From Haaretz, which slags the speaker as a pro-Palestinian "socialite."
"Holland’s powerful Jewish lobby is playing on the country’s sense of guilt over the Holocaust," a prominent Dutch activist said last week, triggering angry reactions and accusation of anti-Semitism from pro-Israel Dutch Jews.
Gretta Duisenberg, the widow of the first president of the European Central Bank and a friend of the Queen of the Netherlands, said in an interview for Islam Online that "the Jewish lobby in Holland, like in the United States, is very strong and powerful, and it is still playing on our guilt feelings although it is 63 years since the Holocaust."
It is important that this conversation is happening; people need to exchange these ideas without being smeared. Note that her argument is limned by Mike Desch’s important paper, The Myth of Abandonment, which described the way that Never-again-ism has distorted American foreign policy. And by Jeffrey Goldberg, who said he moved to Israel (soon after the period of the cultural discovery of the Holocaust in American life, which surely steeped his adolescence) because he didn’t trust the State Department to protect Jews. Note that Menachem Begin described Arafat as Hitler, that the late Tom Lantos, a Holocaust survivor and lobby-pillar in Congress, described Saddam as Hitler, and that Israel’s information minister now seems to describe Goldstone as Hitler. Collective trauma.
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It would be insightful to trace the experience and consequences of the trauma fully and respectfully, valid elements and exagerated.
The “study” of the use of the term “Hitler” or “nazi” (here and elsewhere) doesn’t really say very much.
“Hitler” now means “really bad guy”, only.
Except when it is applied to Jews, in which case it means “anti-semitism,” right?
Because Jews have such delicate sensibilities they can’t be offended by the truth about themselves.
No matter, Dick Witty, let’s let Israeli do whatever it wants, e.g., what it does with Caterpillar bulldozers, all paid for by the US as is spelled out in the US appeals court denying the Corrie family law suit.
These are anti-Semitic remarks, based on the libel of the Protocols of Zion, that the Jews dominate the world
Right, BSDOW, nobody should pay any attention to politics as usual; especially let’s not get specific about the way the system works, especially in the USA. Read Maurice
Joly’s work; it’s still relevant.
You know the difference, BSD? When the Protocols were written, the Jews didn’t dominate the world, so the charge was a lie.
It rather changes matters when the charge becomes true. A libel is necessarily a falsehood. The screechers who cried “blood libel” when the thefts of organs by an Israeli became known were liars, because the charge happened to be true.
Now, the US dominates the world and the Israel lobby dominates US foreign policy. It is no longer a libel, no longer a lie. If it weren’t true, then George Mitchell could tell the Israelis to do to hell.
Potsherd,
Are you saying that you believe that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are applicable to today’s Jews?
“Are you saying that you believe that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are applicable to today’s Jews?”
I’m with you, BSD! If I came across a website where the commenters thought that, I would leave in a huff and never return! From me their hit-count shall never increase!
Why, I don’t know how a mensch like you can stand it here!
Think about it, BSD, let’s talk as one Jew to another, those Protocols have been around a long time. They must mean something to somebody!
Look, BSD, I know what it’s like; there is nothing more gratifying that building up a good head of self-righteous steam about anti-Semitism. But look, if you really want to shut this crowd down, why not tell us how the Protocols have effected you, and your life?
BSD, I’m saying that if a charge is true, it is true, even if it applies to Jews. And if it happens to sound similar to some ridiculous anti-semitic calumny, but it’s true, the fact of this similarity is no reason to suppress the truth.
If, for example, a Jewish pedophile abducts and murders a non-Jewish child, reporting this fact is not a “blood libel”, even if the Protocols made similar charges. A fact is a fact.
So you are saying the Protocols of the Elders of Zion apply to Jews today?
Dear BSNOW, You have piqued my curiositiy regarding the Protocols and am just starting to read them. I never read them before or even had any interest but already in the preface I find one truth regarding the poisoning of wells. M Begin, in charge of the Strern Gang and the Irgun stuffed bodies in the wells at Deir Yassin. This is a time honored method to poison a well. Maybe they saved all this good shit for their brother Semites, the Palestinians. I will keep you informed as I go along. yrs trly
I’m sorry if I am seeming a little dense but are you guys joking about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion being factual in current times?
Jimby, so the Protocols was a prophetic work? Kinda like Nostradamus?
Excellent post, yonira. jimby is antisemitic, yes. You have uncovered the truth about him, and by relation, us, and by relation, this blog, and by relation, anti-Zionism and anything critical of Israel.
Bravo.
First off, yes BSD – you are dense. Although, I think you’re just a troll considering you never substantiate your assertions. If I have to, I will quote the stupid abrupt things you’ve said on this blog to prove my point.
Why would you restate your question after pots has sufficiently answered you the first time?
Here is your first question:
Here is your second question:
Here is your THIRD question:
Same exact question, every time. Stop spamming the blog. Pots gave a succinct response:
If a charge is TRUE – it is true. Regardless, of how it is associated. If a Muslim carries out a suicide bombing, I don’t immediately blame all Muslims. I don’t make gross generalizations about Islam.
