Last night my father and I went out to a small theater in the Philadelphia suburbs to see Greenberg, the new film by Noah Baumbach. Because of the title and the lead actor, Ben Stiller, I was afraid that the film would be Jew-centric. I don’t like things that proclaim their Jewishness, not when Jews are supposed to be opening their eyes to the rest of the world. Still I went. My dad’s 84. He's Jew-centric, it felt like an opportunity.
My antenna started quivering at the start with the introduction of the rich materialistic Greenberg family in Hollywood and their smarmily-patronizing treatment of their personal assistant, Florence, played by Greta Gerwig (in a breakout performance, but I’ll leave the film criticism of this fine film to the connoisseurs). It’s everything I hate about smug Jewish materialistic existence, I thought I was in for it. Then the film declared its values. The rich family goes off on vacation and Greenberg's brother shows up, Ben Stiller, to housesit. Stiller's a carpenter/musician who's just gotten out of a mental hospital after a breakdown, and he's avowedly non-Jewish. His mother is a gentile, he tells a friend in Hollywood, and none of his mannerisms are Jewish (a self-delusion on the character's part).
And in that same conversation, the old friend, Beller, a former band partner now super-rich, says something scatological about someone else’s grandmother, and another character says of Beller, He plants trees in Israel.
I suddenly loved the movie. I realized that Beller is a dick—as opposed to the other former bandmate, a Brit--and one way Baumbach establishes his obtuseness for his arthouse audience is by having him plant trees in Israel. Case closed.
Later on in the film, the Stiller character, whose craziness is manifested by the countless letters he writes to merchants, air lines, pet taxi companies, and others to complain about their conduct, sends a letter to the New York Times. We just see the addressee, the New York Times, and this is odd, because every other letter he writes we hear out loud, with Stiller obsessing over the tiny thing the company did wrong. I guess his criticism of the Times is on the cutting room floor, politics being too big a leap for a movie with ambitions about psychology and manners. The reason I know it's political is that a few scenes later Stiller opens the Times and declares, they printed my letter about Pakistan.
So it's Pakistan? This tetchy crazy conflicted half-Jew is upset about Pakistan? Somehow I doubt it. After I drove home with my dad (who had hated it from the start, doesn't like psychological movies), I wondered if the movie producers hadn't interceded and made Baumbach change Palestine, which would have been psychologically appropriate for a déclassé conflicted half-Jew in the modern age, to Pakistan, just as in another era, Van Morrison's Brown-Skinned Girl became Brown-Eyed Girl. The Israel lobby never sleeps.
I wondered, based on nothing at all, if the movie producers hadn’t interceded and made Baumbach change Palestine, which would have been psychologically appropriate for a déclassé conflicted half-Jew in the modern age, to Pakistan. The Israel lobby never sleeps.
Well considering how so many right wing thinkers and many Zionists tend to conflate the actions of all Muslim identifying people to be in sync with one another…
Do the Jews still run Hollywood?
That’s just an antisemitic canard.
That’s just an antisemitic canard.
—————
Is this canard still able to fly? My impression is that it’s more like a dodo. A rather flightless bird..A bit dead too.
If someone say ‘Jews control the media’ – it’s only a canard because of how you frame the factual foundation for such a statement.
Look at Noam Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’. That can be straw-manned as a conspiracy could it not?
‘The media and corporations push forth a biased perspective to steer public opinion in their favor.”
Antisemitism is not about FACTS it’s about FRAMEWORK.
It’s about conflation.
So yea, ‘Jews control Hollywood’ is antisemitic. However, undertaking an ‘institutional analysis’ of ‘Hollywood’ – do you really think that antisemitic framing (conflation) is from another Planet?
No. It’s real. That doesn’t mean you say it because statements like that are part of a paradigm of thinking about Jews.
Esau’s Tears is a great book people should read about the sociological tensions and their consequences.
“I don’t like things that proclaim their Jewishness, not when Jews are supposed to be opening their eyes to the rest of the world.”
It’ll be hard, Phil, for us to break out of our self imposed ghettoes, but with you in the vanguard, I think we can do it!! Gosh, maybe you could cut off your peyas and go out disguised as a Gentile, and come back and tell the rest of us what it’s like out there.
