Great piece by Jerry Slater on How bad can the Jewish Rightwing get? in which he responds to the Tablet attack on critics of Israel and argues that rightwing Jewish complicity in the occupation and the Israel lobby poses a danger to the Jewish status in the west:
Rather than guarding against anti-Semitism, the insults, coarseness, irrationality and dishonesty of the Jewish rightwing risks setting off an anti-Semitic backlash. To be sure, I don’t think there is much likelihood of this at present, but being Jewish myself and with some personal experience with anti-Semitism in the past, I cannot dismiss the danger out of hand: coming of age in America in the 1940s, I heard about, saw, and personally experienced plenty of anti-Semitism.
More importantly, it is well to keep in mind the historical experience of the Jews: in the past two thousand years Jews have frequently been a tolerated minority, and sometimes have even risen to powerful and respected positions in some of the most advanced and civilized states—like England, Spain, Portugal, France, and of course Germany—only to see their social standing, their accomplishments, their livelihood and often their very lives suddenly swept away by a deadly outbreak of anti-Semitism. In light of this history, the possible resurgence of anti-Semitism in the West cannot be entirely discounted, for it has never been definitively defeated and eliminated and has always survived, even if deep under the surface, as if lying in wait for some national political or economic crisis to once again burst out in full fury.
With that in mind, it is one thing to label (explicitly or by unmistakable innuendo) the most prominent and brave of the Jewish critics of Israel.. as “self-hating Jews,” a charge that is so preposterous and revolting that only fools take it seriously. It’s another matter altogether to continue assailing the serious, informed, and justifiably highly respected non-Jewish critics of Israel—Mearsheimer, Walt, Sullivan, Chas Freeman, Scott McConnell, Michael Desch, and others.
The problem is not that these men themselves--all of them patient, of good will, and genuinely committed to the best interests of Israel--will get really angry at the supposedly “pro-Israel” Jews in general, let alone countenance an anti-Semitic backlash. Rather, the real concern is how ordinary Americans as well as unwise or unprincipled politicians will react, if or when they finally catch on to the fact that Israel’s policies and the still-strong support of them by a large majority of American Jews are inflicting serious damage on American foreign policy, and perhaps even basic national security. Although the Jewish rightwing blandly denies that there is any connection between the hatred of Islamic fanatics and terrorists for the United States and the history of the near-unconditional American support of Israel, the denial is preposterous, since Osama bin Laden and many other al-Qaeda or other terrorist leaders have repeatedly said that their primary motive for attacking this country—including 9/11-- is its support for Israel’s occupation and repression of the Palestinians.
Bad for Israel
As well as being bad for the United States, the American Jewish rightwing is bad for Israel. Israel today is in desperate straits. Even leaving aside the dangers to its national security or very existence created by its endless provocations of the Arab or Islamic world, whose fanatics will almost certainly eventually gain possession of nuclear weapons, the poison created by the stupidity and criminal behavior of the Israelis towards the Palestinians is rapidly seeping into the politics and society of Israel itself. Israel today is well on its way to making a mockery of its claim to be a civilized Western democracy—even if only for the Jews, let alone for the more than five million Arabs whom it effectively rules or controls, directly or indirectly. And with every passing day the news gets worse, as new signs emerge of the gathering descent of the Jewish state into authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, anti-intellectualism, state repression, majority tyranny, and international pariahdom.
A growing number of Israeli commentators openly express their fear that Israel—a Jewish state, who could have imagined it—is sliding into fascism, and desperately call on the United States to help save Israel from itself. In vain, I fear, given the domestic politics of the Israeli issue in this country, as well as (as Scott McConnell has astutely observed) the reluctance of so many Jews and Gentiles to speak out and subject themselves to the repugnant attacks of the Jewish rightwing.
Bad for the Jews
In the entire history of the Jews there has never been a state such as America of the last fifty years or so: certainly not anti-Semitic, and not even merely “tolerant,” but perhaps even philo-Semitic. Where else have we ever been more secure—certainly not in Israel—and, beyond elemental safety, more integrated, respected, prosperous, honored—and, yes, powerful? Even so, given our overall historical plight, as well as the fact that we constitute less than 2% of the American population, one might hope for greater wisdom and insult-free discourse from the Jewish rightwing.
Beyond the potential dangers of fouling the nest, the Jewish rightwing is betraying what we have been pleased to think of as “Jewish values,” but which are really what is best in Western civilization as a whole: a commitment to reason, truth, and justice. The Jewish rightwing is making a mockery of these values: routinely lying, resorting to the tactics of the guttersnipe, and debasing rational and civilized discourse. Indeed, such a discourse would be essential even if the Jewish rightists had something of value to contribute to the debate over Israeli policies and U.S. support of them, and all the more so when they are devastatingly wrong about the true national interest, well-being, and moral standing of Israel.
As they (Israel uber alles Jews) would have it – the dumb goyim adore Jews, Israel, and would gladly see the U.S. ruled by a junta of Joe Lieberman, Gloria Allred, and Larry David.
Ethnic cohesion and ingroup altruism. Richest religious ethnic group in the US.
Fear of the outgroup resulting in a siege mentality that produces a distinct behavior change for insiders and outsiders.
People rebel against this all the time, whether it be hereditary monarchy or whatever.
Phil is courageous and insightful (and older than I thought), but he doesn’t get an essential point. Phil writes as if antisemitism is some latent germ in the all of humankind, just waiting to become magically activated, with no contextual relationships involved, no ordinary, pedestrian cause-and-effect situations going on: antisemitism is always an uncaused cause and Jews are always perfectly innocent victims.
That’s one of the danger Israel’s awful behavior and the right wing’s abuse of US political process presents: If so many people can see it all so obviously now, today, and say, “Good god, who would like somebody who behaves like that;” then does a little retro-analysis and discovers: “Hey, that whole business about how Poles hated Jews? Did you know that Jews treated Poles like dirt? No wonder Poles hated Jews back in ____.”
got that: “No wonder ________ fill in the blank hated Jews back in _____.”
The fit, dear Phil, may begin to hit the shan.
Maybe it IS something about the way Jews treat people and manipulate their political systems that causes people to be resentful of Jews. Maybe what is happening now, that Slater discovered, has happened before.
THE MAJOR TASK FOR ALL AMERICANS is to deal with the situation differently this time!
The relationship of Americans to the Jewish people in the US and in Israel is the most critical situation our generation faces. WE HAVE GOT TO CONFRONT AND MANAGE OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH, AND ANGER INVOLVING, Jews and Israel different from the way other states have done, and differently from the way Rabbi Ken Shapiro at AISH.org prophesies will happen:
“Jews have been persecuted before; we will be persecuted again. It is inevitable.”
How ’bout his, Rabbi: figure out what it is you do that pisses people off and STOP DOING IT.
Norman Finkelstein said, “Israel needs a devastating defeat, to shake it up, shake it out of its lunacy.”
Who gets hurt in that defeat, Norman, and who pays in the end? Israel has never paid for the aggression it has carried out on others, as Israel vents its psychotic rage.
I suggest a “two stage solution” to head off a destructive conflict between Americans and Jews:
1. A truth and reconciliation proceeding, brutal truth; apologies offered and accepted;* moderated by Desmond Tutu, perhaps, in consultation with a United Nations delegation of some sort.
2. Israel and American uber-supporters of Israel, like Haim Saban, SHALL BE REQUIRED to pay massive reparations to those who have been harmed by Israeli aggression.