If a Black guy does something. If an Arab does something. I don’t say ALL of them are the same in ‘that’ way.
Do you recall the Israeli organ harvesting scandal recently? Israel was in fact illegally harvesting organs. When the story first broke out, Israel immediately went on the defensive and accused whoever of being antisemitic. Blood libel and all that.
Then it was revealed that the illegal organ harvesting had in fact occurred. Does this mean all the conspiracies about Jews are now true? No.
But how do you reconcile this behavior w/ the various antisemitic tropes that exist?
Antisemitism is a logical fallacy (in my opinion).
I always bring up Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent with regards to this stuff. He produced an INSTITUTIONAL analysis of the mainstream media. People should judge him on the analysis. Not on the thesis alone or the gist of the thesis.
I consider antisemitism to be an irrational hatred (or pretty much irrational any-feeling) of Jews.
The point is whether a belief can be proven or not. Israel was illegally harvesting organs. Case closed! Does that by-association mean that every other negative thing said about ‘the Jews’ – is true? No.
Blood libel. Does this organ harvesting thing not exist in our collective reality, because it resembles antisemitic tropes? No! It happened! In the physical world, and not in the imagination of whoever wrote the Protocols.
Oh and since, ‘the Jews’ is a generalization. Who are these antisemitic tropes aimed at? Which Jewish subgroup? European Jews? Arab Jews?
Antisemitism conflates all these groups into a monolith, ‘the Jews’ – right? I’m assuming you or WJ or whoever here is a Zionist is ‘aware’ of what antisemitism is.
Just recently Gidi Grinstein was recommending that Zionist activists cozy up to ‘elites’ to counter the ‘delegitimization’ of Israel – the Jewish State.
That sounds antisemitic too. You know, the whole ‘embed themselves within the power structures of foreign governments, fifth column blah blah’ type of meme.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142739.html
Oh and what about the YNet writer who said Israel could ‘unleash World Jewish capital’ onto Turkey if need be, to solve their political differences?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8459874.stm
Is that antisemitic? Does that sound like the Protocols?
Antisemitism has to be defined. In fact, tell me what it means, BSD.
Tell me what the POINT is of the Protocols.
It’s just a conspiracy. The world doesn’t work that way.
Chomsky’s approach to studying complex institutions is a model others should follow.
The protocols as an anti-semitic tract shouldn’t be promoted. There are many intellectual sommersaults that can be done to attempt to get this piece accepted and it hurts our cause to promote blood libels such as that.
In particular, doing this hard work and thorough exgesis, to attempt to prove the protocols correct is damaging
Putting a dent in Turkish Anti-semitism or any other is commendable and I really applaud that (I hope you do too?)
No one is promoting the Protocols.
The point of contention is that the US is the world’s only superpower. Zionism is a powerful reality. Jews are part of the Establishment in the American body politic.
Jewish identity is a powerful social taboo and ideological weapon. Holocaust, Nazi, antisemitism, etc.
One need not look through the lens of antisemitic literature to come to these conclusions.
If these conclusions are antisemitic, then you must explain why. This would deal w/ the content – as I listed above.
If the only thing that ties all these antisemitic tropes together, is ‘irrational hatred’ (with more focus on irrational) – then the Protocols are irrelevant. So is your insistence that reality should be framed through anti-Jewish fantasy.
Answer this simply: did Israel harvest organs illegally? Did they eventually admit to it?
Ok, now unless you’re a liar – you would have said ‘yes’ twice. Does that make YOU antisemitic?
I don’t agree to your premise, BSD. I don’t agree to this very same premise, as espoused by many people – that we must frame everything through a anti-Jew/pro-Jew/neutral-Jew lens.
These events exist. That’s that.
Whatever antisemitism is – it exists only in the CONCLUSIONS one draws from FACTS. Antisemitism does not exist in the FACTS.
You want to change reality itself, it would seem. To re-frame reality in either anti/philo/non-Jewish sentiments.
“Against fatheadity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”
BSD you ignored the two articles I cited.
Both Israeli authors said things that could easily be straw manned as ‘antisemitic’. I would like you to comment.
Also, what are your thoughts on Israeli illegal organ trafficking? Are the perpetrators antisemitic for their actions?
Is a Jew who commits suicide, committing a hate-crime? Is he antisemitic since he killed himself (a Jewish person)?
You are ridiculous. As I said, you want to redefine reality through a lens of ‘feelings’ towards Jews. These actions exist independent of Jewishness, while at the same time being affected by socio-economic variables.
By your standard, we should not try to understand any complex system, because by definition it would be conspiratorial.
whoops, I meant to say:
‘while at the same time being affected by socio-economic variables within a Jewish community’
Culture matters too. Like, we could study the rise of evangelicalism in Guatemala. Does that mean we’re anti-Christian? The way in which we’d talk about that ‘identity’ would be similar to the way we talk about Jewishness.