(Please don’t tell Phil that most of us have been out in the world for a long time, and don’t need anybody to open our eyes or lead us. I’m not sure he could take it. My God, what if he found out that this whole inward-looking Judaism is self-created, a privilege of the affluent Jews, a hoax. Us poor Jews have had our eyes open for quite a while, we had no other choice.
Of course, Palestine was changed to Pakistan. Someone from AIPAC had a discreet word with the producers
Not only in Hollywood Richard. You should see how from one week to the other, articles in Wikipedia are changed to fit a more Zionist view. I was stunned to see that a month ago an article about Jerusalem has, last week, has been so radically edited in order to credit a somehow opposite view!
thankgodimatheist – I’ve seen a lot of that including deletions of whole sections not complimentary to Israel and then multiple smaller edits that for example increase jewish casualties and decrease Palestinian deaths – purity of arms by wiki edit. I recall once seeing a table on wiki claiming that 20 Israelis had been killed by suicide bombing in 2009.
If you are confident editing wiki (not hard to learn) you should make corrections/revert vandalism, or at least alert page watchers to the problem by writing on the articles talk page. All the older edits of wiki pages are viewable on the history tab for you reference.
I see this as a real problem, wiki has a pretty good reputation for impartiality, younger people use it a LOT, believe it, and that is being distorted by these edits. It’s a battleground – which is why so many I/P articles are marked “disputed” with editing frozen.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I would venture the ‘dick planting trees in Israel’ is more a jab at the character’s self-righteousness and do-gooder status and the protagonist’s own self-loathing than a political message.
And let’s face it, the PEPs love to focus on places like Darfur and Pakistan.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I would venture the ‘dick planting trees in Israel’ is more a jab at the character’s probably self-righteousness and do-gooder charitable works, and the protagonist’s own self-loathing, than a political message.
And let’s face it, the PEPs love to focus on places like Darfur and Pakistan.
I haven’t seen it yet, but I would venture the ‘dick planting trees in Israel’ is more a jab at the character’s probable self-righteousness as a rich do-gooder who can fund charitable works, and the protagonist’s own self-loathing, than a political message.
And let’s face it, the PEPs love to focus on places like Darfur and Pakistan.
Sorry about the crazy multiple posts. Apparently hitting esc doesn’t stop a submission.
“Oh, so it’s Pakistan? This tetchy crazy conflicted half-Jew is upset about Pakistan? Somehow I doubt it.”
Phil,
There is a tiny group whose got some Pakistanis convinced they need Israel. I told you about them, remember? One of the members keeps insisting he’s very much interested in the welfare of Pakistan, they need schools and hospitals! And there are some idiot Pakistanis that actually seem to believe that friendship with Israel will get them the upper hand over India in some way, shape or form.
But you are right, the lobby never sleeps. Somewhere, someone came up the idea at the lobby that Israel needs to establish friendly ties with a non-Arab Muslim nation and they chose Pakistan to start the effort.
More people should plant trees in Israel, this is a worthy effort.
There should be an entire production dedicated to planting trees in Israel, that would do very will in the box office.
If planting trees is so good, how come you Israelis uproot so many of them?
it has never been proven that trees were uprooted by Jews.
ISRAELIS. Stop using the entire Jewish population of the world as your personal human shield behind which you hide your crimes.
link to youtube.com
Interesting how the first video shows a picture of the entire state of Israel labeled as Palestine.
That completely discredits your source as anti-semitic ethnic cleansers.
Right, because the real natives of Palestine are supposed to have Eastern European accents, Polish names and arm themselves with surplus German hardware, huh.
No? Are they supposed to have Syrian and Egyptian names, Cairo accents and arm themselves with Iranian hardware?
Yeah, some of us have actually studied Arabic, you blithering racist. Palestinians have their own unique dialect that is substantially distinguished from Egyptian and Syrian.
it has never been proven that trees were uprooted by Jews.
——————–
Asshole! They did it last week. A mosque vandalised and 300 olive trees uprooted by the most vicious, nasty and ultra fundamentalist group, the Yitzhar colony of whicxh rabbi has published a guide for the killing of non-Jews.