* acceptance of apologies will not come until reparations are fully paid, and until apologies accepted, Israel will be held in pariah status: no trade, no banking relationships, no entry into US without visa, no academic exchange. Nothing. Pretend Israel is Iran.
it’s a start.
I disagree, Psycho. The outbreaks of antisemitism in the Christian world, and this is a Christian phenomenon, were primarily a consequence of Christian xenophobia and intolerance. Christians didn’t tolerate other Christians, either and its history is full of great outbreaks of violence directed against any group that didn’t share one version’s exclusive religious view.
Read about the Albigensian Crusade and you will see that there is nothing unique in the progroms against Jews.
But the standard antisemitic canards have one thing in common: they were false. Jews were not draining the blood of small children, betraying the state to its enemies, controlling the governments.
The profound difference now is that the charges brought against “the Jews” happen largely to be based on truth. Haim Saban frankly admits he is working to gain control of both the media and the government. And this being the case, the old “antisemitic canard” charge is losing its force. I don’t think it matters what the Jews did to the Poles in some other century. It matters greatly what Jews are doing now to undermine the United States.
Respectfully, Potsherd, I have to question the depth of historical understanding you are referencing. This statement, for example:
completely fails to recognize the many competing interests in the “Christian” world between the fall of Rome and the 19th century — including the fact that the “Christian” world was composed of numerous secular as well as religious factions that were contending with each other while simultaneously contending against dominant Muslim commercial interests. I am approaching the view that what really bothered Jews is that they were just bit players in the whole production: few acts of persecution of Jews rose to the intensity of the strife between Genoa and Pisa, or the threat France posed to Florence. But you don’t hear about those conflicts because today, Jews dominate the historic narrative with tales of their perpetual victimhood. Put in context, Jews are Barney to Marlon Brando’s Terry Malloy.
Well-respected scholars have made powerful cases that even the expulsion from Spain was not, primarily, out of hatred of Jews. The voices of those scholars are seldom heard because they get Shalalaed.
to sustain this thought, you have to say that “the Jews” or even some Jews, like Haim Saban, are acting in a way radically different from ways Jews — more precisely, Jewish elites — have ever acted before. They are acting “out of character;” this people, who pride themselves on the perpetuation of their ethnic identity, are suddenly acting in a way totally beyond anything in that ethnic identity.
In an article that I quoted some time ago (and got figuratively spat upon for) in 1881, ordinary Germans complained bitterly that Jews in Prussia and especially in Vienna dominated the media, controlled other industries essential to survival of the German middle class, created a ‘housing bubble’ inflated by Jewish-owned loans at high interest, etc.
I was accused of citing an article that had no academic validation. Maybe so. But somebody wrote it, back in 1881; somebody felt that way. Hitler didn’t do it: Hitler was born in 1889. Something else was going on that upset Germans.
If it matters what Romans did to Jews in 135 AD, the starting point of zionism, or what pharaoh did to Jews 3000 years ago, it matters what Jews did to Poles in some other century.
I agree.
I argue that it is important to discover past patterns of causes and outcomes — especially outcomes that have been marked by violence towards Jews — in large part because we Americans have got to go about this differently. We cannot allow a pogrom to occur; we have got to make Kristallnacht impossible. The people of the United STates are going to have to figure out how to relate to Jews, without destructive outrage, when they have full knowledge of the ways Haim Saban and some, few but powerful other “Jews are undermining the United States.”
If the systems and cause-effect relationships of the original Kristallnacht are not clearly understood, it is less likely to be able to avoid its repetition. Jews are their own worst enemy in this regard: hiding and forbidding discovery of Jewish behaviors — ie Jewish Bolshevism at the time of the rise of German National Socialism, is as ultimately self-destructive as a 5-year old hiding a broken glass under the rug.
I am not clear, psycho, how you believe this account is at variance with my position?
I understood you to say you did not think the history of Polish-Jewish relations was important, I believe with the goal of sharpening the point that what is going on now in the US is of critical importance.
We agree on your conclusion; I just wanted to exercise some electrons to elaborate the less important point.
I do believe there is a profound difference in the influence that the Zionist/Jewish power structure exercises in the US today and the situation at any time in the past.
In 1881, some Germans did believe Jews were controlling their country; * they undoubtedly had reason for this belief; their reasons may well have been justifiable. Nevertheless, it was a false belief. Whatever influence Jews had at the time, it did not remotely amount to control.
It is not a false belief now.
*It was, I surmise, much the same belief as white males have when they discover that their own, previously unassailable control over their society has been diminished in any degree. Let the presence of some lesser group – women, blacks, Asians, Jews – increase by 5% or so, and suddenly they are taking over and white males are discriminated against.
Nevertheless, it was a false belief. Whatever influence Jews had at the time, it did not remotely amount to control.
Some interesting reading here — Rothschilds were really annoyed that Germany had defeated France in Franco Prussian war; they may have played a deliberate role in German hyperinflation. I haven’t plowed through both of Niall Ferguson’s 2-vol. bio of Rothschilds’ to verify that suspicion.
Influence was different in Germany then than in US now; how does that get interpreted?
Later in the same era, Russian Jews streamed into Germany, where they were unwelcome by German Jews as well as by Germans. Think of Hispanics flowing into US, but pushing communist ideology.
The Jews in Germany, Eclectic Magazine, 1881
When you get to the point that the Kaiser was afraid to speak out on some subject because the Jews might bring down his cabinet, let me know.
I have to say I fall more toward Psycho’s line of thought or questioning.
Actually just about any religion or ethnic group could claim the eternal victim card. ‘Oh look how we were treated in Rome 15 centuries ago or France 6 centuries ago or China 2 decades ago.
I mean seriously, claiming anti semitism came out of nothing is like beleiving in the virgin birth. Groups of people or tribes have always clashed thruout history due to different interest or goals or the means they used to ensure their survival or thriving. Or just things that others are repulsed by in their culture or whatever.
The thing is why do the Jews persist in using anti semitism, as if it’s something all non jews are born with, as a defense every time they get caught out or have people oppose their individual or collective actions or agendas?
An idiot can plainly see in current events that the reason dislike and opposition to the Jews is occuring now for instance is …drum roll please…because of what they ‘are doing’ right now that isn’t even in dispute.
Anyone mean to tell me that this is the first time Jews have clashed with others or within the countries they lived in because of their own activities or attitudes or following their leadership into trouble?
Nope, I don’t’ believe that.
Some times people can get picked on or abused or scapegoated…BUT NOT ALL THE TIME…not in every single instance since the beginning of time like the Jews claim.
Just guessing or theorizing…maybe it started with “some’ Jews crossing some line with the rulers or gov and because of the Jews intense tribalism,(sticking togetherness) they all got kicked out by said ruler or gov just for safety measures. Then I can imagine the Jewish leaders or elites that actually caused the trouble telling their followers and lesser Jews that this wasn’t their fault, (thereby covering their own elite ass), that Jews are just hated for no reason by the others.
Yea, I can see it starting that way and becoming first a Jewish truism handed down from generation to generation, and then becoming a tool to escape responsibility and justify their own actions toward others.
Jerry Slater sounds like a smart and well meaning guy, but in him also you can see that his “some” experiences” with bigots , reinforced in him in a way what he had been taught as a Jew about anti semtism being a universal ‘lurking thing’ in most of society.
Listen, we can slap people and groups around, call them names criticize them for political or religious or any reasons at all. That’s what happens when important things are up for grabs in a country or the world, or some are offended by behavior they find disgusting or dangerous in someone or some group..