For example, there are tons of books on the Christian Right. There are books that deal specifically with the symbiotic relationship between the Christian Right and multinational corporate greed.
Does that imply an indictment on all of Christianity?
No. No. No.
These charges only serve to lower the intellectualism of the discussion.
Is 200-foot wide Star of David carved into Palestinian farmland in Gaza by Israeli soldiers, antisemitic?
Do tell, BSD.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/at-yale-judge-goldstone-faces-down-his-accusers.html
Excuse me Cliff, but we were not discussing organ harvesting. You asked me a question “Did Israel harvest organs illegally? Did they eventually admit to it?”
I don’t know I would have to look into that. That wasn’t the original topic of the conversation.
Excuse me BSD, but the POINT of mentioning ‘organ harvesting’ is that Israel accused the people who initially broke the story of ‘blood libel’.
I have not read the Protocols but I’m assuming that ‘blood libel’ is in the general nexus of antisemitic blah blah. Ok? Is that too difficult for you to understand?
It’s all related.
The point is whether an event in real life is inherently anything. So if a Jew harvests organs, do we have to frame it through a particular lens? Or does this event first exist in reality as a FACT – from which we, through our own subjective interpretation, draw conclusions.
The antisemitism is in the conclusions. The interpretation. The subjective.
“These are anti-Semitic remarks, based on the libel of the Protocols of Zion, that the Jews dominate the world”
Don’t I know it, BSD! It’s as absurd as all those claims that white Christian people are an oppressed and battered mionority!
Unfortunately, the Queen of the Netherlands has long been brainwashed by the Zionist anti-Islam propaganda. She too have criticized Islam in the past and believe that Muslims are going to take-over Europe in the future.
“If you want to talk about being critical of Israel, that is a feeling among many Europeans, so how can you characterize that as Muslim? There is no such thing as a Muslim issue in Europe or growing Muslim influence on politicians,” – Susanne Nies, head of French Institute of International Relations.
Europe’s Muslim factor scares Zionists
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/europes-muslim-factor-scares-zionists/
There’s a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe, especially Germany, because of the influx and great wave of out of work peasant Turkish former opium farmers in the 60s and 70s. It created an entire underclass in Germany. This is what allowed politically seamy Zionists to capitalize on these sentiments, and draw parallels to Israel’s ‘plight’. It worked until recently. It worked until Gaza. Gaza was the last straw in Israel-forgiveness.
Haaretz, January 30, 2010: World isn’t buying Israel’s explanations anymore
Also from that Haaretz article:
Libel…that the Jews dominate the world.
Libelous except when David Brooks writes it in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/opinion/12brooks.html?em
Libelous except when Dan Senor and Saul Singer write it in their book ”Start-up Nation“ and crow the same on Morning Joe.
Figure out this passive-aggressive cat’s-cradle of logic and let us know what we’re supposed to believe. The Jewish minefield of exceptionalism has become a time-waster without a revised 21st C map.
“Figure out this passive-aggressive cat’s-cradle of logic…. a revised 21st C map”
Well put.
It would be useful to study the relationship of the Holocaust and Holocaust guilt and its interaction with support for Israel. But it should be done with a degree of sensitivity. Certainly Gretta Duisenberg with her miniscule (or nonexistent) sensitivity should not be the one we to lead the discussion.
By sensitivity you must mean, someone with whom you’re more politically aligned.
Zionists regularly use the Holocaust and blah blah blah to justify their actions.
Does this have to be said again? It’s common knowledge in this conflict. Yet, here you are whining that she said the obvious.
Yeah, and the whining has become exhausting, and no longer appropriate in the 21st C. The whining is used to destroy people’s careers if criticized, and impose apartheid on an indigenous people, influence American politics and foreign policy to extent that the American people face the possibility of another war on the whiners’ behalf, loot the US Treasury in the amount of $15 million/day for the whiners’ foreign protected capitol, and carve out separate rules by which only the whiners are allowed to play.
So, WJ, get a grip on your sensitive soul and wake up and realize that when you put your Formula One or the universal racetrack and claim you want to play to win, you play by track rules. Things get hit. Things get screamed at. Shit happens.
Are you shitting me? What do you think has transpired for 60 years?
“Are you shitting me? “
Amazing, isn’t it, MRW? Do you think he deals with the other issues and events and choices in his life the way he deals with his fantasy-Zionism support?
Crap, he would end up in jail or 72 hr. observation in a heartbeat.
WJ, just out of curiosity, when Holocaust survivors demonstrated against the Israeli government for short changing them, did you join in the protests?
I mean, if you care so much about the Holocaust and those who survived it, why don’t you actually do something to improve their living conditions? Israel and its banks keep pocketing the reparations money and the survivors get very little. And many of them live below the poverty line.
Excellent point, Avi. WJ, just out of curiosity, when Holocaust survivors demonstrated against the Israeli government for short changing them, did you join in the protests?
And you can add the billions that Bronfman got on their behalf from the Swiss govt. that the Holocaust survivors never received.
Bronfman got on their behalf
Indeed.