Here in Haaretz:
Haaretz(November 19, 2008)
Probe: W. Bank settlers uproot 300 Palestinian olive trees
link to haaretz.com
Israeli Settlers Uproot Palestinian Trees! (May 21, 2009)
link to arabwomanprogressivevoice.blogspot.com
Settlers uproot olive trees from Palestinian land near Ramallah(September 8, 2009)
link to kennysideshow.blogspot.com
Many links but the system doesn’t allow anymore..
From 1967 to 1999, Israel uprooted an estimated 1,000,000 trees in the OT, and an additional 1,405,658 trees from 2000-2006 (source: Status of the Environment, Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ), 2007)
On the uprooting of trees following following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Meron Benvenisti wrote:
I guess we could call that making the bloom desert.
”it has never been proven that trees were uprooted by Jews.“
Oh yes is has, Steven.
UNIX,
because of racist crap like you, there will be no peace in the region, and believe me the Zionist state will collapse, with the American empire.
Shmuel
Here’s some additional info:
link to uprootedpalestinian.wordpress.com
Palestinian research centre, specialised in monitoring Israeli violations, revealed that the Israeli occupation authorities destroyed 14000 olive trees in the Palestinian territories during 2009. Such assaults included the uprooting of thousands of olive trees, for the sake of expanding the Israeli settlements, and the burning and cutting of thousands more by settlers.
In a report issued following the completion of the olive harvest in the occupied West Bank, the Land Research Centre said that the occupation authorities burned and uprooted about 1455 olive trees during the harvest season this year, and washed away around 7000 trees since the beginning of the year for the sake of settlement expansion, while settlers attacked more than 5500 other trees.
Israeli attacks were concentrated in the provinces in the north of the West Bank. In Nablus, the occupation attacked about 6000 olive trees; in Salfit nearly 5720 trees were uprooted; in Qalqilya around 400 trees were burned or uprooted; in Hebron, nearly 1600 trees were attacked; and in Bethlehem, the occupation pulled out about 30 trees.
link to uprootedpalestinian.wordpress.com
There’s loads of material, TGIA, including B’tselem reports and statements/reports by Israeli government officials (MOD, Civil Administration, IDF Spokesman, etc.). Anyone (including yours truly) who has ever spent any amount of time in the OT can tell you about the widespread destruction of olive and fruit trees – whether in the WB (for settlement construction, the separation wall, settler vandalism, “security exposure”, collective punishment) or in Gaza (“security exposure”, collective punishment, “buffer zones”).
To claim otherwise is nothing short of ludicrous.
Guys, I don’t think UNIX is genuine. In other words, if he is not a misguided opponent of Israel trying to embarrass their side, he is at least a run-of-the-mill troll trying only to get a rise out of people. I’m just consistently picking up hints of sarcasm. Even if I’m wrong, is he really worth debating? (Although posting sourced information is always helpful.)
I went to a meeting last night at my synagogue put on by a group of liberal-left individuals interested in Israel issues, on how we felt about our relationship to Israel.
I went to a similar event, formatted in the same way a couple years ago, organized by AFSC (same umbrella group that did the Chicago “teach-in” yesterday). People went around in a circle, and talked of their personal experience relative to Israel in their life.
Around 15 people were there, not an enormous amount, thankfully, and everyone literally was left-liberal and relatively politically aware.
Everyone in the circle, spoke of their intimate sense of connection to Israel, to some extent, that Israel was NOT alien, and not an abstraction. Everyone spoke of the presence of Israel as important to them in some regard, though not everyone was attached to the idea of a current exclusively Jewish state.
And, everyone in the circle spoke of their varying sense of guilt and disappointment in the way that Israel is currently conducting itself.
In the group were individuals that organize an annual ultimate frisbee tournament between Palestinian and Israeli youth teams, as well as integrated pickup games. They told me of the difficulty that they have now in traveling to the West Bank, that Europeans and Americans are free to travel, but Israelis cannot. Only those with dual citizenship, with American passports, can get into the West Bank. They said that Palestinians had an easier time traveling in Israel, though that was still difficult.