That doesn’t translate to MOST PEOPLE wanting to kill ALL the Jews or blaming ALL the jews or believing ALL the jews are the same or in on the same neferious plot.
My advice to Jews would be..give this anti semitism shit up….just drop it….quit chewing on it and blaming everything on it. There aren’t enough real anti semites in this country to elect a dog catcher much less start a holocaust.
Is it possible Jews as a whole will be viewed with suspicion, maybe resented..yep, that’s happening now a bit. BUT, the saving grace is we aren’t primitive anymore, our second thought after ‘Oh no it’s a Jew at the US Treasury!” or where ever ….is hold on, dont’ be an ass, that doesn’t mean he’s one of those MF’ing Israel firsters whose gonna embezzle all our money for Israel.
Just give it the hell up and man up and step up and be willing to say yea, ‘they’ don’t like ‘some’ of us because of what ‘some of us ARE DOING…not just because they hate “the Jews”.
That’s a fucking cop out.
Then we will listen to you if and when you ever have to go up against actual and real anti semites.
Meanwhile this anti semite, anti semite is just pissing people off and wearing out what little patience they have left, if any, with the US-Isr-ME-I/P- Jewish Lobby- Iran schemes that most Americans see very clearly going on and realize as a threat to their welfare.
And byw this rant applies only to those who it applies to.
potsherd,
I don’t think anti-Semitism is specifically Christian. Ancient literature shows that Jews in the ancient world were succeeding in pissing off the ancients before Christianity was invented, and before the Jewish revolt*.
You can read a bit about it in Hugh Schonfield’s book “The Essene Oddessy”, as well as in the primary sources.
And there was some anti-Semitism in the Islamic world as well. (Though far less.)
PG’s line is that anti-Semitism is largely the result of Jewish behaviour rather than “xenophobia” on the part of everyone else.
*Now there was a display of superior Jewish intelligence!
To expand a bit on Roman tolerance and the Jews:
The Romans were, on the whole, pretty easy going. They allowed most crackpot religions. (And there were plenty of them even before Christianity came on the scene.) They allowed political satirists to mock the rulers in satirical musicals. (Plenty of those.) They put up with sententious philosophers lecturing them on their personal and political moral shortcomings. (Plenty of those tedious old farts, too.) They even allowed public poetry recitals! If you fancied yourself as a poet, and had a bit of money, you could hire a hall, invite everyone you knew, and inflict your verses on any who actually turned up. If you were broke, you could stand up in a public place and start declaiming to the general public. (Probably a good way to get the makings of vegetable soup, if you weren’t too fussy about quality.
But some things they would NOT put up with: bad plumbing, poor public hygene, civil disturbance, and armed rebellion. And everyone knew tht when they put thier collective foot down on the last of those, it would be shod in several legions’ worth of military boots.
Plumbing was several civilization grades above anything the Jews had achieved, Pontius Pilate had to build a drain to clean up the mess from the Temple sacrifices, Jews in Roman cities seem to have used rent-a-mob tactics as a means of self-expression, even though they were given a number of privileges by the Roman authorites, and finally the geniuses in Jerusalem decided they could take on the Roman Army.
RoHa, I’m not a very good writer, so if this is what was understood, I miscommunicated it:
“PG’s line is that anti-Semitism is largely the result of Jewish behaviour rather than “xenophobia” on the part of everyone else.”
I wouldn’t say “LARGELY th e result of Jewish behaviour….”
I would say PARTLY Jewish behaviour. . . — I am certain that not ALL Jews did things that made other people mad. In fact, I think that for centuries Jewish elites have used and abused ordinary Jewish people just as much as non-Jewish people.
I do reject the “Goldhagen” thesis, that anti-Jewish thinking resides in the Other, who behaves evilly toward Jews for no reason.
Also, the power of propaganda to create mobs, and mobs behaving blindly, must be considered in trying to figure out why people harm Jewish people. Media and propaganda are powerful tools for getting other people to do evil things. Some people — Kermit Roosevelt, for example, know how to use the power of the mob.
Thanks for the correction.
you planted the white male idea in my head and now it won’t go away.
interesting analogy.
Phil is courageous and insightful (and older than I thought), but he doesn’t get an essential point.
PG, i’m not sure if you were referencing this particular post but if you were phil didn’t write it, jerry slater did.
thanks annie; you’re right: I mistook the Roman type for Phil’s writing, not Slater’s. I had not read the Slater link thoroughly enough.
“Maybe it IS something about the way Jews treat people and manipulate their political systems that causes people to be resentful of Jews.”
This is like the textbook example of anti-Semitism.
“I suggest a “two stage solution” to head off a destructive conflict between Americans and Jews:”
This is a disgusting old anti semitic (not to mention used against the Palestinian refugees and any other “other”) trope. That Jews and Americans are two different things. As if Jews aren’t Americans.
Honestly, even if you don’t think you’re wrong, you should know that this stuff looks really really bad. And it makes supporters of Palestinians look bad, and that hurts Palestinians. So, if you do care about Palestinian rights, you should stop writing stuff like this.
It may be a textbook example of anti-Semitism, but is it incorrect?
yes it is roha. it presumes an absurdity. ‘the way Jews treat people‘? i don’t even know what this is supposed to mean in today’s society. and this : “The thing is why do the Jews persist in using anti semitism”. the jews? do ‘the jews’ all use anti semitism? of course not. frankly it is difficult for me reading ‘the point’ in language that’s so filled w/these kinds of generalizations.
whatever, i left the thread yesterday after reading a bit of this and now i am back to see where it went. i don’t want to start a flame war obviously but i even find it uncomfortable reading ideas couched in this kind of language. i doubt if i am alone.
You aren’t alone annie. I am bothered by the constant talk of “the jews” this and “the jews” that, and Americans versus “the jews”, as though [as Joseph Glatzer observes] you can be jewish or American, but not both. It’s the kind of language you would expect to find among white supremacists @ Stormfront – and merely a variation on a theme of the worst sort of tribalism that has produced/enabled zionism. That such language is being used candidly at a site like Mondoweiss – run/written by American jews – opposed to Israel, is a disgrace.
Yes Psychopathic God, I’m talking about you.
Annie, Sumud.
You are quite right in rejecting the universal implication of “the Jews”. PG’s comments certainly do not apply to all Jews, and if this is Glatzer’s point I agree with him.
However, I interpreted Glatzer’s comment as denying the possibility that there are patterns of behaviour which are fairly common among Jews and which provoke resentment in the rest of the population.
I see no reason for denying such a possibility.
I also interpreted the comment as an accusation that anyone who suggests the possibility does so, not on the basis of an analysis of history, but from a prejudice against Jews.
Again, I see no reason why the suggestion can only be based on prejudice.
oh, now you’ve hurt my feelings, Sumud. Would be even more wounded if almost everything I’ve posted today & yesterday is based firmly on Haggai Ram’s theses and writing in “Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession.”
why not save your uppity for IDF that kills children.
It is soooooooooooooooo tiresome that the entrails of dead pigeons, cats, mice, and maybe even rabbits are constantly examined for evidence of — wait for it: antisemitism.
Is any other category or element or abstraction so closely monitored in American discourse?
Is American discourse hovered over and dissected and probed for possible occurrences of antiirishism? Does the US State Department have an office of antiHispanicism?
Nobody asked me about creating a “Jewish” state. Nobody knows, or frankly, much cares if any particular person is Jewish or not.
You write that it “looks bad” as if “Jews and Americans are two different things.”
