Tumultuous day at Sheikh Jarrah on Friday. Here is Didi Remez again, quoting a speech by novelist David Grossman:
I think that we are all beginning to grasp — even those who maybe don’t really want to — how 43 years ago, by turning a blind eye, by actively or passively cooperating, we actually cultivated a kind of carnivorous plant that is slowly devouring us, consuming every good part within us, making the country we live in a place that is not good to live in. Not good not only if you are an Arab citizen of Israel, and certainly if you are a Palestinian resident of the Territories — not good also for every Jewish Israeli person who wants to live here, who cherishes some hope to be in a place where humans are respected as humans, where your rights are treated as a given, where humanity, morality, and civil rights are not dirty words, not something from the bleeding-heart Left. No. These are the bread and water, the butter and milk of our lives, the stuff from which we will make our lives, and really make them lives worth living here.
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That was a good point.
Shulamit Aloni with similar sentiments on another issue: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3874378,00.html
David Grossman’s points are well taken– and obvious. I can’t help but wonder what the latest batch of Mondoweiss trolls has to say on this thread. Denial is a river in Egypt?
RE: “…making the country we live in a place that is not good to live in. Not good not only if you are an Arab citizen of Israel, and certainly if you are a Palestinian resident of the Territories — not good also for every Jewish Israeli person who wants to live here…”
FROM WIKIPEDIA: …Grossman, an outspoken peace activist, supported Israel during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. On August 10, 2006, however, he and fellow authors Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua held a press conference at which they urged the government to agree to a ceasefire that would create the basis for a negotiated solution.
Two days later, his 20-year-old son Uri, a staff sergeant in an armoured unit, was killed by an anti-tank missile during an IDF operation in southern Lebanon shortly before the ceasefire. [1] In a premonitory interview in 2000, he had declared that Israelis support ‘a culture of death’: “Married couples say, ‘We’ll have three children, so if one of them dies, there will be two left’.” [2]…
THE WORDS OF A FORMER ISRAELI: “…Israelis have never been particularly kind to each other. It’s one of the reasons I left actually. In my late twenties I started to grow weary of the unkind, harsh and unforgiving atmosphere around me. It was a tough place to live in not because of our ‘enemies’ but because of how people treated one another. You would believe that we were all enemies rather than people who have some kind of a shared heritage. The only thing that could unite people and temporarily brought out more kindness and a sense of cooperation was a feeling of being under collective threat, and in particular a ‘good wholesome war’…” – Avigail Abarbanel
SOURCE – http://www.avigailabarbanel.me.uk/index.html
Nice to see that Phil is (maybe) reading the comments. I posted this article this morning (Sydney time). Hehe.
You always post worthy articles TGIA, it seems to be a real gift you have, and I am sure it is born from a passion for peace, justice, and equality.
Thanks VR. BTW, just to let you know that our old friend Sweden 1975 is in the house. I’ll let you guess who is the one. Ha ha. Fun is in store, my friend…
I meant here on Mondoweiss.
Probably eee…lol
No, it’s UNIX..You might not remember his constant talk on the AA about the Linux system being the best etc. Today, on another thread he said that he may not be an Israeli, as a teaser..He followed with the Hatuel story, one of his favorites, another clue..
with popular attitudes in israel already strongly weighed toward racism, an acceptance of apartheid and vicious continual horrors visited upon the Palestinian population each new caution and admonition from the israeli intelligentsia read like so much epitaph-writing rather than remarks to provoke a revolution in thought and behavior
Too little, too late
Again we see dehumanization of the Jewish people. Jews in their land are carnivorous plants, parasites, cancer etc.
There will never be peace unless Jews can be seen as human beings with blood as red as an Arab.
Are you an idiot? Grossman is JEWISH. From what I undestand, Grossman is also ISRAELI.
Then he is a traitor
UNIX – def: master control program (what an appropriate name for a zionist shill that is paid to monitor critical responses to its beloved fascist-terror-murder state)
hover over “UNIX” and or click it and you get bsd.org … which likely has no connection to the noxious poseur who uses it as his moniker her on Mondoweiss, methinks bsd in this case really stands for:
b belittling
s serious
d discourse
We see again dehumanization with people that support Jews living in their native land. On a thread that likens them to human eating plants, we now have a new one: Master Control Program.
In any event, plants can be killed and computers can be turned off.
This is the first stage, dehumanization, we know what happens next.
uni, you have poor reading comprehension skills. grossman didn’t say jews were plants, he said the occupation was a carnivorous plant.
we actually cultivated a kind of carnivorous plant that is slowly devouring us. the israelis were the gardeners. you’re the traitor.