Phil would call everyone in that room progressive except for Palestine, although I would call everyone in the room especially progressive on Palestine.
I described my sense that the most progressive one can be on Palestine without seeking to falsely annihilate one’s own sensitivities is to be progressive with a body, meaning to work to reform Israel, to make Israel as good and humane an Israel as is possible, but not to seek to annihilate, nor to walk in a state of existential apology.
These are people that care, that care both about Israel and about Palestinians, people who derive from the holocaust the lesson “Never again”, interpreted as never again to anyone, including not to us.
Some were tempted to walking guilt, the old pre-holocaust diaspora psychology. I’m not there and not going there. You’ve taught me that, that there is no just, no peaceful, no progressive form of voluntary self-annihilation, as there is no just, no peaceful form of abuse of Palestinians.
You’ve also demonstrated for me that is it important to understand how the left has now harbored anti-semitism in its sanctioned set of political attitudes.
One attendee spoke of the reality that he confronted that the land had been occupied when the Zionists arrived. I didn’t get to tell him, but wanted to later, that that was a false notion, that it was only true in the context of either/or. Either the land is Jewish or the land is Palestine or Arab as was the prevailing national identity at that time.
In the context of actual room, there was plenty, as evidenced by the 11 fold increase in population in the region, including four-fold increase in Palestinian population. If the land was fully occupied, that the population would max out at maybe 1 1/2 times the 1948 population.
That is a different question than the politics of how the land is occupied. It is not a statement of advocacy for Zionist dominance, but solely a statement of eliminating the guilt of living. He spoke of the parallel to the language of Lebensraum referring to the settlements. I agreed with him on the settlements question, of the parallel logic of exclusive and expropriated land, but not on the “there is no legitimate room for us” theme.
One friend has a daughter at Hampshire, and she spoke of the culture of leftist conformity and abuse of individuals that bore sympathy and connection to Israel.
I knew the woman and her daughter already, but it confirmed to me that the BDS movement is a punitive conformist movement, a politically correct imposition, as much as a liberation movement.
That it leaves no room for simultaneously loving Israel and criticizing, but only room for guilt and condemnation.
I spoke about my understanding that it is impossible to be good if one is psychologically weak, abused, and that that applied to Israelis and to Palestinians, that we do NOT realize justice by attempting to psychologically weaken the other, that we only achieve justice as in good neighborly relations by respecting the other, humanizing the other, the real one, not the political caricature one.
And, again, that to accomplish that, requires knowing the other, not being artificially separated by either Israeli security, by Hamas and other terror, by peer pressure shunning of the other.
My stand was confirmed for me. Proud and critical simultaneously, not as an irreconcilable contradiction, but as is the native territory of living.
And, not artificially separated by BDS.
“that to accomplish that,”
Witty
————
‘THAT’ abuse alert!
It is not a statement of advocacy for Zionist dominance, but solely a statement of eliminating the guilt of living.
Witty
————
If you put that sentence the way it should ” eliminating the guilt of living ON SOMEONE ELSE’S LAND” you’d see why guilt should not be eliminated..
Witty, everytime you attack BDS, you make me feel that BDS is in the right direction. Witty Israel became a pariah state because of people like you.
Witty, I think your words have the power to sway the most hardened zionist to support BDS, the ultra-maximalist version. That’s how pathetically phoney your “argument” is. Shunning is exactly what needs doing – in spades, because the “Israel” you keep swearing passionate love to, is one bat-shit crazy frigid bitch. Just don’t expect any love coming back your way…….
Now, what exactly was wrong with Hamas again? too much che guevara for your taste? maybe you should try some chanting instead of these weird cooing sounds you make.
I think you have issues, witty, of the egregious neurotic kind….what does your therapist think? mother issues? transference? confusion between subject and object?
Now, if only you were a proper bipolar, I’d have a cure for you…
I don’t think you are served by that dismissal Dana.
That was the J Street room. You want to go radical and dismiss and harm others, that is your choice.
The themes that are articulated here are not what is held dear. These were all people over 50, most not wealthy at all, whose legacies are their work and their sensitivities.