Ask me about my perspective: ask me about what it looks like to me when somebody like Robert Lieber wags his finger at me and insists that I MUST like Israel better than Palestine because America and Israel “share values.” When those “values” include shooting children for sport, that “looks bad” to me.
United Jewish Federation sends solicitation letters to many, many Jews, and many, many Jews contribute to UJF. In turn, UJF uses that money to sponsor organizations such as Iran Task Force, a project of World Jewish Congress’s World Jewish Diplomatic Corps,
Notice: demonstrated commitment to “Jewish affairs” . . . needs of “world Jewry” . . .
But, operating within the American political system and exercising disproportionate influence over institutions such American pension funds, American military, American Congress, to shape American decisions and spending and dying for the needs of “world Jewry.”
From my point of view, that looks really, really bad.
www worldjewishcongress org/uploads/materials/ba02b9e558ee334b961445fcb66b7b807623091f pdf
Iran Task Force is a project of WJDC.
This is the key statement in the above quote: Iran’s defiance of international nuclear agreements.
Iran is NOT in defiance of international nuclear agreements.
The people who wrote that know that Iran is not in defiance of international nuclear agreements.
But that false statement, that unsupported premise, is the pivot point for a campaign of demonization, financial shake-down, an orchestrated media campaign to create the pretext for another war, and has culminated, to date, in H Res 1553, a measure that gives Israel the green light to attack Iran, perhaps with nuclear warheads.
That’s a really really bad turn of events.
Iran Task Force’s (by the way, why aren’t these ‘diplomats’ registered as agents of a foreign government?) first project was to lobby United States states pension funds to divest from a list of international corporations devised by Iran Task Force, that is to say, by persons committed to the needs of world Jewry. Got that: the rights of American citizens and contributors to their pension funds were overridden in preference for the perquisites of persons committed to the “needs of world Jewry.”
Honestly, I think that looks really, really bad. I think that looks like people committed to the needs of world Jewry using American institutions to pursue their Jewish agendas. We haven’t even discussed the reality that that agenda is actually harmful to American interests, is not accountable to American controls, and is unaccountable to American oversight.
If you care about the position people like Iran Task Force is putting ALL Jews in, you should stop them from doing stuff like they do. They are trying to coerce the United States to wage war on Iran. I don’t have any way to stop their influence. If you’re Jewish and you don’t like “Jewish” being associated with what may become the most horrendous act of an entire era, I suggest you take the matter up with the World Jewish Congress, World Jewish Diplomatic Corps, the United Jewish Federation, the Iran Task Force, AIPAC, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, The Jewish Federation of Northern America, American Jewish Committee, AntiDefamation League, Union for Reform Judaism, Orthodox Union, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, Hadassah, National Council of Jewish Women, American Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith.
When you’ve contacted all of them and straightened them out and told them that what they are saying and doing “looks really really bad,” and they “stop doing and writing stuff like that,” then you can come back and yell at me and call me names.
But until then, Don’t yell at me.
I’m just the messenger.
That stuff looks really, really bad. It hurts Iranians. It is intended to hurt Iranians. And if Americans are snowballed into hurting Iranians, Americans will be hurt, too. So will Jews. Really, really badly hurt.
I can’t do a thing about it. I don’t give to Jewish foundations.
“why not save your uppity for IDF that kills children.”
If you believe I’m giving a free pass to the IDF please provide some evidence of that.
I don’t subscribe to the school of thought that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. On many points I’d agree with you:
• Israeli treatment of Palestinians has been and is appalling – war crimes appalling.
• US foreign policy is distorted by Israel
• Neo-cons beat the drum hard for the US to invade Iraq and are doing it again on Iran, prioritising Israeli interests over American interests in a remarkably short-sighted way.
There are probably other things also, but at a certain point we diverge. I think the problem is zionists and neo-cons, and you’re blaming all jews. I read your comment that bombing of synagogues will commence shortly after any US action on Iran (and it sounds like incitement):
link to mondoweiss.net
I read your comment elsewhere in this thread that jews should not even participate in the Palestinian struggle for liberation – and should quarantine themselves from the civilised world. In the same comment that jews who voted for Obama did so for sinister purposes, and that jews are responsible for the mess America is in:
link to mondoweiss.net
Well, I agree that you’re cynical.
And then there is the third comment in this thread which is both repugnant (jews have brought calamity on themselves) and bordering on thoughtful (“THE MAJOR TASK FOR ALL AMERICANS is to deal with the situation differently this time! The relationship of Americans to the Jewish people in the US and in Israel is the most critical situation our generation faces. WE HAVE GOT TO CONFRONT AND MANAGE OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH, AND ANGER INVOLVING, Jews and Israel different from the way other states have done, and differently from the way Rabbi Ken Shapiro at AISH.org prophesies will happen:
“Jews have been persecuted before; we will be persecuted again. It is inevitable.””)
In the same comment you’re writing about “Americans” and “jewish people in the US” as though jews can’t be Americans. What’s that about? What makes you more of an American than all the jews in the US? I understand the charge of dual-loyalty (or even loyalty exclusively to Israel) but what about all the jews who disagree with and actively work against the influence and policies of zionists/neo-cons/Israelis? Why are you tarring them because of what some jews do?
IF your concern that jews will be harmed in the US is genuine then the first thing you can do is to stop demonising them. Stop banging on constantly about “the jews” and use more appropriate descriptions – like zionist or neo-con.
I think you’d object if I described spoke about white Americans based on the behaviour of the Ku Klux Klan, or derided all christians because of the behaviour of the nuttier fundamentalists christians. Likewise I object to the demonisation of muslims that is widespread in much western discourse and media at the moment. For the same reasons I object to your going on about “the jews”. Just because anti-semitism has been thoroughly abused by the ADL (and others) doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want. It’s a juvenile reaction and I think you can do better.
You’re dead wrong when you wrote above about the position the Iran Task Force is putting jews in (“If you care about the position people like Iran Task Force is putting ALL Jews in, you should stop them from doing stuff like they do”). They aren’t, it’s you. You are the one who insists on making generalisations based on religion and/or tribe. So don’t. It’s simple.
I reject your claim to be just the messenger. You aren’t. You’re shaping the message in a particular way that demonises jews and ignores those jews who object to and work against many of the same things you do. Again, so don’t.
it presumes an absurdity
what does that mean, annie?
“It is an overgeneralization” I understand: applying to ALL the characteristics of a few. that I understand. I could engage in rational discussion about “overgeneralization.”
I don’t understand what is meant by “it presumes an absurdity.”
You’re dead wrong when you wrote above about the position the Iran Task Force is putting jews in (“If you care about the position people like Iran Task Force is putting ALL Jews in, you should stop them from doing stuff like they do”). They aren’t, it’s you. You are the one who insists on making generalisations based on religion and/or tribe. So don’t. It’s simple.
I’m dead wrong because you say so?
Iran Task Force is doing pernicious work, namely, attempting to cause Americans to hate Iran. It’s ‘charter’ is to promote Jewish interests.
Its agenda is to target Iran, to cause the people of the United States to hate Iran, in order to advance “Jewish interests.”
I pivots that agenda on a false premise.
In doing so, it DEMONIZES Iran — all Iranians. You’re worried that the loyalty of Jews is in the US is put under a spotlight, but the people of Iran are kept in a state of perpetual fear that the US or Israel will drop bombs on their children. I have talked to Iranian people; I have looked in their eyes and heard their fears, hidden behind a veil of dignity.
