If granted one simple wish to raise awareness in the US Congress about where America’s annual Israel subsidy goes, it would be this: before the next pro-Israel vote, members of Congress would sit down and watch YNET’s ninety second video of Israeli settlers holding a Purim Party in East Jerusalem in the neighborhood where Israel is forcibly evicting Arabs who have lived there for generations so Israelis like these can move in.
It’s not an atrocity, not the casual cruelty of soldiers at a checkpoint, or “at war” against a defenseless civilian populace in Gaza. These are Israelis far from the stresses of combat, Israelis in a festive mode. They are singing a song of praise for Baruch Goldstein, the American born Jewish doctor who shot and killed twenty-nine Palestinian worshipers in Hebron in 1994.
“Dr. Goldstein, Dr. Goldstein" their song goes, "Everybody loves you.”
Obviously, the songsters represent a very small slice of Israel opinion: very few Israelis would openly praise the slaughter of unarmed worshipers. And equally obviously, there are extreme racist nationalists in almost every country in the world. There are small groups of neo-Nazis In Germany, and other places.
But the truth is also this: in no other country which is an “ally” of the United States is the racist far Right more deeply embedded in the state structure, more encouraged and empowered by a freely-elected democratic government. Remember, these are the kinds of Israelis that the Netanyahu government is now, as part of official policy, moving into houses in the most symbolically rich and contested real estate of a city holy to three religions. They are the kinds of Israelis whom the government will then protect with troops and police, and whom prominent mainstream American Jews will subsidize with tax deductible contributions. They are, quite literally, the vanguard of Zionism today.
And because of America’s support for Israel, financial and diplomatic and rhetorical, the singing settlers are now a big part of the face of America itself, the face we show to the Arab and Muslim world. So, honorable members of Congress, watch a bit and see what our dollars are paying for. Ninety seconds is all I ask.
It must make average Americans puke–except most of them don’t even know this score–thanks to our Fourth Estate–someting Goebbels would appreciate, not to mention his technical mentor, the Jewish American, Bernays, who seduced America to smoke cigarettes by using long-legged shicksas puffing away in parades.
I think the problem, is that there are members of Congress who agree with this jubilant crowd of Arab-hating racists.
I don’t think that’s the main problem. The main problem is that the MSM does not give average Americans an objective view of all the news fit for you when it comes to
Israeli activities. Otherwise, our congress could be quickly shamed. The whore MSM, owned by a handful of conglomerates that should be attacked by the ancient Sherman Anti-Trust Act, grease the horrible USA enabling tyranny everyone but the USA and Israel sees. Congress people merely deal with the fact lobby money talks, that 60% of Democrt donors and 30% (plus Xhristian Zionist) donors is the second key. Open the vault.
another aspect of the problem is this: it would be hard to find a video showing yer average Iranian-on-the-street behaving the same way the as the Purim celebrators.
American media has adopted the formula Iranian government = bad but Iranian people = good/sympathetic, and that’s the face of Iran that a western visitor sees, as well.
The comparison does not favor Israelis.
Except that the average American never sees the enraged, rascist face of Israel. They do see constantly Iran equated with Hitler 1938.
Which is ironic. Which country, Israel or Iran, has the prison camps for persons of a specific race?
The Feast of Purim, according to the explanatory story in the book of Esther, conveys both an assurance that Jews will bring many benefits to non-Jews who ‘delight to honour’ them and a threat that those who go against Jews will be terribly and repeatedly punished. The first half of this prediction has often been kept, even on much less stringent conditions than those stated. I very much hope that the tendency of Jewish culture will be emphasise this half and minimise the second. But those who sing the praises of Goldstone don’t provide much encouragement, do they?
Goldstein, one presumes you meant. Heh.
And no, it doesn’t. People like Witty would have us believe that Netanyahu is a unique confluence, and if it just weren’t for him Israel would be a great place.
Videos like this reveal otherwise.
RE: “The Feast of Purim…conveys…a threat that those who go against Jews will be terribly and repeatedly punished” – MHughes976
MY COMMENT: This reminds me of a Purim photo I saw on an Israeli blog several years ago. The photo was of three individuals on a city street (Tel Aviv, I think) dressed in their Purim costumes and proudly ‘aping’ for the camera. The three were attired in pristine white KKK regalia with their faces fully covered excepting holes for their eyes. Their robes were even adorned with ornate cross patches that looked to me like the official KKK insignia.