Bronfman did the legwork, so the survivors won’t have to (get a single penny).
WJ, the time for “sensitivity” training is over. This article was published in haaretz and Duisenberg was not-so-sensitively smeared with a “pro-palestinian” and the oh-so-insulting “socilaite” labels. The first to associate here with terrorism or just, “the enemy”, the second, to brand her as light-weight – an insult in Israeli parlance (often used BTW to describe Sarah Nethaniahu or anyone else one wishes to throw to the wolves). Now, how sensitive is that?
As the torrents of anti-muslim, anti-arab, anti-obama-the-kushi pamphlets I keep receiving from israeli ‘friends”show, sensitivity is not exactly a widely disseminated value over there. neither is it among the neoconians in the western world. So let’s not be too hasty sending Duisenberg to sensitivity training, in say, israel.
besides, she is right. The holocaust industry is real, it is alive and it is, still trying to plow full steam ahead, damn the consequences. To the israelis – and their supporting lobbies – it is simply one of those calamities that should not go to waste, to channel rahm. After all, israel owes its existence to the holocaust, and since they see ‘existence” (however they mean it) as under threat, there is a need to keep reaching for the same tool that ensured it’s coming into being in the first place.
No wonder there’s such harsh reaction to any suggestion the tool may have become blunted by time and over-use.
Hear, hear.
————–
Finklestein v Charny for anyone who missed it first time around.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKTKMFTprM
It’s sensitivity you want? In that case, you shoulda stayed in schul and never have even attempted this colonial-settlement business. Being regarded with “sensitivity” is not, not, not, one of the rewards of Zionism, you chump.
Once you’ve declared yourself an armed state, “sensitivity sort of goes out the window, and it’s into the dog-eat-dog world of politics and war.
gosh, Mooser, MRW, you pretty thoroughly eviscerated [a sensitive word for 'gutted'] BSD.
There’s nothing left for me to say.
All those years of memorizing Protocols and developing my inner antisemite — wasted, down the drain.
Hey, but maybe that’s a good thing? I can return to loving music, enjoying travel, struggling to cultivate a magnificent peony.
Thanks, guys!
Certainly Gretta Duisenberg with her miniscule (or nonexistent) sensitivity should not be the one we to lead the discussion.
WJ, there should be no ‘leader’ of the discussion at all. The US and Western Europe are supposed to be beacons of democratic principles, right? So Ms. Duisenberg has the right to her opinion, and it shouldn’t be squelched because it has offended your delicate sensibilities. If ‘offensiveness’ was the editorial standard, someone would have stuffed a sock in Dershowitz’s mouth years ago. And come to think of it, I don’t recall your comment criticizing that sack of excrement when he recently suggested that Judge Goldstone was a race traitor. That’s not offensive? Which leads me to my real point: I am sick to death of the hypocrisy, hypocrisy being a mixture of dishonesty, condescension and narcissism. The debate is going to get messy before anything meaningful occurs, and those who have censored and infantilized the debate in the past are largely responsible for this state of affairs. So if you want to complain, complain to them.
Apparently very few people remember Gretta Duisenberg from the last time we came across this woman. She was collecting signatures on a petition in support of the Palestinians and had collected a few thousand. ” How many signatures are you aiming to get?” she was asked. “Six million,” she answered with a mischievous smile.
The Israel lobby in the United States is well documented, but the Israel lobby in Holland is not well documented. Does anyone have any actual facts to support Greta Duisenberg’s assertions.
Learn Dutch.
t the Israel lobby in Holland is not well documented. It’s called the history of Jews coming to America, and its history has been available since 1492 when Isabella kicked the Jews out of Spain, the Muslims in the 1480s.
I’m missing your point. Are you suggesting that anything she says should be dismissed out of hand because of that comment? If that is the case, then we can simply dismiss all of the racial nuttiness coming out of the mouths of official Israeli representatives, and Israel’s unofficial spokespeople in the US, as irrelevant.
You don’t get to decide who has the right to comment on this subject. IP is an open topic for debate amongst all citizens of ostensibly free and democratic societies. And once again, if anti-semites and holocaust deniers suddenly feel empowered to speak their mind, it is largely the result of the complete stifling of an honest debate on this topic by Israel and so-called friends of Israel for the past decades.
The witch from Holland is allowed to say whatever she wants. But it is Phil Weiss who should be sufficiently aware of her history who ought to refrain from referring to such a witch in a serious way.
Wow, I must be in need of some serious sensitivity training. Are you WJ referring to the number 6 million that she quoted? If so what the fork? Anytime anyone anywhere uses that number and it is not used in reverence to an arbitrary number of Jews who died in the camps in Germany do suspect anti-semitic thoughts or connotations? Am I a holocaust denier if I question that number. Maybe there were six million and two. Whew it must be a bitch to be a Jew.
You just sound like a typical Zionist-POV Wikipedia article on something I-P related.
There is always a sub-section for ‘criticism’ in which the only ‘criticism’ is from groups like CAMERA or Dershowitz or other nutcases.