Thirty years ago the US aided Saddam Hussein to drop chemical bombs on innocent civilians in villages in Iran. I travelled to Iran in the seat next to a woman whose brother was in a German hospital, being kept alive by machines that functioned for his lungs. She showed me the X-rays of his lungs. He will never be able to breathe on his own. When Iraq dropped chemical bombs on the innocent people of Iran, Iran’s leaders appealed to the United Nations to sanction Iraq, but nobody payed attention to Iran. Iran did NOT retaliate with chemical attacks. It endured the slaughter of its citizens.
Iran Task Force has a deliberate agenda to cause American people to hate Iran with the ultimate outcome of once again killing innocent Iranian people. Iran Task Force is sponsored by the dozen or so Jewish organizations that I listed.
IF INNOCENT IRANIAN PEOPLE DIE, THOSE ORGANIZATIONS WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR DEATHS. And so will all Americans.
Ever since the end of World War II, German people have been held in contempt, have lived in an aura of shame; in pariah status. ALL German people — take a look on DKos sometime: I have even seen commenters complain if “German” is used without attaching some form of insult or reminder of their shamed status.
If the United States carries out the acts that organizations like Iran Task Force and those dozen or so Jewish organizations are feverishly urging the US to carry out, an attack on Iran, then for the next two generations the people of the United States — my children — will be thought the pariahs of the world. To say, “I am American” will be the equivalent of saying, “I am a German” in 1948.
I’ve gone to J Street meetings to try to push back against the organized onslaught of Iran Task Force — one impoverished person pushing back against the organized and hugely financed might of 15 Jewish organizations, to plead with them to stop the demonization of Iran. Their response is to Lobby Congress! “Tell Obama he has to solve the problem.”
OBAMA DIDN’T CAUSE THE PROBLEM.
Jewish organizations caused the problem.
GO TALK TO THEM.
Tell them to stop.
You’re damn right I demonize Jews, Sumud, because what some Jews are doing is demonic, they are doing it in the name of Jews. If you want Jews not to be demonized, then tell the Jews who are using the name of the Jewish people to stop doing what they are doing.
It’s astonishing that you give me so much power — one, anonymous, moneyless person pushing back against the organized might of 15 Jewish organizations, and I’M the one who is demonizing Jews.
Now THAT is the absurdity annie speaks of.
Do you remember what happened when I challenged Witty to tell us which nationality he valued more, “Jewish” or American?
It’s not a canard if it’s true in the cases it’s applied.
oh Sumud, come out and plaa – aay.
“Yes, I’m talking to you, Sumud.”
so there
I don’t understand what is meant by “it presumes an absurdity.”
‘‘the way Jews treat people‘”????
what you reference as an ‘over generalization’ presumes a generalization about ‘‘the way Jews treat people” has a correctness about it to begin with and it does not. jews don’t go about there life ‘treating people’ in any kind of unified fashion any more than anyone else.
clearly you don’t get it. go back and read sumud’s comment about 10 times, or 100.
“As we shall see, where an anti-Semitic politics becomes important, usually more is involved than simple malice toward the Jews. In politics, principles – even as unprincipled a principle as anti-Semitism – are seldom completely divorced from some set of political interests. In the case of anti-Semitism, major organized campaigns against the Jews usually reflect not only ethnic hatred, they also represent efforts by the political opponents of regimes or movements with which Jews are allied to destroy or supplant them. Anti-Semitism has an instrumental as well as an emotive character. Thus, to understand the cycle of Jewish success and anti-Semitic attack – and to understand why the United States is not exceptional – it is necessary to consider the place of Jews in politics particularly, as Hannah Arendt noted long ago, their peculiar relationship to the state.” From Ben Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the [Goy] State; excerpts here, including on the Weimar period in Germany:
link to mailstar.net
Why Germans supported Hitler:
link to lewrockwell.com
(Here’s the same guy advocating stopping foreign aid to Israel:
link to fff.org
from the Ginsberg link:
In 1991, prior to the Persian Gulf War, Buchanan asserted that men named Rosenthal, Kissinger, Perle, and Krauthammer – a group he called Israel’s “amen corner” in the United States – were beating the drums for a war in which “kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and LeRoy Brown” would be the ones to die. Later, as a candidate in Georgia’s March 1992 Republican presidential primary, Buchanan attacked a group of Jewish hecklers by saying, “This is a rally of Americans, by Americans, and for the good old U.S.A., my friends.” During the same rally, Buchanan responded to a question about his anti-Semitism and racism by referring to his First Amendment guarantee of free speech.
I have a bit of videotape of Buchanan at a presidential primary in New Hampshire (I think; might be Vermont). Two Jewish hecklers rose from the audience and made moves physically threatening to Buchanan’s wife, who was standing by his side. Buchanan stepped in front of her to deflect the hecklers.
by the way, I agree with Buchanan.
No American should be put on the defensive for failure to support Israel.
And Jews should have the same rights and protections concerning speech as any other American: no more, no less.
The State Department Office to monitor antisemitism should be disbanded.
It is true that excessive polemic and threat from whatever camp distorts the prospects of good outcomes, and live and let live everywhere.
It would be wonderful if Jerry also criticized some of his adherents, if not criticized his own writing periodically.
Keep up the criticism of policies and practices. That is what reform is constructed of.
But, to dismiss anti-semitism or other racism as marginal, ignores how xenophobic movements gestate. They are algae, multiplying rapidly from an incidental starting point.
Yeah, Dick Witty, in case you havenot noticed this blog has not been ignoring how the xenophobic state of Israel and the zionist movement gestate. Incidental teeming algae? You said it, not us.
“They are algae, multiplying rapidly from an incidental starting point.”
And I thought “Goy” was insulting. Who knows, maybe Gentiles like being compared to pond scum?
Now I see why the WTC towers fell over, they deconstruct as easily as Witty’s writing.
who planted the seed of the algae, Witty?
ever browsed through all the books by Jewish authors that have as their major thesis “why the US really ought to hate Muslims” ??
Psychopathic,
Your comments on the causes of anti-semitism are neanderthol and harbor if not encourage racism.
My comment was about how movements gestate, they multiply, and fast, especially the hateful ones.
It is a relevant exercise of ADL and others to legitimately identify, expose, warn, and oppose such movements.
They make mistakes, but their mission is a critical one, given the willingness among those that advocate for “democracy” to excuse hatred of Jews, individually and collectively.
“are neanderthol ”
I don’t want to pick on you Witty but it’s Neanderthal not neanderthol..And for the purists it’s Neanderthaal..
*sigh*
“neanderthol”
You make it sound like a medicine for halitosis or something..
My comment was about how movements gestate, they multiply, and fast, especially the hateful ones.
and my comment was about how the movement gets started.
If you look at the pattern of demonization of Iran, it is impossible to avoid the realization that neocons/Jewish people/Israel advocates started the ball rolling. Keith Weissman was an AIPAC operative in 1995 when the first set of sanctions on Iran was enacted, first by an Executive Order signed by Bill Clinton, then by an act of Congress, the D’Amato amendment/Libya/Iran sanctions act.
Those sanctions on Iran were put in place to advance — or protect — Israeli or Jewish interests.
They harmed US interests.
Special exemptions from sanctions were carved out to protect Israeli and Jewish preferences regarding Iran — Israelis love Persian carpets and pistachios; those items were exempted to serve those preferences.
Israel did not pass similar legislation in its Knesset that would constrain Israeli commerce with Iran; but Israel advocates/Jewish people/Israel lobby pressed the restrictions, that harmed American interests, on the US.