Grossman lost his son who served in the Israeli army in 2006 when Israel attacked and massacred over a thousand Lebanese.
He lost a son.
You, however, seem to have lost your mind a long time ago.
Avi
Is it normal or possible that, say an average Israeli, had never heard of David Grossman? Is it normal that UNIX had no idea who Grossman was? That, in addition to many other things, made me think that the troll may not be not Israeli..
To use a hyperbole, I’d be surprised if he could locate Israel on a map.
You’re a one trick pony UNIX, with absoutely no capacity to participate in discussion.
You really should go away.
“We see again dehumanization with people that support Jews living in their native land.”
Absolutely not. Jews have every right to live in Poland, Russia, and Brooklyn.
Perhaps the other commenters could try ignoring obvious trolls like this instead of calling them out on the 2nd comment.
Are you an idiot?
——————
Chaos, that’s only a small part of a long story which is going to be told in its time soon approaching.. This idiot is giving himself away without realising.
What type of an “Israeli” doesn’t know that David Grossman is not Jewish AND Israeli? Hell, I know that though I’m neither!
know that David Grossman is not Jewish AND Israeli?
————————
know that David Grossman IS Jewish AND Israeli?
Who cares, TGIA? BSDNow is a compulsive liar, anyway. It’s hard to know where his duplicity ends and his ignorance begins.
Chaos
I’m waiting for him to respond first and then one has to be seated in order to listen to what this despicable fellow with whom I have a long story, is all about. I maybe more Swedish than he is a Jew..He gave enough clues to give himself away. His latest is when he said today, ‘I may not be an Israeli’. That’s why I asked yesterday if someone could ask him (not eee) a question in Hebrew..
This is going to be good. Yes please type for a very long time about how I am a Swede that you know. Make sure that you pour out your feelings and make a very long post about it.
Uh oh, the Swedish disease…look out Mondoweiss. This guy is such a damn idiot, there are not enough words. Perhaps we can deliver the archives for him, but he might break out with hives…lol
Are you an Israeli and a Jew UNIX
UNIX
I asked you a question? Are you an Israeli and and a Jew?
I think the real dilemma that Grossman and the majority of Israeli’s face is a refusal to accept that the seed was sown in 1948 – in how the state decided to actualize and constitute itself. In a way, I’m still not convinced that the Nakba of 1948 will ever enter Israel’s collective public consciousness other than to be seen as a historical fact and a necessity. The creation of a Palestinian state would serve as a constant reminder, either of the event (these people came from inside Israel, and have legitimacy), or of Zionism’s own hesitancy, or as Benny Morris says, the ethnic cleansing wasn’t total – hence Golda Meir’s wishful thinking ” There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
In many ways, we don’t appreciate how effective what many saw as a modern day miracle (the creation of the state) was in helping the Jewish psyche displace the immediate pain and horror of it’s worst catastrophe – the Shoah. ‘Only a miracle could wipe out a catastrophe’. In this way the Shoah really did give Zionism a dark and dangerous new inner life (how ‘humanity, morality, and civil rights’ are seen after the Holocaust in relation to the Palestinians), which then itself goes on to appropriate a new redemptive meaning to the Shoah.
But even by it’s own goals, Zionism has been successful, it’s brought half the diaspora to Palestine, but as David Grossman says, it does Israel harm by remaining. I’m actually more struck by the insistence that Israel and Zionism are one (as if Israel was a body and Zionism the purest form of it’s soul), especially in the mainstream Jewish community I’m growing up in – it’s as if to say that only Zionism can fully comprehend the Shoah (in the sense of both feeling it’s pain and redemption), and if you don’t get it, you’ll never understand.
Despite this I am a fan of Grossman’s though.
RE: “… it’s as if to say that only Zionism can fully comprehend the Shoah (in the sense of both feeling it’s pain and redemption), and if you don’t get it, you’ll never understand.”
Have you ever tried to reason with a “born again Christian?”
They know, and you don’t. They will pray you may someday see the light.
I think what you are saying Citizen is the ferocity with which people have in holding on to their most cherished identities, and of course, when those identities are challenged people tend to hold on to them ever more tightly and see any criticism as a direct affront to their individual or collective sense of self.
It often seems depressingly easier for those who fear introspection to be evasive rather then to acknowledge that a different or no tangible meaning could be appropriated to an event like the Shoah. It’s why criticism seems to have little effect on those zionists who share the state’s exclusive redemptive vision.