If you want to understand where these settlers are coming from (and in my experience Scott McConnell is wrong to say “very few” Israelis share their opinion of Barry Goldstein), I recommend reading the Book of Esther (the Purim story), especially the final chapters. As a Jewish kid, I was brought up to believe the holiday was all about celebrating the foiling of the wicked Haman’s plot to exterminate the Jews. Then one time when my kids were young, my (half-Jewish) wife decided this would be one bit of Jewish tradition she wouldn’t mind introducing the kids to. So she dug up a bible and read the actual text and freaked out. Yes, according to the story, Esther and her uncle Mordechai did foil a genocidal plot, and the king had Haman hanged. So what did the Jews do to celebrate? With the king’s permission, they went the next day and killed Haman’s ten sons, plus 500 other people in Shushan (the capital city), plus uncounted others in other parts of the Persian empire. At the end of that day the king asked Esther what else she wanted, and she asked for a) another day to kill more people, and b) to have Haman’s ten sons hanged (even though they were already dead). The king agreed, and so they went and hanged Haman’s dead sons and killed 300 more people in the capital and 75,000 (!!!) elsewhere in the empire.
A lot of my progressive Jewish friends like to believe that the behavior of the settlers or the Zionists in general is a betrayal of Jewish values. After reading the Book of Esther and other parts of the Old Testament, I’m not so sure – tribalistic violence is very much part of the tradition.
(Which is not to say there aren’t also more positive parts of the Jewish tradition, or that other religions don’t also have plenty of atrocities in their traditions.)
oh my, i had no idea esther was so ruthless.
“. So she dug up a bible and read the actual text ”
You should never do this. The key characteristics of that particular source of Jewish values were well described by Thomas Paine.
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind. “
how much more should Persia have done to “honor” Jews: Persians vanquished Nebuchadnezzar, sheltered Jews in Babylon for many years, financed the return to- and rebuilding of- Jerusalem over a 200 year period.
Yeah. And look how Israel treats Iranians now!
No good deed goes unpunished, apparently.
Most Americans, and probably most members of Congress, have no idea who Goldstein was and what he did.
Yes, this strikes me as true. They have not even given a moment’s thought to what it takes an avowed zionist jew to handle the justice of the Gaza Turkey Shoot; a zionist jew who evaluated justice in other parts of the world not involving jews, but in behalf of non-jews looking for justice.
Yes, this strikes me as true. They have not even given a moment’s thought to what it takes an avowed zionist jew to handle the justice of the Gaza Turkey Shoot; a zionist jew who evaluated justice in other parts of the world not involving jews, but in behalf of non-jews looking for justice.
Do you know the name of the Sbarros suicide bomber? How about the Passover Massacre bomber?
I can’t. But I am also having a lapse about the King David Hotel bombing massacre in 1946. 96 people killed if I remember correctly. Can you help me out?
Howard: Rahm Emmanuel’s father might be able to help with those names.
But that was a good bomb!
Julian is talking about bad bombs.
To help you to keep them clear, here are some more good bombs.
Bombs thrown by Jews into buses full of Arabs in the late 1930s.
Bomb which blew up S.S. Patria .
Bomb in British Embasy in Rome (1946)
Letter bombs sent to British Cabinet Ministers in 1947.
Bombs in market places, Damascus Gate, etc, 1947.
Bombs in Semiramis Hotel, Jaffa Gate, etc, 1948.
Bombs in Egypt during Operation Susannah.
And, of course, the bomb that did this
link to muslimmatters.org
and this
link to ziofascism.net
and this
link to homepagedaily.com
Does that help?
No. But then Palestinians aren’t writing pops songs and having festivals to him celebrating the mass murder he perpetrated, Julian.
Palestinians DO seek to memorialize some of their resistance fighters with a monument. link to haaretz.com
This has Bibi bent out of shape. He has instructed his minions to tell the White House to do something about this.
That’s the precious part: Bibi wants the White House to do something about it.
Boy, get out there and whup these uppity Arabs.
Oh, the irony, PG.
Meanwhile Bibi made a big song and dance about attending the 60th anniversary celebrations of the King David Hotel.
“Do you know the name of the Sbarros suicide bomber? How about the Passover Massacre bomber?”
The Big Four are sacred to you, aren’t they Julian?
link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com
It’s like you are fleeing into the night, bumping into tress and hysterically shouting your shibboleths. “The Sbarro bomber!” Thud, bang! “Passover massacre” Ooph! Crunch!
The image of Julian running and screaming, Blair Witch style, through the woods (undoubtedly, with Witty or yonira in tow with the shaky cam) really made my day.
You truly are a treasure, Mooser. :)
15 people were killed, including 7 children, and about 130 were injured in a suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizzeria. Now, let’s compare the Gaza Turkey Shoot toll, for only one example. And the USA did not front for the latter, nor did it finance it, nor did it
immunize it at the UN. I guess you, Julian, have your own insane film in your head called Mystic Pizza.