We won’t shut up. Our mutual sympathies will not be silenced.
If you are saying that Israel should be punished only, severely, then I am hoping that people like Phil, Norman, Naomi, etc. will be capable of noting that and effectively opposing it.
This is DIFFERENT than South Africa. It would be unlikely for you to find diaspora South Africans, let alone take a poll of their sentiments. In this case, real Americans have these real relationships. It is not foreign, not distant, not abstract.
If you and others conclude that their voices would then be irrelevant, that you would not listen to their warnings of excess, then that would have proven my point (in retrospect) of your “sides” inhumanity, not your humanity.
Further, you prove my point about your unwillingness to appeal to Jewish liberals as ally in criticism of Israel, which to a T, every individual in that room did and held. You demonstrate the conformity approach, the malicious politically correct approach.
We won’t shut up. Our mutual sympathies will not be silenced.
Witty
———–
DON’T SILENCE ME!
Boohoo hoo.
Jewish liberals are an ally yes, not Zionist liberals, especially given that you include yourself among them. Yours is a deperate and cynicla attempt to speak on behalf of all Jews. You even slipped in the anti semitism caranrd in there.
And even the land without a people carnard. You’re like UNIX with lipstick.
Did you think we wuoldn’t notice?
“anti semitism caranrd”
“a people carnard”
————
Car..nards? Are they fitted with tires ? Do they run on fuel?
No offense Shingo. Just being silly.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and paddles like a duck, it’s a canard.
Jesus Christ, Richard, we can’t stop your double-talk, but could you at least stop the double-spacing? Although I can’t help noticing that white space is indeed most of your argument.
Starving them and driving them to despair!
Link to the above story
link to maannews.net
“Report: Israel shuts off water to Jordan Valley farms”
Obviously all the Palestinians fault, if their knowledge of zionist history were better – if they loved Israel more, Israel wouldn’t be forced to do these things.
RE: “The Israel lobby never sleeps.” – Weiss
FROM M.J. ROSENBERG (03/17/09): …Rosen wrote the Nightflower memo to me on August 3, 1982, my first day at AIPAC (I worked there for four years, and, other than [Steve] Rosen, I enjoyed the job. I left to take another one; my politics on the Middle East did not change until 1993 and Oslo)…I kept the memo and, years later, after Rosen succeeded in purging three of my former colleagues, I gave a copy of the memo to the Post where it was first published. The full text.
To:MJ
From: Steve
A lobby is a nightflower
It thrives in the dark
And dies in sunlight
Remember: The Walls Have Ears.
SOURCE – link to tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com
Thanks Dickerson..Scary stuff!
Could as many as possible NOT REPLY to UNIX? Maybe he/she will go away.
No, it won’t. The only way it might even possibly go away is if enough people rouse their ass to press the “report abuse” button, and the comments host has a fear of liability.
Why on earth would UNIX go away? If it’s not stopped it’ll start cutting and pasting long screeds.
I’m sure an awful lot of Palestinians tried to ignore the Zionist settlers. Did they go away?
When Israel won its war in 1948, it took over only the lowlands, not the highlands of ‘Judaea’ and ”Samaria’. It also took over a huge percentage of the fertile agricultural land. Previously Jews had only owned and cultivated parts of the coastal strip and bits of Galilee, and grown oranges and bananas.
Here you can see the divvy-up of the colonised land after Oslo 1993, and the spread of illegal Israeli settlements (even under Israel’s own laws).
link to christian-bible.com
First they took over the valleys and water sources (and incorporated many of these into ‘Israel’ by running their Security Wall almost exactly above the western springline.)
Next, they allowed (or put) settlers on hilltops, without any water resources or fertile land. So these poor deranged immigrant nutters have to attack the locals to get what they need.
The locals have lived there for generations , and make a hard-scrabble living out of their olives.
Olive trees: link to www1.american.edu
Exactly.
Known as Mitzpim (plural) or Mitzpeh (singular), meaning lookout/outpost, these hilltop colonies were strategically placed throughout the occupied territories. The same method was used inside Israel to geographically isolate and contain Palestinian towns and villages.
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