That first set of sanctions was deliberately pressed on the Clinton administration becauseIran had extended a hand of friendship to the US and Israel feared that the US might accept it; the sanctions were a slap in the face of the Khatami administration of Iran, just as the “axis of evil” was a slap in the face of the Iranian administration that had helped US in Afghanistan. Both of those slaps were delivered at the behest of Israel advocates/Jewish interests/Israel lobby, and were harmful to the interests of the US.
I reject the argument that US uses Israel to gain access to Iranian oil. US oil companies did not want sanctions on Iran, were then and are now harmed by sanctions on Iran, do not now want sanctions on Iran.
Take another look at the ad in a New York newspaper the other day, claiming that US must stop buying foreign oil because Iran is evil. Please show me the endorsements of Exxon, Conoco, BP America, or of any of the major oil field development companies like Schlumberger or Helmerich & Payne. I don’t see any, do you? All of the endorsements are Jewish groups, acting to advance Jewish interests.
I didn’t produce the ad, Jewish groups did. I didn’t produce an ad nearly four years ago that kicked off the campaign of Iran Task Force to demonize Iran, Jewish groups did.
If you object to the negative impact on ALL Jews created by some/a small group of Jews, take it up with that small group of Jews who are purveying the negative messages; that ain’t me; you will not find my name or my money involved in ads or campaigns or lobbying that seeks to engender hatred of the Iranian people.
In an earlier comment I listed the organizations that DO use the name of your group, Jewish, to engender hatred of Iran; I’ll list them again for your convenience:
World Jewish Congress
Iran Task Force
World Jewish Diplomatic Corps
AIPAC
Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations
Jewish Council for Public Affairs
The Jewish Federation of North America
American Jewish Committee
Anti Defamation League
Union for Reform Judaism
Orthodox Union
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
Jewish Reconstructionist Federation
Hadassah
National Council of Jewish Women
American Jewish Congress
Bnai Brith
Zionist Organization of America
World Union of Jewish Students
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
American Enterprise Institute
Hoover Institute
Saban Center at Brookings Institute
Those are the names of the groups — that small group of Jews — who are debasing the generalized name, Jewish.
If you object to the negative light in which your name, Jewish, is being framed by these few Jewish groups, then I suggest you tell THEM to stop doing what they are doing. Tell each one of those groups, and toss in Haim Saban: NOT IN MY NAME.
I am not doing anything to bring harm to Jewish people; I am doing everything I know how to prevent harm to the Iranian people.
I AM, and will continue, pointing out that predominantly Jewish groups are deliberately seeking to create hatred of the Iranian people with the ineluctable outcome of grievous harm to the Iranian people and consequent harm to the American people.
Ever browsed through all the books and articles by white Christian authros that have as their major theseis “why white Americans should hate people of African or Native American descent. Should all white Christians suffrer because of these few haters? Your habit of generalizing about Jews from the actions of only a relatively few Jews is what’s known as stereotyping. As for Jews being responsible for any hatred directed at them, were and are native Americans responsible for the hate directed at them, were Japanese-Americans responsible for the hate that forced into concentration camps a little more than a half-century ago. What’s more, whatever German Jews did or didn’t do, no way could that justify mass murder. Same goes for the hatred that some Eastern European Christians felt towards Jews. Carrying your argument to its logical conclusions would lead one to ask what are the Palestinians doing that makes so many Jewish Israelis hate them? As for Jewish control of U.S. foreign policy, it may look that way but have you ever considered the fact that Israel’s war-mongering serves the interests (oil & world domination ) of Empire USA, and that by allowing the U.S-Israeli relationship to look like the tail is wagging the dog, just in case Empire’s plans go awry, the powers that be are setting up Israel & its Jewish-American (not its Christian American supporters*) as scapegoats.
*Christian Zionists can always claim that devuiys Jewish Zionists duped them, and they’d get away with it because of the general acceptance of age-old stereotypes.
thank you yourstruly
How can you sustain that amount of irony in your system and not die of toxic shock?
It seems, at least as to the USA economy, the USA has already reached its Weimar Moment:
link to commondreams.org
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Lets get real, after a banking/financial sector collapse that showed great disregard for the American public, and the neoconservative push for the disastrous Iraq war, the pogroms did not come. Far from it. But the careless trend keeps going forward.
Helen Thomas, Chas Freeman, etc. etc. Media figures from Murdoch proudly touting his pro-Israel bent, to hardliners like Wolf Blitzer, and not Harman at Newsweek.
Therefore, it will be difficult to disguise the fact that most pro-Israel groups are siding with Israel against the US president, and defending policies that respected military leaders now openly question.
link to forward.com
rel=”nofollow”>
While Jewish communal leaders focus most of their current lobbying efforts on pressing the United States to take a tough line against Iran and its nuclear program, some are privately voicing fears that they will be accused of driving America into a war with the regime in Tehran.
I have a tip, stop pressuring the US to do something not in US interests and there wont be an accusation. It really is that easy.
and yes, i know Murdoch is a gentile. Im showing a careless trend in media bias.
Citizen, who WAS the right in pre-Weimar and Weimar Germany? (you’re going to tell me his name was google. . . . I don’t know much about political parties and labels; I suppose left-right labels are supposed to make certain characteristics come to mind; they elude me.)
Why are you asking me, PG?
whew, that was so yesterday.
I think I asked you because the link that you posted re Weimar was heavily involved with right-left distinctions.
Great article, Mr. Slater. This is true: the insults, coarseness, irrationality and dishonesty of the Jewish rightwing risks setting off an anti-Semitic backlash. I’m hearing it. There is an ennui with the Jewish rightwing that is fraying the reticence to ‘go there’. Mainly, it is the completely uncontrolled and adolescent and vulgar, extraordinarily vulgar, form of public discourse they engage in; namely, when they don’t get their way, they destroy the careers and reputations of the dissenters as if it were their right.
Your article is timely and correct, in my view.
several years ago Gary Ackerman shocked me out of my socks with the nasty way he responded to a caller on C Span Washington Journal.
It was a wake-up moment.
“If ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise.”
I was happier when I was blissfully ignorant and tried desperately to stay that way.
But bad things kept happening, and eventually, it was impossible to avoid noticing that Jewish names were involved with quite a few of the bad things that happened.
It’s a painful spot to be in.
As effective as Jews are at shaping public opinion, which is a function of manipulation of emotions, not of critical thinking, it is frightening to think of how ‘mobified’ the US may have become.
Mobs turn.
Mobs do not have brains.
Mobs can get ugly fast, and they don not discriminate about: if you are at the end of the stick a mob is swinging, you will get struck, regardless of your innocence or guilt.
Some brilliant stuff in there.
I can’t speak for all international activists in Palestine, who, incidentally, have recently come in for criticism in the press. But the sentiments expressed here, I am certain, will be shared by many of our number.
I am an atheist, I go to the West Bank; but my dream is that Jewish people from all over the world come together to form the vanguard of the movement which will eventually lead to real justice for the Palestinian people.
Naive? Probably. But I cannot think of a better way to combat the evil of anti-semitism.;
here’s why I think that’s a mistake, Arty, heartfelt as I think your hope is: for Jews to “lead the movement” for real justice for the Palestinian people give ownership of justice for the Palestinians people to Jews.
Palestinians should own their liberation.
in my opinion, the best things Jews can do are: 1. get out of the way of Palestinian justice; 2. reform their own culture, and NOT by flying to the protecting embrace of Uncle Sam or some other government: Jews need to have a parlay in their own tents and find a new Jeremiah to chide them and guide them. Chris Hedges and Jeremiah Wright might give some pointers. . .