And, as to the man responsible for the bloodiest terrorist bombing of the Palestinian uprising that killed 30 Israelis enjoying a passover meal in a hotel in Netanya in 2002, he was captured by Israeli soldiers. Are you suggesting the
Israelis responsible for the last forty plus years of occupation and seige, and the Gaza Turkey Shoot, should also be captured and put on trial? If so, good for you.I agree. My tax dollars and values dictate no less.
Of course the USA did front for, finance, and indirectly praise the Gaza Turkey Shoot. And it immunized it at the UN. Sorry, I resent that. Not in my name.
julian, no i do not, but if you post a video of palestinian’s praising them in song
i’ll watch it. celebrating gory death is probably not all it’s cracked up to be.
There really is no comparison.
The difference here is that Israel claims to fight against so-called terrorism, yet the colonial settlers who have invaded Hebron commit terrorism against Palestinians on a daily basis, while the Israeli army looks on and does nothing.
Just the other day, both Livni and Netanyahoo honored a group of Lehi members who were sentenced to death by the British government for murdering a British minister in 1944 Palestine and attacking Arab buses. Israel honored them and called them “freedom fighters”.
As for Goldstein, he was honored with a memorial built for him in Kiryat Arba by fellow colonial settlers who now make an annual pilgrimage to his grave in celebration and commemoration of his massacring 29 Palestinians.
Had the same act been carried out by a Palestinian, his home would have been summarily demolished by Israeli authorities, his family would have been arrested or harassed and he would have officially been labeled a terrorist.
I have heard these types of moral relativisms from a very young age. Israelis, and Zionists in particular, have developed a reflex reaction to such criticism. While they are occupying and killing another people, they demand the right to shape the narrative any way they see fit, but the moment the Palestinians fight back, they are labeled terrorists.
Retorting back with “well they kill too”, doesn’t change the fact that Israel is the powerful party and Israel is the colonizer and occupier. One can argue over the details of the conflict, about who did what to whom, but that doesn’t change the big picture. In the final analysis, an end to colonialism and occupation will be the only solution to this conflict.
To continue to discuss the specifics, the details, implies that the conflict is symmetrical, that the parties involved are involved in a normal conflict. But, neither of these characterizations would be true.
It is what is allowed and not allowed in the American for profit mass media. For example, it is allowed for celebrities to support and respect Nelson Mandela and speak about him on television – as long as his support for the Palestinians and a Palestinian state is not mentioned.
The same applies to Israel as a country. Only one view is allowed in the American mass media.
There’s no reasonable question that the USA MSM is the anchor for what the US is doing and enabling wrong in the world. If you want to know who these people are,
and who they affiliate with, google the ownership of the MSM, a very small group
which masks all that the US government does against its own best nterest and the best interest of the world, including long-term Israel.
I don’t know how Dr.Freud would analyse my ‘Goldstone/Goldstein’ slip. A sign of bipolarity perhaps?
Horst Wessel at least wrote a song; Goldstein just murdered praying innocents. Goldstone?
Why he wrore an objective report about mass murder that the US congress dissed.
Oops, typo: I mean he wrote a song.
And Goldstone wrote a report.
And Goldstein showed what it means to be a real zionist; that’s why he’s honored by zionists like Audie Murphy. What a hero!
I have a feeling that Horst W was a Nazi street fighter eliminated by Commies and became the subject of an admiring song rather than the author of one. Just as Goldstein now is, on Sullivan’s testimony.
Well, he actually wrote The Fahne Hoch. Otherwise, yes, he was eliminated by the Commies.
let us hope the future finds many more mentions of Goldstone in a positive light and that Goldstein slips into the annals of forgotten infamy
Allan J. Kuperman’s message delivered to Barack Obama on Christmas Eve: “Incentives and sanctions will not work , but air strikes could degrade and deter Iran’s bomb program at relative little cost or risk (to Americans fighting as an Israel proxy war) and therefore worth to try. They should be precision attacks, aimed only at nuclear facilities, to remind Iran of many other valuable sites that could be bombed if it were foolish enough to retaliate (against Israel).” And I bet Allan has the appropriate attack date for the proposed America’s percision bombing of Iran’s civilian targets, similar to Israeli military tactics – the Purim 2010, which falls on February 28 – Jewish celebration of the murder of 72,000 innocent non-Jewish Persians on the orders of Queen Esther, over 2000 years ago.
Christian Barack Obama cannot ignore Allan’s call for “Wipe Iran off the Map” – simply as some warmongering Jew’s rant. The Anti-Christ is supported in his Iranian Holocaust by such prominent Islamophobes Christians such as Rev Pat Robertson, Rev. John Hagee (he teaches that it’s God’s will that Americans fight and die for the Anti-Christs), Chuck Colson, and Richard land……
Iranians’ Purim2!