Thank you BenjaminS. Of course I wonder about alternative histories. What if Zionism hadn’t made it their goal to get rid of the Palestinian Arabs from the very start, and used so many excuses to do so in 1948? What if instead of using the Holocaust to demand Arab land and justify mass murder and expulsion, they’d gone to the people of Palestine and explained what had happened? I believe that most would have been as horrified and sympathetic as anyone else in the world. But we don’t know, that didn’t happen, any opportunity for peaceful coexistence was deliberately discarded by the Zionists. They didn’t even regard the people of Palestine as worth talking to. The seeds of the conflict were sown long before, when Zionists first proposed to take over someone else’s land. As you say, after the holocaust they told the Jewish peoples that they would live on and rebuild, presenting as a “miracle” the creation of the state. I get how such a “miracle” was welcomed. Had they been more honest they would have said they planned to rebuild by long-thought out destruction of the pre-existing peoples and cultures in Palestine. I happen to agree, Israel and Zionism are pretty much the same thing, although theoretically Israel could change. Sorry to be so harsh on Zionism. It isn’t 43 years of turning a blind eye, it’s at least 68.
Deir Yassin’s inextinguishable fire
Dina Elmuti writing from Deir Yassin,
“Deir Yassin,” she says with a sadness, a sense of loss in her eyes each time she speaks of the atrocious day she lost her home. “Deir Yassin,” she says with a childlike innocence in her voice as she recalls sweet memories before her entire world was completely denatured by evil. “Deir Yassin,” the imperishable words of my grandmother continue to resonate with me each day for she made me promise to never forget, and that’s a promise I intend to keep to her.”
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11194.shtml
It’s racist settler colonialism which devours the good parts of every political project based on it. And therefore the problem is the ‘occupation plus colonialism’ from 1917 onwards.
It’s a fact that there is no equivalent of the Righteous Among the Nations (those non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis) among Jews who might have felt some compunction about expulsion of half of a whole people, destruction of a culture, and everything that went with the Nakba and the ‘miracle creation’ of Israel, and the long, debilitating war against a subject people ever since.
Not a single Jew spoke up for the Palestinians. It’s as if they are ‘non-people’ much as Jews were seen in Germany. It didn’t take long for the Israelis to adopt the attitudes and habits of their recent persecutors (which is to be expected, since none of the ‘founding fathers’ of Israel had any experience of the Holocaust at all).
“It’s a fact that there is no equivalent of the Righteous Among the Nations (those non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews”
————————
Richard, do you mean in the past (1948 Nakba) or the present? If it’s the later, I know of many many Jews who are as vocal if not more than any Arab I know. But if it’s the former then you’re right, I haven’t heard of any. That would be an unspeakable shame!! People were slaughtered like sheep.
Richard Parker- Maybe if you wrote no Israeli Jew spoke up in favor of the Palestinians you’d be closer to the truth. Including Diaspora Jews, obviously Einstein spoke in favor of letting the Palestinians back in. I’m quite sure Martin Buber who was an Israeli spoke in favor of letting the Palestinians back in. You are full of shit.
‘Einstein spoke in favor of letting the Palestinians back in.’
Back in to where? Or was he referring to the 750,000 expelled from the new ‘Israeli State’? Wasn’t he just a such nice old man?
Einstein rejected Zionism, but whatever fragment of what he said or wrote positively about Israel is adopted by Israeli hasbara to help their cause.
WJ – before you call me ‘full of shit’ just name me one single Jew who protested the Nakba as it was happening, or shortly after
Einstein spoke in favor of letting the Palestinians back in.
WJ
————————-
Why are you distorting what Richard said? He spoke of saving lives during the Holocaust not “letting people back in”..Not the same thing at all!
Who’s full of it now?
“He spoke of saving lives during the Holocaust”
————-
He spoke of the EQUIVALENT of saving lives during the Holocaust.
ot but critically important
Not many folks covering this. Especially our MSM (hello Rachel, Keith) enough stories about Sarah Palin
Has Aafia Siddiqui’s Daughter Surfaced?
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/
Last weekend a girl approximately 12 years old, who spoke only English and Persian and claimed her name was “Fatima,” was dropped off in front of the home of Siddiqui’s sister. Some stories indicate an American named “John” may have been with her. Dawn reported a senior policeman described that the girl was:
… wearing a collar “bearing the address of the house in case she wandered off”.
This Jewish anti-semite refers to Jews living on their land as carnivourous plants. What a sicko. It’s people like this that take us away from peace. Jews building and thriving is not a flesh eating plant.
America has lost its soul and the Israel haters quote Grossman, a Zionist, and take pot shots at Israel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/asia/13afghan.html?ref=global-home
Why are you shooting civilians again?
And why do you shoot pregnant women and then gut them with knives?