I didn’t word things very well and of course the Palestinians need to ‘own their liberation’. Perhaps what I should have said is that what I would dearly like to see is Jewish people being very visible in the struggle, with Palestinians, to bring about real justice for Palestine.
An image from a few weeks ago regularly comes to mind. Following a weekly demo in a village near Bethlehem I watched as a young female Israeli activist was embraced by a female Palestinian who had come to provide food for the protesters. It was heart-warming to see and I only wish that the moment could have been broadcast round the world.
i have seen and heard to much that is hateful, Arty. I am completely and totally cynical.
No, Jews should NOT be “very visible in the struggle, with Palestinians.”
Jews were “very visible in the struggle” to put a black man in the White House, but it was not an act of generosity much less justice, it was an investment, a Mephistophelian act of sheer cynicism.
Jews have f*%#ed up Palestinian lives and American political discourse and processes such for several generations.
Get the hell out of US and Palestinian political systems. Quarantine yourselves. Reform your own sick society. Nobody wants a sick physician “healing” them, and Israeli culture is sick to its core. Heal your own society, then maybe, in a generation or two, you can be trusted to function in the civilized world.
The anti-Jew is down to even wilder generalizations. As for Jews not being visible in the justice for Palestine, it may or may not interest you that from the experience of many Jews, Palestinians are cheered up when they find out that the individual who is struggling with them is a Jew. As for Israel and Jewish-Americans, what are you going to say when more and more Jewish-Americansthe renounce Israel? Don’t trust them, they’ve got a subversive motive. Racists are always questioning the motives of their favorite scapegoats, although seldom questioning their own motives.
PG, I’m very cynical too. Wouldn’t you like Malcolm X, for example, to look at you as an individual human? Wouldn’t you like to quote Shakespeare’s don’t I bleed when cut too? I know you get my point. You abhor the Goldhagen thesis, and, in my opinion, rightfully so. Has every Jew you ever met and you grew to know been the kind of selfish, duplicitous prick you suggest when you use a negative generalization including all Jews in its ambit? Do you think Phil, Adam, Mooser, Shmuel, for example, are motivated by the same spirit, and stand on the same spot as, say, Dershie, Pearl, Lieberman, Wurmser, Wolfowitz, Feith, Krauthmammer, Witty, Schwartzman, and that whole string of blinkered zionists that use to flock here to spill out their vulgar
slurs? Official lying narratives are hard to endure–just ask the White Rose. Did you see and hear that video of that Jewish American young lady singing, the one who had her artistic and humble eye shot out by the IDF? Was Hannah Arndt Golda Meir? You are intelligent, educated, often eloquent and always full of a high sense of fairness and justice–keep your positive zeal universal. You can and do name names, organizations, etc; and you should so particularize the problem-makers, and the patterns of their conduct. But lumping everyone of a particular ethnic group in the same pot is not the way to truth but to politics as usual.
My secular Jewish attorney friend once asked hypothetically, why does it seem that every couple of hundred years there’s an outbreak of unrestrained violence against Jews. Is it fear, distrust, and resentment of an insular society? Is it jealousy of the success a culture dedicated to newtworking and looking out for its own? Is it aspects of the culture that seem alien, or put forth an air of superiority? Are Jews just a convenient target the way that most racists seek someone to denigrate in order to feel better about themselves?
But couldn’t any ethnic, religious, or cultural group fit these descriptions to one extent or another? Are there examples where other sub-groups are historically so regularly vilified to the point of semi-condoned brutalization?
Many groups seem to be a target of convenience for a time (in some circles in the US, it seems to be OK to openly scapegoat Muslims and Mexicans for any number of ills), but are Jews (the Jews?) unique in their recurring status as an object of ire at times for an alarmingly substantial portion of the population?
Self-fulfilling prophecy, and as Slater points, bringing it upon themselves.
Maybe you should thrust your lance at what Ben Ginsberg has to say at the hot link I provided above–may be a few pointers there.
Interesting material. Haven’t finished it as there is quite a bit of it. Some of the other links within the site are eye-openers as well.
“Is it jealousy of the success a culture dedicated to newtworking and looking out for its own?”
No jealousy, but resentment. A group which excludes and discriminates against the majority in order to win greater wealth, etc., for its members is regarded by the majority as a parasite upon them.
This sort of attitude has been held towards the upper-classes and the Masons. When I lived in the U.S., it seemed that in poor districts there was resentment against Korean immigrants because they would assist each other, but not work for the common good.
Same goes for Chinese in many parts of Asia, and for Indians in African nations.
I am confused. Don’t you people always say that every illiterate Pakistani villager can explain the difference between a Jew and a Zionist?
Didn’t Osama Bin Ladin say that he loves Jewish Athiests who worship Karl Marx as the messiah?
Didn’t President Achmadinajad call Mayor Bloomberg to thank him for his support on the Ground Zero Mosque?
“Didn’t Osama Bin Ladin say that he loves Jewish Athiests who worship Karl Marx as the messiah?”
lol!!, no. He’s dead by all accounts. Unless you can make a skeleton talk, like the Son of Svengoolie.
“Didn’t President Achmadinajad call Mayor Bloomberg to thank him for his support on the Ground Zero Mosque?”
Jeffry Goldberg wrote a good article on this.
link to theatlantic.com
Cite it: Didn’t Osama Bin Ladin say that he loves Jewish Athiests who worship Karl Marx as the messiah?
“I am confused. Don’t you people always say that every illiterate Pakistani villager can explain the difference between a Jew and a Zionist?”
Yes you are confused, because it is the right wing Zionists who insist that there is no difference between a Jew and a Zionist.
It’s AHma….
Unlike Ashkenazi Jews, Mizrahi Jews use the accurate pronunciation of the Hebrew letter “Chet”. That’s not a Ch sound like Chanukah, but a Het sound like Hevron (Hebrew for Hebron).
So, Ahmadinajad is to be pronounced Ahhh-Mah-din-najjaad.
Incidentally, the name is actually comprised of two names, transliterated into one in English.
In both Persian and Arabic the name is Ahmad Al-Najjad, pronounced Ah-mud E-Na-jaad.
Yes indeed, and I think it would help so much if Israelis could speak Hebrew with Semitic accents instead of Eastern European ones. They they could learn to say saHin Hummous Habibi instead of sakhin khummus khabibi and grate the poor waiter’s ears.
Who are you referring to when you say “you people.” Most of the authors on this blog are Jewish. Are you referring to Jews when you say that?
OK and why are people going after PG for anti-Semitism, and not rachelgolem for making Jews out to be “the Jews?”
Seriously, and no offense to those Jewish commentators among here, but you guys have to stop letting Zionists play you for fools by hitting you in the reflex point that makes you go after the rest of us non-Jewish commentators when we point out the aspects of the pro-war/pro-Israel lobby that solidly identifies and advertises itself as explicitly Jewish.
It’s not our fault for pointing that out, and if you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at the people who are stealing Judaism from you and twisting it into something awful.
Rachelgolem is her own golem. Part of the confusion is that Israel and Israeli spokes people say they are speaking for all Jews, and some slavishly pro-Israel commenters here have used the term “the Jews”
as have some (a few) used the same term. American politicans have also conflated the state of Israel and all Jews. PG gets called to account for so generalizing–we need to call the Rachelgolems to account as quickly and as often.
