Here are the top headlines today from Haaretz:
If anyone can reconcile the second and third stories, please let me know. It seem perhaps a mashup of the headlines would work best – "Netanyahu: No more excuses – time is ripe to build 700 new homes in East Jerusalem."
Easy: Netanyahu has no interest in actual peace, but he wants to revive “peace talks” as a means of indefinitely postponing a final agreement with the Palestinians while continuing to confiscate more of their land. In the meantime, he wants to make war on Iran, which is trying a similar infinite-delay tactic of its own while it finishes its nuclear facilities.
It seems as though Israel will build until Jerusalem cannot be divided
You missed the headline about Mousavi’s uncle being executed by Iranian agents, but I understand.
That’s okay, yonira. You can go to Haaretz on your own so you can salivate over while picturing the corpse of a “brown” person. This really isn’t the place for you to whet your particular appetites.
Again, why is that relevant to the Israeli/Palestinian issue? I’ll tell you, it’s not – But it’s a tool used to demonise the Palestinians by association.
Iranian regime kills people and are therefore evil. Iranian regime is Islamic. Palestinians are also majority Muslim. Therefore, Palestinians must also be evil.
Long live Palestine, Yonira!!!!
Gold STONE GOld Stone !!! repeat after me: “GOld Stone”
The distinction between the sec0nd and the third is a good opportunity for dissent to distinguish between policies, rather than just demonize.
That’s it Witty! Keep making excuses for Israel at all costs!
Richard, let me quote a famous 15th-century Italian-Jewish mystic, Elia del Medigo: “The median between irreconcilable extremes will always be mistaken.”
Thanks for that, Shmuel. I enjoy the tidbits of information I get about a myriad of subjects here. Sounds like a wise mystic.
Off topic a bit, but I enjoyed reading about the background to the creation of the word “boycott” posted on some thread here the other day and I forgot to thank whoever it was that posted it. (sammy?)
Thanks I am kind of addicted to words, being a verbophile and like to extract as much enjoyment as I can from them
I also like the quote from Elia del Medigo, who also said:
…our divine Torah would never oblige us to believe things which contradict each other, or to deny the first principles, or even principles that are almost like first principles, or the evidence of our senses. If our religion required us to believe such things we would reject the religion. For even if it were assumed to be true that we were so required, no divine punishment could follow our refusal to believe such things, since our intellect, with its nature as constituted by God, would not allow us to accept or to believe them but would constantly picture and inform us of their opposite… (Sefer Behinat Hadat, Part I, section 4, p. 81, lines 29–35)
Never demonize! Unless of course you are demonizing Hamas and/or Hezbollah. Or anyone criticizing Israel. Right Witty? Or is it just never “demonize”(or condemn) Israel or anything it does?
If Netanyahu is responsible for number three, then what does it tell you about number two?
Was an article not long ago in Haaretz alleging some inside info about how Netanyahu is just spoiling for a fight with Obama. Not gonna get one though I don’t think: Apparently there is no limit to the amount of shit our man can be made to publicly eat while still smiling.
To call him the man an empty suit is to insult a good suit: I’ve seen jellyfish with more spine than our ‘Bama possesses.
It looks easy to reconcile to me.
“… Netanyahu ready for new peace talks, lasting two years, based on 1967 lines.”
and
“Israel to build 700 new homes in East Jerusalem. State also considering appropriating private Palestinian land in the West Bank…”
Means that Netanyahu wants two more years to consolidate Israel’s hold on the West Bank, before “generously offering” the Palestinians the disconnected non-viable Bantustans that are left after the additional Israeli land grab.
Why the necessity to extend peace talks for two years? To have more time to create more “facts on the ground.”
I think it is Mousavi’s nephew, not his uncle, who was killed, perhaps in the heat of street violence, perhaps – with utter folly from the perpetrator’s point of view – deliberately marked down for death. The family is descended from the Prophet, I understand, and that too makes things worse from the point of view of Shia morality.
So Elia del Medigo rejected the median? I had thought that he was part of the general medieval Aristotelian scence and therefore would have seen moderation and navigating between extremes as pretty admirable. But I speak from almost total ignorance.
or perhaps killed by one of the covert operatives US and Israel have planted in Iran.
I wouldn’t jump to any hasty conclusions. From what I’ve heard there’s every reason to consider the Iranian regime as the prime suspect, considering later on a militia was sent to surround the hospital where the body was taken — and said body has subsequently been taken without record.
Not saying other suspects aren’t out of the realm of possibility but… this doesn’t exactly fall outside the M.O. of the Iranian government.
MH,
The reference is to the median between irreconcilable positions – more specifically a “compromise” between philosophy and theology. Del Medigo was an Averroist, and believed in the “doctrine of dual truth”. Philosophy and theology can co-exist, but a “median” between them would simply be nonsense – neither one nor the other. The point of my comment was, of course, that Witty’s faux moderation is, more often than not, an attempt to find the middle ground between irreconcilable positions – peace and war, justice and injustice, duplicity and good faith – and as such is little more than nonsense.
And it was a very apt reference. Special kudos to you for showing Witty what a real academic in action looks like.
I was hoping to demonstrate that change is being effected.
Not radical change, but definitely change.
If you keep your eye on the prize and don’t get distracted and vague, at least bothering to identify what the prize is, then that prize is realizable.
I see it in the large corporate sustainability and shareholder resolution world. The skilled ones, that actually make changes within corporations, PICK their fights. They identify foundation issues and only seek to accomplish them (at a moment). Over three years, some accomplish even just components of “living wage resolutions”, “internal carbon resolutions”, “corporate governance resolutions”. All small, often more PR than substance, all contributing to company profits in some way. But also, changing both company policies and executive attention, and norms.
Still corporate, still entirely urban, still limited scope of “citizenship”, but DIFFERENT than the past.
Excuse me but… are you comparing Israel’s governance and policy choices to those of greed-driven corporate management? Why, Witty! If I didn’t already know you were Jewish, I’d suspect there was some anti-Semitic thinking behind the whole “Jews are after the money” way of framing a discussion about Israel.
Change that actually occurs. Some reaching a qualitative shift.
What do those words mean? They make no sense.
Smaller, more specific achievable goals.
Oh! Can I try?
“A paradigm shift, localized to specific human interests.”
You know, I could probably put together a random phrase generator and save you the keystrokes, Witty.