Passing off your POV for mainstream. Why don’t you communicate to the non-Zionists why this woman should be avoided?
Because of that one comment? Apply that standard to your own side.
And this is the substance of your total rejection of everything she says, not to mention the namecalling?
If she says the earth is round, that doesn’t mean that the earth is not round. Yes, she deserves to be called names. At the end of this thread I try to begin to deal with this subject, which is indeed a deep one that deserves attention.
Just quote what Zionists say. Refer to their alliance w/ the Christian Right.
And let’s be done w/ these hypocrites. This is an old topic that has been covered extensively already. ‘The Holocaust Industry’ is very real.
When you Google this lady’s name, you get links like this:
http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/317 (Zionist)
I was reading up on this ZioTroll named ‘Zeq’ or something. He used to be a Wikipedia editor. Apparently, he and CAMERA attempted to spam Wiki (slowly over time) with articles on the I-P conflict and related issues from a Zionist perspective.
At some point in the exchange of emails (the ‘evidence’ of Zeq’s scheme) he said that pro-Israel editors should try to get Palestinian and pro-Palestinian editors banned from Wikipedia.
Electronic Intifada has the emails.
No surprise, that this kind of intellectual dishonesty and hate is apparent in our own Zionist trolls.
Cliff, do you mean that they have stopped editing Wiki? I no longer rely on wiki for subject on the ME.
Zeq was banned. But Wiki has no real accountability process. I’m sure CAMERA has taken the initiative and has editors on the Israel-Palestine related articles.
It’s obvious when you read the articles anyway. The framing, rhetoric, etc.
Like in the Hebron Massacre article, the words ‘murder’ immediately characterize the killings. No one is quoted as having said the Massacre was a ‘murder’ of Jews. It’s stated as a fact. (I agree BTW)
However, when it comes to Baruch Goldstein or whoever, his massacre of Palestinians is characterized as ‘killings’ and ‘murder’ is only used when referring to the words of someone else. Hence, it’s in quotations. Not a ‘fact’.
There is also a ‘Prelude’ section to the Goldstein murders. Read it. It provides no voice for Palestinians and essentially serves to mitigate the horror of Goldstein’s actions. They can’t outright justify what Goldstein did – but they will do damage control.
Going back to the Hebron Massacre article. They provide a ‘background’ section, in which they describe the history of the city, and history of antisemitism directed at Hebron Jews and yada yada yada.
None of this humanizing context is provided for the victims of Goldstein.
Obviously, Zionists are trolling Wiki. If they act as thought police in real life, then they will do so on-line.
It’s not surprising that they would mobilize to frame I-P articles in their favor. Just think about how Israel pays Zionists to troll blogs like this one. All the regulars here will remember the legion of hasbaraniks who showed up here last year, due to the bad PR Israel was getting for butchering 1300 Palestinians.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9474.shtml
You should also look up the confrontation between other Wiki editors (presumably, sincere non-Zionists) and Zeq. The guy is such a damn liar. His email was zeqzeq@yahoo.com or something and all throughout the confrontation, with the evidence against him piling up, he keeps making the most ridiculous arguments. All evasive naturally.
Reminded me of Witty and Einstein. Pathetic.
Cliff, that’s very informative and bears repeating.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9474.shtml
I have long held that there was extreme bias regarding Palestine/Israel issues on Wikipedia. The bias was so prevalent that I got the impression the founder may have been colluding with one lobby or another.
I even got banned a few times for posting well referenced information which was deemed “vandalism”. Surprise, surprise.
check out this groundbreaking post on EI, even though Cliff posted it, i think it needs to be posted for a third time in the same thread. its just that mind blowing
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9474.shtml
I think the influence of “hasbara” on wikipedia is overblown.
The citations are real, verifiable.
You think that supporters of Palestinian solidarity don’t try to influence wikipedia content?
This is why your Two-State solution will never work, Witty.
Dishonesty.
You exude dishonesty. Palestinians can feel that on a physical level when they are being brutalized by Israeli thugs in uniform.
Anyway, sure Witty. I can do something and it can just be ’something’. As in an innocent ’something’.
I can take that same something though and do it in such a way that it is dishonest, underhanded and immoral.
So yes, anyone writing about anything on Wikipedia [a 'something] is basically trying to ‘influence’ ‘it’ with their perception of the subject-matter.
However, the coordinated effort on part of Zionist organizations such as CAMERA to influence Wikipedia is wholly different in nature of engagement from a single Zionist individual contributing a piece of information.
Read the PDF. Read the subject-matter of this exchange before giving your opinion. You always do that. Whether it’s Goldstone or your petty misrepresentation of Benny Morris’s views on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (he was in full support – whereas you said he was a ‘maybe’).
Using absurd oversimplification to lessen from the credibility of the article, and the influence of the Israel lobby on Wikipedia, was supposed to be a tactic reserved for Dershowitz. Now you’re adopting that same tactic? Your teachers would be proud.