But most interestingly, after doing all that, why do you focus on Israel instead of taking care of your own problems?
As for what Grossman is saying, it is nothing new. He has been saying it for years. Very few Israelis agree with him. The reason I respect Grossman and not you, is because even though he and I have different views, we both want a better Israel. You on the other hand, want no Israel. Grossman would not be happy knowing people like you are using his words to BASH Israel.
Singling Out Israel for Moral Opprobrium
Shmuel,
That may be a passable answer for you (we can debate that). What about the rest of the people here? What is their excuse?
Read past the first two paragraphs.
I did, not convincing at all especially when they have so many problems to deal with in their country not at all dissimilar from ours. If we are sitting on the back of the Palestinians, the US is sitting on the back of the world. Why the focus on Israel then? Face it. This kind of blog also attracts the far right and far left that are irrational Israel haters.
I love it! It’s like you’re saying, “Nazi Germany is smaller than Soviet Russia. Leave us alone!”
You are correct. The US is sitting on the back of the world, just as Israel is sitting on the back of the Palestininians. Personally, I would like to see, for example, the Bush Jr regime leaders and key scribblers be tried for war crimes by an international court. I would also like to see them prosecuted by a US court
for violating the Bill Of Rights. I don’t think my POV is irrational. I make the case on this issue on other blogs dedicated to that general subject. There are many. This blog
is more narrowly focused, although at times there is overlap. The very fact of “the special relationship” is acknowledged by anyone with modest knowledge of US foreign policy; I comment here accordingly.
You have failed to understand the gist of the article Shmuel gave you. It answers your question, “Why the focus on Israel then (on this particular blog)?”
Yes, you Kant.
Citizen: Yes, you Kant.
:-)
The commenters here have added some more tribes to the ones Haber suggests, such as the People-who-Expect-the Countries-That-Receive-Huge-Amounts-of-Their-Tax-Dollars-Should-also-Be-Accountable-to-Them tribe (I seem to recall something about taxation and representation from my US history classes).
Could it be that the US Army was trained in how to occupy another country by the IDF, the “most moral army on the World”.
What a disgusting blood libel. The crimes of the US army are now Israel’s fault.
Do you have a dart board with the words “anti-Semite,” “blood libel,” and “Protocols” on it and you just throw randomly to figure out which one you’re going to regurgitate in any particular post?
Also, do you deny that your soldiers were caught doing it first? And what happened to the “special relationship” US and Israeli militaries were supposed to have together?
I’m sure a lot of American vets reading this blog are looking at you, eee, and having their doubts.
Are you even sane?
Do you know how many innocent civilians the US killed in WWII? Korea? Vietnam? Iraq? Afghanistan? Israel did it first? Are you joking?
I think it will not be an exaggeration to say that you killed at least 1,000 to 10, 000 times more innocent civilians than Israel. Why are you even opening your mouth about this issue? You have zero moral standing.
And what braciole is saying is a vile blood libel. Are you denying it isn’t?
Israel has admitted to stealing organs. Just recently, retired IDF soldiers were found doing the same things.
Why do you deny Israeli crimes and change the subject?
Just because the US practiced slavery, colonialism, and has done horrible things in war does not mean your racist, apartheid State can do so as well.
We will not remain silent as you and your cult steal what is left Palestine.
Feel feel to quote me the part where he claimed Israelis were eating the flesh of gentile children, chief.
Yeah, really, Cliff. People in “blood libel” glass houses shouldn’t throw stones when there’s a corpse with its eyes scooped out at his metaphorical feet.
eee, as a former member of the IDF – which butchers Palestinians regularly, you have no moral standing. As a citizen of a racist, apartheid colonial-settler State.
You have no moral standing.
Actually, you have no moral standing because of your opinions and actions.
You proudly served in your murderous cult-army. You proudly support the demonization of the Goldstone report which you said was ‘nothing’ (then like a coward, backtracked on).
You see, we do not support the murder of innocent people. We do not support colonialism.
Just because we may be American, does not mean we are guilty of the American State’s crimes.
Just as a JEW is not summarized by the JEWISH State. Never. You are a Zionist. You were an IDF soldier. You support these policies and you make these ridiculous arguments.
You are responsible for the crimes of your pariah State.
I am not an ‘American’ colonist. I am not an American soldier who is proud to have invaded and helped destroy Iraq.
I don’t define myself by my State.
You do. That’s why you’re responsible.
You are a coward that puts blinders on and decides to pick on little Israel instead of fixing your own home which is 1000 times worse.
At least you’re not denying that the organ theft and the crimes against humanity are being done in Israel, eee.