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Onward Hagee Christian soldiers, marching off to war–you are all righteous gentiles; we zionists love you–just don’t ask to marry our daughters. You can die for us. You should be happy! Meanwhile here’s a can for your Zionist contributions too. You can deduct it on your IRS form.
The problem with showing this video to Americans is that they wouldn’t understand the words.
Lots of white Americans, especially Hagee’s folks Citizen mentions, love this sort of thing. Theology aside, they live vicariously through the Israelis’ thugishness. They cower in fear before black and Hispanic crime, but think Israel knows how to deal with its minorities.
I would say the worst part about all of this is…
I am one of the most anti-tribalist people on the face of the earth, and even I find myself humming this song while shopping at Wal-Mart. Despite the horrible quality and lyrics, it’s catchy. :(
Ah, the power of music…
But, but…b..b..b..b.. but Witty says we just have to engage and persuade these people, and they, perhpas with the help of G*d, will see the light and come to embrace their Arab brothers and sisters. He says that dissent is violence against Israel. He says, he says…
Thank God nobody listens to what Witty says. These people are filth.
FPM
Problem is most average Amerians think that Israel and the Palestinians are nasty (when they don’t think Israel is Paul Newman in Exodus); they look at the I-P situation as a version of the classical hillbilly clan fight. They have no clue of I-P history, nor of the current I-P situation.
Well, and you can see where they get that impression. Most Americans, if they’ve met anyone involved, have never met even one Palestinian, but may have met Israelis or Israeli shills.
If I thought everyone from the Middle East acted like the average Israeli does, I’d make the mistake that they were all nasty, too.
symbolically rich? phooey. And holy shmoley.
This is “contested real estate” because it is very expensive real estate. Never forget that this entire gambit is all about generating wealth and cornering it for Israel.
link to haaretz.com
State Hopes for Record Price in South Kirya Tel Aviv Land Sale
Let us be charitable, Frankie. It’s way too easy to make demons out of mere misguided humans, a pitfall I am sad to say that I am most prone to.
However, I do wonder…the rules of this site say that anti-arab racism is forbidden, why are people allowed to speak against intermarriage, as well as believing that Israel should remain a jewish state?
Sunyata, that’s a good question. Ask the regular commenter here, Richard Witty, who doesn’t favor intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles and works constantly to secure “Israel as Israel.” He says his goal is to maintain Jewish continuity. Many of us regular commenters here disagree with him, as do Phil and Adam, but Mister Witty here is allowed to remain, and so, you can ask him. You might also ask his fellow travelers here, such as yonira, and Julian, and to a slightly lesser extent WJ. There are a significant number of non-Jewish regular commenters on this blog–I venture to say, they all agree with Shumel’s POV 90% of the time; Shumel’s a former Israeli, now living in Italy.
Over 2000 years ago, Persian Jewish Queen Esther tricked her husband to murder over 75,000 non-Jewish Iranians. Since 1990s, Zionist bride (Israel) has been able to trick Washington in destroying several non-Jewish countries. The reason for such destructive human nature could be attested to Book of Deuteronomy, 7:1-8:
“When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are to possess and casts out the many peoples living there, you shall then slaughter them all and utterly destroy them…You shall make no agreements with them nor show them any mercy…You shall destroy their altars, break down their images, cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire. For you are a holy people unto the LORD thy God and He has chosen you to be a special people above all others upon the face of the earth…”
Israel-born Jew and a reserve in Israel Air Force, Lt. Col. Glad Atzmon, says: “In order to grasp the latest devastating murderous Israeli expedition in Gaza one must deeply comprehend the Israeli identity and its inherent hatred towards anyone who fails to be Jewish and a hatred against Arabs in particular. This hatred is imbued in the Israeli curriculum, it is preached by political leaders and implied by their acts, it is conveyed by cultural figures, even within the so-called ‘Israeli Left’.”
Another Israeli Jewish writer, Israel Shamir (he left Judaism for Christianity a few years ago) wrote in his article A Yiddishe Medina, wrote: “That is why the decision of President Bush to embark of the campaign of revenge is not a Christian act. One could argue that the President and his administration are manipulated by the Jews, who dream of vengeance. Not in vain, immediately after Wall Street was hit by kamikaze, Bibi Nataniyahu said ‘it is very good for us’ [ii]. Not in vain, Ariel Sharon tried to compare Palestinians to Osama b. Laden. Not in vain, Israelis demand destruction of Baghdad and Teheran, of Korea and Sudan, of everybody who is not taking orders from Tel Aviv or Washington.”
Iranian fearing another Purim
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
Can we try to stay away from conspiracy theories that span 3000 years?
I don’t think we can tie in the events of Purim to current Israeli actions today.
Israel is merely a colonial entity that is doing what every colonial entity before it has done.
This of course does not excuse their despicable behavior but does not make their disgustingly racist behavior exceptional.