I love how the CAMERA hack, finishes off by telling people not to advertise the fact that this is a group effort. A group with an obvious agenda.
Then he says dissenters will accuse CAMERA of being part of a Zionist ‘cabal’. Except, that’s exactly what CAMERA intended. They are organizing, via group effort, a campaign to push a pro-Israel perspective into I-P related articles.
Wikipedia is very much like a game. Lots of legal spittle involved. Lots of rules. People exploit the loop-holes to advance POV.
A Zionist named Zeq tried this and failed when the emails between him and the CAMERA hacks were circulated.
He’s just like you Witty, you should read his excuses when confronted with the evidence. He doesn’t address the accusation. Instead, he tries to change the subject constantly.
At one point he even accused the dissenters of antisemitism.
I’ve seen the actual quote, but the EI article references it anyway so I’ll point you towards said article instead.
I gave up on trying to keep on a Wiki about Sardis that one theory held that “sephardim” is a term that emerged from Jewish presence in Sardis as early as the time of Croesus. my sentences were deleted so many times, I quit. I don’t use wiki, consider it the equivalent of MacDonald’s to cuisine.
It’s a reasonable speculation that Jews were in Sardis at the time of Sardis.
It’s also a reasonable speculation that Jews were in Sardis at the time of CROESUS.
doh
Some more information on the CAMERA-Wiki scandal.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/29/wikipedia_blocked_doj_ip/
Apparently a DoJ employee tried deleting an entire section of CAMERA’s Wiki page that dealt with the scandal.
Excerpt from the email correspondence between Zionist Wiki editor, Zeq and CAMERA members:
http://electronicintifada.net/downloads/pdf/080421-camera-wikipedia2.pdf
Nice digging, Cliff.
Interesting! But how would we understand ‘Jewish’ in sixth century terms?
The Achaemenid Empire certainly had an Aramaic-speaking official class to which the restorers of Jerusalem – or those who thought of themselves in this light – belonged – Nehemiah being the prime example.
By 399 we find Xenophon distinguishing himself in the Battle of Cunaxa. ‘Cunaxa’ is related, I believe, to the Aramaic term for what later became a ’synagogue’, so suggests a Jewish majority in an area of Iraq.
But how any of these groups related in religion or race to what later became Judaism and Jewish people must be quite a problem.
I’ve seen CAMERA on my campus back before I graduated and became “old,” but this sort of thing is scary. It is so damn easy to abuse Wikipedia, and of course Zionists aren’t the only ones to do it. I just don’t like the idea that CAMERA can control what people see on their first google search about the I/P conflict.
Holocaust chic. I’m talking a whole lifestyle! But I can say no more, there are kapos everywhere! Found on on my guitar this morning!
Mooser,
I don’t appreciate you making light of the holocaust. I have reported this comment as abuse.
Shut up BSD. Mooser has been on this blog for years and is not the type of person who mocks the Holocaust.
Who the hell do you think you are? Why don’t you slither back to wherever you came from.
Cliff,
If you have gotten to the point where you cannot recognize abuse on this blog, then something is seriously wrong. I didn’t realize that Mooser has been commenting for so many years and maybe this was a one-time slip, or I am taking it out of context. All I can say is that I was really shocked and saddened to see that comment.
How mighty righteous of you. So you’re not here trolling just for kicks?
BSD, you are a goddamn liar. Mooser is not making fun of the Holocaust. He was joking about Holocaust exploitation and fear-mongering (something you regularly do on this blog).
Hence the ‘chic‘ part.
Unless you begin to substantiate your accusation, don’t expect anyone to take your seriously. I doubt Phil and Adam will buy into your BS anyway.
Mooser is someone we all know and respect and is an adamant Judaism=/=Zionism, anti-Zionist.
Your pathetic attempt to get him reprimanded is transparent.
Correction : your = you
BSD, get off your horsie and take off your spurs. Mooser, take his bag of quarters.
In case you dont know, BSD, Mooser is the Mondoweiss Mascot. We love him. He’s our court jester with a genius for cutting through crap. And he’s got the right religion for this site, which is extra lucky for him. ;-)
Cliff is right. He’s been here for years. There are times when we put out an APB for him.
Ok well maybe I took it the wrong way. I’m sorry if I did, it just really hits me in the gut when I see words like that.
Then grow a pair, pull up a chair, and loosen your tie. We drink beer and shots around here, not wine spritzers.
[Unless Shmuel offers us some of the good stuff with the fizzy water on the side, not inside it.]
Mooser, please stop fretting over it.
What guilt is appropriate?
Few people now alive were in a position to do much of significance during the war years, so it isn’t simple personal guilt for things personally done. We are heirs of the culture of those times but we have revised our inheritance, if necessary, in an anti-anti-Semitic direction.
How do we know when this revision has gone far enough? The single, simple test, say some, is unreserved and uncritical support for Israel: any reservation, unless perhaps a minor one, authorised by respectable and mainstream elements within Israel itself, amounts to a live element of anti-Semitism in our minds. But this is an inherently immoral demand to let our moral judgements be determined politically and not by our moral principles. It’s an interactive process, even more destructive than Ms. Duisenberg says. To the extent that the demand is met every action by Israel, however bad, is accompanied by a chorus of approval, corrupting the morality of Israel’s leaders more and more all the time.