If you don’t trust the Americans on this forum to take this case to the international courts, how about we find a penitent European? Better yet, how about a former Israeli, like Shmuel? Your argument doesn’t really stick to him.
How so? To the extent the US and Israeli military work together, operate with the same values, stratagies, tactics, direct blunt force and Black OPS, etc, and they are deeply enmeshed, the US is at fault equally. No blood libel here.
Many. An estimate on Iraq dead at the hand of US is up to one million, for one example. I don’t condone that. I do what I can to bring it to the attention of
my fellow Americans. That’s what a responsible citizen does, yes? Considering
the US’s funding of Israel and providing immunity in the UN by way of veto for Israeli’s criminal acts and long oppression of the natives, and considering the
fact “the special relationship” of the US with Israel has and is one of the prime declared motives for blowback against the US and its people, the least I can do is be consistent. I don’t make an exception for the US, nor do I make one for Israel. Otherwise we are left with nothing but Goering’s opinion of the Nuremberg Trials–victor’s justice, kangeroo court, etc. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Spoiling it rotten? Or giving it some tough love when it’s called for?
No. he’s saying we have to go farther up the chain than we did with Lt Calley. And the same goes for Israel. Kant, not tribe.
You are a coward, who served in a coward-infested army that butchers the indigenous population whose land, property, water, money and community your pariah racist State has stolen/destroyed/colonized.
I don’t apologize for American crimes. I don’t excuse American crimes. I did not choose what my race/nationality was. I define myself my by own free will. I do not support my State no matter what it does. In fact, I criticize my State vehemently.
I am against American imperialism, and the War in Iraq.
You on the other hand, are a devout Zionist – and such a total coward of zero moral standing that when you’re faced with the crimes of your pariah racist State, you instead talk about other criminal States.
Keep diverting the discussion to America, you coward. Keep conflating Jewishness w/ Zionism and using Jewish identity as a human shield against criticism of Zionism, you coward.
Eee, are the one with the blinders on. You have not effectively responded to Cliff. You must keep repeating the same hasbara tactic–the world is guilty, so why only pick on poor Israel? Ah, it must be due to anti-semitism. You have not addressed Shmuel’s reference url article.
What a disgusting blood libel
eee
—————–
“Anti-Semite” Jew-hater” Blood libel”!!!! You’re a one trick pony! Be creative man! Phew!
We did send troops to Israel to learn how to treat Arabs, it was in the LA Times I think. I can’t blame all our racism on Israel, but I sure can blame a lot on Israeli propagandists, the Leon Urises and writers of half the junk action films.
You are just a bunch of cowards. Why are you picking on Israel instead of fixing your country? Why are you inciting people against Israel instead of making sure your hands are clean? You have absolutely no right to try fix Israel until you fix YOUR OWN HOME. Leave fixing Israel to the Israelis. All the rest of you are just Israel haters. Stick to your problems and solve them first. They are 10,000 times worse than Israels as you are the world super power and trend setter. All your excuses are useless. If you don’t support your government’s policies, why are you not focused on changing them instead of BASHING Israel? Because you are cowards and want to pick on the weak party instead of going against who really sets the rules in the world, the USA.
Aren’t you gonna be late for Drama class?
Another example of an ad-hominem attack. What a bunch of hypocrites. You have nothing substantial to say and it shows.
You know, that amount of irony is actually toxic to people who haven’t had their conscience surgically removed.
Deviation and repetition.
Not at all, you think linking to some article is an answer?
Not at all. Deal directly with the points I raise. One liners and obscure links are not going to cut it.
When people deal with the points you raise, all you do is shout “LIAR!!!!111″ at the top of your virtual lungs. You’ve alreadly aptly demonstrated that trying to engage you on rational terms is an exercise in futility. It doesn’t matter how many gallons of water you pour into it, a sieve will simply never carry water. And neither will your arguments.
Trying lifting weights or exercise instead. You’re a Confused Individual
and some new hobby might get you thinking clearly.
Good luck and I hope you find your way.
Why are you picking on Israel instead of fixing your country?
eee
—————–
Why don’t you address their arguments instead of their motives, eee? BTW, I’m not American. Should I conclude that you’re ok with me criticising the rogue state of Israel?
The inane eee has accomplished a miracle! He’s making UNIX look like a genius in comparison!
there has never been any good part of israel the idea as a whole is ridiculous. You can not take a fable and make them true no matter how many people have been brainwashed there will always be those that play in the field of reality.
I have to agree. We all saw where misadventures in “Aryan” mythology went. There’s a reason why racial superiority complexes are incompatible with modern nationalism.
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