of Exodus in action. Too bad that view of history has been out of vogue for at least 20 years (except in the Jewish community). Sorry to say Mr. Tepperman, but your review doesn't show "fair-mindedness toward the Arabs." Shame on the Times for running it.
Except that that racist, anti-Arab view of history has NOT been out of vogue for at least 20 years, and it is still in vogue for more than just Jewish Zionists. There are the nominal “Judeo-Christians,” who have vague ideas about the issue as a clash of civilizations with Israel supposedly on the West’s side; there are the more explicit Christian Zionists; and then there are the rah-rah, FDR-Truman worshipping Statist crackers of both Left and Right, forever wanting to re-fight WWII. All of these are totally ignorant of the cornerstone of Western civilization, which is (was) Christianity, not “Judeo-Christianity,” and they’re also ignorant of the Christian-based libertarianism of the Founders, which is what set America on the path to greatness.
What has gone wrong in America is that it has turned its back on Western civilization in favor of State-worship and money-worship — the two big specialties of Jewish opportunists. The Jewish NYT promoting the ghosts of Truman in the service of stirring WWIII against Islamofascism? Big surprise there.
Phil is right, so is Ed. Exodus lives on, even for most Americans who never saw the old Israel-instigated propaganda flick, those who’s formative years were engrossed
in the Freddie Kruger Holoween series, and later. They all resonate to the term “sand niggers.” The best representation of modern America is Kendra, the TV series. Too bad this is the big Lembowski. (Sic) Where is the USA going? Check out the infantile but talented director of Kill Bill and his Jewish capital supporters. New movie coming out soon. An anti-goy wet dream coming to a Multiplex cinema near you. “Dirty Rotten
Basterds,” or something like that.
More, let’s have more scalping of White Evil personfied.
This is loopy. The right never “worshipped” FDR.
And give us an example of a left-wing cracker.
It’s likely been written about before: Who chooses which books to critique in the Book Review?
Of course, that view also hurts Israel, since it implies that Israelis — at least the Jewish ones — are all from Europe. Which isn’t true. Today, Jews of European extraction aren’t even a majority; most are from the middle east.
Well, it’s not Hannah Arendt.
From Nazi-Zionist Friendship Commemorative Medal
Also relevant are Zionism, Fascism, Nazism for Dummies and Collection: Chief Zionist Frauds.
The adherents of palestinian supremism are Islamic inspire fascists. No need to reserve the right to paint these arabic nazis so as to properly idenitfy them.
It is a wonder that nuts exist who still believe the world is flat and the Jews made it so.
Well, you can’t discuss it without discussing the conditions in Europe. Someone is going to have to handle the old canard that Palestine was the “only” option for the displaced and battered Jews of Europe.
There is, of course the “peopless land” thing that fits in with that. But for some reason, even those who understand that Palestine was indeed populated at the time sort of “short circuit” about the displaced Jews “having” to go there.
That myth needs very badly to be exploded.
Palestine was not an option during WWII. The Nazi inspired, Mufti led, Arabs demanded and received British confirmation that the Jews would be forced to die in Europe.
Picture it. Hitler lived and he’s put on trial: “I had to murder Jews, the Arabs wouldn’t let me deport them, it’s their fault”.
I saw radosh give a talk about this on C Span, interviewed by a reported from the wall street journal. brett stevens? I can’t remember
There was a really remarkable exchange toward the end. It was very clear throughout that radosh was a big kool aid drinker . so stevens reads a quote from george kennan saying you know” ” if we support israel the arab governmetns are going to resent it and become weak and extermists will take over and they will be even more hostile to us” and basically describing exactly wthat would eventually happen in the middle east which stevens pointed out. radosh was like “oh no no. the other countries want us to attack iran, kennan wasn’t right” he was emphatic. I meant to email stevens and tell him dude you were right and it was obvious to anyone but I never got around to it.
Sometime morality backfires. It did not change the moral behavoir of the US in this particular instance.
Erste wir essen, dann kommt die Moral — Brecht
I consider Truman to be a mass murderer. It is quite appropriate that Israel has a stamp honoring him.
I suppose I should have said that I consider Truman to HAVE BEEN a mass murderer. Or should I have? (Being very mistake prone, I miss the edit feature.)