In a wider sense, cultural exploitation of the Holocaust emphasises and deepens at every point the division between those who do and those who do not call themselves Jewish – not that there is any scientific objectivity about this distinction.
The role of the Nazi genocide of the Jews in the establishment of the state of Israel is undeniable. The role of Jew hatred in Europe in the establishment of the state of Israel is undeniable and the Nazi genocide, of course, was the ultimate expression of that hatred. If Europe between 1881 and 1939 would have been as welcoming to Jews as the United States circa 2010 there would not have been sufficient manpower to establish the state of Israel. The cultural needs of Jews, faced with the prospect of assimilation not withstanding, it was the Jew hatred that Herzl saw during the Dreyfus trial that brought home to him the truth that a disaster was coming the way of the Jewish people and he was right.
The tragedy or irony of Israel (besides the one that this web site deals with) is that the establishment of Israel came too late to save the Jews from the freight train that was headed their way. True a few hundred thousand were saved by the Zionist enterprise between 1939 and 1945, but that was a fraction of those who lost their lives to the danger that Herzl accurately foresaw. If only the “colonial” enterprise (it was more than that, but let me use that derogatory phrase just for a moment) had taken place 50 or 100 years earlier Israel might have saved millions instead of hundreds of thousands.
Fast forward to 2010. Israel still takes visiting dignitaries to Yad Vashem to pay their respects as a type of religious pilgrimage. When Obama did his “on the one hand/on the other hand” in his Cairo speech, it was the suffering of the Jews during the Holocaust versus the suffering of the Palestinians in the present tense. To balance his Cairo speech he didn’t visit Jerusalem, but Buchenwald. When Netanyahu goes to the United Nations he takes the floor plans of the gas chambers of Auschwitz to counter the obscenity of the Iranian front man Ahmadinejad. Benny Morris writes about his worry that the next Holocaust will take six minutes rather than 6 years. Amos Oz (or was it A.B. Yehoshua?) used to say that during the day the Israeli feels powerful but when he dreams at night he dreams of the powerlessness of the Jew being marched into the gas chambers. Israeli high school seniors are sent to Poland to do the concentration camp circuit to solidify their Zionist feelings.
I don’t really know how the Roma or the Armenians are dealing with their post genocide traumas. (The way the Armenians are still struggling to get their genocide recognized seems to inform me that recovering from genocide is no simple task.) Certainly the Jewish habit or tradition of memory would have played a role in the Jewish reaction to the trauma even if there was not a state that needed “justification” involved in the calculus.
The Jewish lobby’s power in America is certainly more connected to their ability to defeat Congressional candidates than to any other factor. Americans’ historical knowledge is weak and an event from 65 years ago is really not that close to the minds of most Americans.
(a footnote: Gretta Duisenberg is lucky that Haaretz calls her a socialite rather than a witch [rhymes with]. When she was collecting signatures for some anti Israel petition and was asked by a reporter, how many signatures do you aim to collect, she smiled and said, “Six million.” She is a poor example to use if one wishes to deal with this topic in any serious way.)
RE: “Note that Menachem Begin described Arafat as Hitler…” – WEISS
FROM SAUL BELLOW: …Thirty years ago, my wife and I visited her Grandmother’s house in Rising Star, Texas (near Blanket, for those of you who don’t know West Texas). She rocked in her chair to the cadence of a televangelist named Roberson who serendipitously – timed with my arrival? – pontificated (oops, wrong religion) on the nature of Jews. “God does not hear their prayers,” he claimed. How did he know? “And you don’t want to do business with those folks, neither.”
That evening a Fort Worth Rabbi accused the preacher of anti-semitism. Roberson responded in a press conference to answer the Rabbi. Displaying a star of David that he wore around his neck, he announced: “Menachem Begin [Prime Minister of Israel] gave it to me.” “We agree in principle that all Jews should be in Israel.” A skeptical reporter returned to the Rabbi’s charge of anti-Semitism. Roberson explained: “an anti-Semite is someone who hates Jews more than he’s supposed to.”…
SOURCE – http://www.counterpunch.org/landau02012010.html
It is time to stop being sensitive about the Holocaust, and face the brutal truths. We don’t want to hear about it any more. We are told not to forget it, but what good has remembering it done?
All this constant wittering about the Holocaust has not stopped mass murders, wars, genocides, or racism. Millions of people have been slaughtered both before and after the Holocaust, as well as the millions who died during it.
According to some, it has not even stopped ani-Semitism. (Probably the perceived anti-Semitism is the result of people getting fed up with the constant whining about the Holocaust.)
What it has done is send comfortable, safe, American Jews into paroxysms of manufactured grief for people whom, in many cases, they never knew, and who were dead before they were born.
It has inflicted dozens of dreary, boring movies and fraudulent “memoirs” upon the world.
Others here have pointed out that the wittering about the Holocaust has been used as moral blackmail for extortion of funds, and a justification for ethnic cleansing.
Has any good ever come out of the Holocaust industry?
I am sorry for those died in the Holocaust, but no more sorry for them than for the dead of the killing fields of Cambodia, or the thousands of Australians who died in WW2, or for the victims of the fire-bombing of Dresden.
They were all killed.
They are all dead.
If we cannot remember them all equally, then it is better to forget them.
Exactly. Zionists don’t even give a damn about the Holocaust.
Endless lies and hypocrisy. WJ went off on the lady mentioned in the article because she said ‘6 million’. Compare what she said to what Yahoo said recently.
Zionists love playing victim even though they are the occupiers and colonizers. Even though they were the ones who started this conflict, and are perpetuating it.
It’s not difficult to understand. This is colonialism. Jews can use their identity to emotionally blackmail people. That’s what separates Zionism from other forms of nationalism.
If Zionists were doing this to Africans, it might be harder for them. African identity can be used against Zionists, in the same way they exploit ‘Jewishness’.
It’s just disgusting. None of this stuff has anything to do with reality and the Palestinians are always losing out in the end.
So what the hell does the Holocaust mean?
I couldn’t care less. The Holocaust is a historical event. It’s used for political purposes though. So I judge people, and not the event. WJ was trying to play the Holocaust card earlier and we called him out on it.
My son and I are going to the Holocaust Museum in DC this April as part of a school trip. It will be interesting to see to what extent the Nazi extermination plan for other ‘races’ is part of the museum experience.
The Holocaust is as real as an historical event as any other, but I object to its continued exploitation as the superlative event in the historical hierarchy of suffering. I actually prefer to avoid the use of the word when the topic of discussion is, in reality, the Nazi program in general. Exploitation of the ‘Holocaust’ both excuses Zionist misconduct and minimizes the suffering and humanity of others. WJ’s arguments make this point clearly, if unintentionally.
Prof. David Ruderman speaks and writes extensively on the history of Israelites in Babylon from time of Nebuchadnezzar until 1951. Recall that when Persians conquered neobabylonians and enabled exiles from Jerusalem to return, only a minority of the exiles did so; the majority stayed in Babylon/Baghdad.
The Persian province created in Jerusalem for the returning Israelites was called Yehud (from ‘Judah’) and its inhabitants Yehudi, precursor of ‘Jew.’
Ruderman describes how the Jews who stayed in Babylon prospered and engaged thoroughly with the Babylonians, as early as the
We have a great deal yet to understand about the crucial Ezra-Nehemiah/Elephantine period . The Oxford History of the Biblical World remarks that ‘with the arrival of E and N in the mid- to late fifth century the boundaries between Jew and non-Jew began to be defined more narrowly’. A major development. My feeling is that there had ‘always’ been a monotheistic movement with elements in many parts of the ME and Egypt and that what was to become the increasingly ‘narrowly defined’ Judaism emerged by a slow process from the fifth century. When we find elements in many different societies that have a Jewish or Israelite aspect we need to know how far they were involved in this process: were they already like the Jews of the future, or perhaps more like other kinds of monotheist?
I don’t see it as “collective trauma.” Many of the folks who use Hitler to describe every enemy of Israel had nothing to do with the Holocaust. I think it is a collective refusal to accept that it is 2010 and not 1940.
Isn’t ‘Holocaust’ essentially a theological, not a historical term, originally referring to an acceptable form of sacrifice? It doesn’t say ’something terrible was done in the past’ but ’something terrible is inherent in the difference (which is a difference in theological inheritance) between Jews and non-Jews’. You get traumatised and re-traumatised every time you use this word.
Are we to interpret those events as a meaningless horror, made yet more meaningless becaus those responsible were a grotesque minority, or as a sacrifice whose morally illuminating character helps to give meaning to history? The latter view, inherent in the word ‘holocaust’, emphasises in the sharpest possible way the difference between the race whose sacrifice was demanded and all of, not just a minority among, the deluded others. The implications are very great and almost too painful to spell out.
What Gretta said about Jewish domination of the US – is 101% true. Former US presidents Nixon, John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter are the living example of the power of the pro-Israel Jewish lobb groups. So are dozens of Congressmen and Senators who dared to criticize Israel and Jews being more loyal to Israel than the US – at the risk of losing their career. It was former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who said: “There are many Members of Congress who wants to be free. I am one of them. I wanted to be free to vote according to my conscience, but I had been told that if I did not sign a pledge supporting the military superiority of Israel, no support would come my way. And sure enough, I did not sign the pledge and no support came my way. I suffered silently year in and year out, because I refused to sign the pledge. An then like a slave that found a way to buy his freedom – I went to work – I wanted to be free – Free to cast the vote in US Congress as I saw fit and not as I was dictated to…..” – Cynthia McKinney.
It’s very dangerous to speak truth in the West
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/its-very-dangerous-to-speak-truth-in-the-west/
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