“midwifing the nation wasn’t done in Washington conference rooms but on the rocky soil of Palestine itself” True, aided and abetted by the Sonneborn and Haganah illegal arms smuggling networks in the United States. The docks of New York were critical as well, as well as general unwillingness of anybody to prosecute the Neutrality Act. From the standpoint of Palestinians int the 1930-1940, the US was their Afghanistan, harboring hostile groups intent on launching attacks against them, unwilling to uphold any rule of law.
Truman was kind of the lobbyists’ bag man. First he was Boss Pendergast’s boy, and then Feinburg’s fool. Kind of American campaign finance in a nutshell.
Radosh is a special case. Back when he was a Stalinist, places like Columbia would not hire him because he did not know how to behave in polite company: he attacked anyone who disagreed with him as a reactionary or an idiot or a coward. Now that he has migrated from Stalinism to Zionosm (changing his primary loyalty from the USSR to Israel), he attacks his critics as Communists or politically correct or Anti-Semitic.
bill- wasn’t he a libertarian for a while? I could have sworn I saw his name alongside murray rothbard someplace or other
I knew I saw his name somewhere.
from lewrockwell.com joseph strombergs review of radosh’s book about commies
“To mention Rothbard is to bring to mind the lost weekend Radosh spent as an near-ally of right-libertarian anti-imperialists in the mid sixties. Bob Dylan appears in this book, but Rothbard and his associates do not. Yet Radosh wrote on FDR’s foreign policy for Rothbard’s Left and Right (3, 3 [Spring-Autumn 1967]), edited a book with Rothbard, A New History of Leviathan (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972), on the rise of US corporatism and empire (to which Williams contributed), and wrote a thoughtful and friendly survey of right-wing “isolationists,” Prophets on the Right (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975), with chapters on Charles Beard, Oswald Garrison Villard, Robert Taft, John T. Flynn, and Lawrence Dennis.
Of this political lost weekend there is not a trace in this memoir. Could it be that the politically shipwrecked Radosh, having washed ashore near the New Republic, Al Shanker, and the Olin Foundation, is more ashamed of once consorting with right-wing libertarians than of having been a Stalinist?
”
answer: yes
You mean this
Whoops.
You mean this “rocky soil of Palestine?” link to tr.im
This is how you get on a stamp –
“Sometime in the late 1950s, that world-class gossip and occasional historian, John F. Kennedy, told me how, in 1948, Harry S. Truman had been pretty much abandoned by everyone when he came to run for president. Then an American Zionist brought him two million dollars in cash, in a suitcase, aboard his whistle-stop campaign train. ‘That’s why our recognition of Israel was rushed through so fast.’ As neither Jack nor I was an antisemite (unlike his father and my grandfather) we took this to be just another funny story about Truman and the serene corruption of American politics.”
Gore Vidal
Forward to – Jewish History, Jewish Religion. Israel Shahak
I cannot say if Radosh was ever a libertarian, but I believe that he could have written “Prophets On The Right” while still a Stalinist. If I am not mistaken, David Horowitz supplied the book with a blurb while he was also still a Stalinist.
Signing my own name, which “Ed” didn’t do, I say that his remarks quoted below are dead on IMHO:
“Except that that racist, anti-Arab view of history has NOT been out of vogue for at least 20 years, and it is still in vogue for more than just Jewish Zionists. There are the nominal ‘Judeo-Christians,’ who have vague ideas about the issue as a clash of civilizations with Israel supposedly on the West’s side; there are the more explicit Christian Zionists; and then there are the rah-rah, FDR-Truman worshipping Statist crackers of both Left and Right, forever wanting to re-fight WWII. All of these are totally ignorant of the cornerstone of Western civilization, which is (was) Christianity, not ‘Judeo-Christianity,’ and they’re also ignorant of the Christian-based libertarianism of the Founders, which is what set America on the path to greatness.
“What has gone wrong in America is that it has turned its back on Western civilization in favor of State-worship and money-worship — the two big specialties of Jewish opportunists. The Jewish NYT promoting the ghosts of Truman in the service of stirring WWIII against Islamofascism? Big surprise there.”
Tom White