“The amount of money that U.S. taxpayers have spent protecting our oil-producing Arab friends in the Persian Gulf dwarfs the amount of aid we’ve given Israel. So, no, our relationship with Jerusalem does not come at the expense of our many Arab allies.”–Lee Smith
link to jewishpolicycenter.org
This is an outright lie. Secondly, no aid we give said oil-producing Arab friends is unconditional. W & M point out all the ways Israel is favored over all other friends. Go to W & M The Israel Lobby and the index lines on
economic aid, and military aid. You will find in those indexed pages just how utterly favored Israel is, and this, no matter what it does–the contempory question is, why? No oil there, not even enough water.
Why does Lee Smith have a job?
link to lobelog.com
Imagine if we pulled all the bigoted comments off of any blog or news article’s comment section? Make that all anonymyous bigoted comments sans even a pen name id (or date, even, and without mentioning the article topic commented on)–and tarred and feathered the article writer for those anonymous comments beneath his or her article. That would pretty much eliminate any internet discussion of any controversial subject, yes? Catagorical Imperative. Shows just how afraid those who pay Lee Smith are of Phil, Adam, Walt, Meersheimer, Sullivan et al. Scared s***less of honest men with intergrity who actually have universal values and ethics!
Read the article posted here today about the near-inevitability of Israel dragging the US into an attack on Iran. Then prepare to see the backlash after the economy crashes beyond hope of repair.
Succinct, potsy.
You got it. This year’s U.S. siege of Iran was authored by the Jewish lobby and is being implemented by uber-Jewish Stuart Levey in the Treasury department, who famously ate ten courses of spinach at a Chinese state dinner rather than submit to the indignity of non-kosher food.
When middle east war breaks out (as Israeli ambassador Michael Oren so calmly discussed in the WaPo last week) and gasoline zooms to $6/gallon, remember who’s your daddy — AIPAC, the foreign lobby which enjoys de facto exemption from federal laws such as the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
If a malevolent genius wanted to stoke an unprecedented pogrom in the U.S., he could hardly do better than what AIPAC and ADL and the Council of Presidents are doing of their own volition. That legendary 15 I.Q. point advantage seems to go ‘poof’ in large groups of neocon Jews.
It will be worse here. There has never been a country as large as this, with a population as condensed as ours, that has reacted to Jewish over-reach in a society. Not Russia. Not Germany. The Ottoman Empire. None. If Israel attacks Iran and drags us into it, it will eventually be construed as a Jewish action, and not just Israeli. If you think the bubbas went crazy over France stiffing us with its lack of Iraq action, and created the Freedom Fries thing, the reaction — while certainly not immediate — to the consequences of bombing Iran will be long, very slow to change, but ultimately far more destructive. The military and vet groups will make sure of that.
Israel attacks Iran at its peril. It is mind-boggling that the important Jewish leaders in this country can’t see this, and aren’t screaming for this insanity to stop. Why they aren’t calling the neocons the scourge of American Jews is beyond me. My bet is that the majority of American Jews haven’t got a clue.
This “bomb Iran” thing is madness!
Israel doesn’t want Iran to get the bomb..
But Israel has got it already..
which means that for Iran to bomb Israel, it exposes itself to retaliation and destruction and the result would be mutual annihilation..
In other words the bomb is for deterrence not for practical use..
But Israel doesn’t want itself to be deterred either.
It wants to be able to bomb Iran any time it feels like it without risking retaliation!!
Israel in a nutshell!…Sheer madness!
Madness?
Of course it is, but that won’t stop it from happening.
Israel doesn’t want Iran to get the bomb. Is that the issue? Or should we step up to a more general concern? “Israel doesn’t want Iran to get more power”. or “Israel doesn’t want Iran to upset Israel’s regional hegemony. ” Whether Iran then is in direct pursuit of nuclear weapons, or it has a long term aim to build nuclear weapons, or it has a long term aim to be able to make nuclear weapons if really pressed, or it just achieves regional power so that Israel loses control, it all doesn’t make much difference to Israel. Then the Iran nuclear threat is just a way to make it scary. “long term threat to regional dominance” doesn’t sound very catchy.
The National Intelligence Estimate of 2007 said that Iran had in all likelihood stopped work on weaponisation in 2002 – which supports the idea that Iran’s main concern was to match Iraq if the need would arise – while the strategic considerations against the US are entirely different. These claims were repeated last year. The current NIE is being delayed – according to Gareth Porter because it’s not mean enough towards Iran.
The sad hidden truth is that America-Empire wants a nuclear war in the mid east – is using israel to achieve it – all the while hiding behind the walls of America-Republic and out of view.
Our military indstrial complex fools us time and time again.
It means nothing to them that we elect left or right – the grand empire plan continues forward unabated, un-noticed and it would stomp on ANYONE, including presidents, who stupidly would stand in their way.
It seems like they know our deepest weekness and they use it against us on a daily basis: we can’t resist, nay we LOVE a good, warm and fuzzy yarn at bedtime.
Your step-up is accurate. When I see something in the American Legion Magazine about it, it will be way too late.
that’s the manifestation of the issue.
The irritant, of which Israeli opposition to Iranian nuclear development is a symptom, is mainly psychological and sociological, and complex.
stay tuned.
I don’t think that’s the case, Taxi. Undoubtedly there are some — the Cheney-Gingrich groupies — who want a nuclear war in the Middle East, I think there are other voices in the defense constellation who recognize what a major fubar that would be.
The 2007 NIE was an indicator of the fight that, I suspect, took place then between the Cheney factions and the opposing factions. It’s reasonable to conjecture that a similar battle is raging right now, in advance of the new (delayed) NIE.
Obama has been neutralized by Netanyahu; the Cheney faction and Netanyahu are in the same camp.
US oil companies stand to gain NOTHING from a nuclear devastated Iran. It doesn’t even make sense from a back-of-the-envelope assessment.
I think the odds are better that in that scenario the Muslims will continue to be the designated scapegoats. It’s that way already (along with Mexicans). Whenever Americans bomb a country a large fraction of the American population persuades itself that it’s because they had it coming, and if they shoot back it’s because they are terrorists trying to kill Americans doing their duty and if we kill civilians it’s because they were used as human shields or else they deserved it or both. And if they engage in genuine terrorist attacks against American civilians it’s because they’re evil, since we never did anything to deserve it.
This might be wrong, but it does seem like Islamophobia is the new anti-semitism–some of the same tropes people used about Jews in the early 20th century are just transferred over to the Muslims. A war where yet again American boys are killed by Muslims isn’t going to change this.
kinda handy to have schlock jocks like O Reilly and Limbaugh and Hannity and Beck, serving corporate media masters and fanning the flames of Hispano-hatred and Islamo-hatred.
There is a special project, the Iran Task Force, run out of Ashkelon, to fan Iran-hatred and to make sure “Jewish interests” are protected by governments “when the political opportunities present themselves.”
Yep.
Too, radio talk show hosts such as Michael Medved and Dennis Prager peddle PEP earnestly everyday; their voices warm with fake tolerance for those they deem enemies of Israel. They constantly put in cloying plugs for Israel, which always conflate USA core values with Israel’s. In a nutshell, they sell sell a dream of Israel as American as apple pie.
I agree with you somewhat Donald. Nevertheless when I turn to the right-wing dial on my radio more than half the time they’re drumming up hostility toward illegal immigrants.
American anti-semitism was never so great as racism against blacks, native Americans, Latin-Americans and Asian-Americans. Now the right wing but especially the pro-Israel right wing is drumming up racism against Muslims. Left to their own devices I think the right wing would be concentrating mainly on blacks, Mexican immigrants and probably Jews too, but now that pro-Israel Jewish right wing has taken over a lot of the leadership of the right wing they really do go after the Muslims.
I gotta disagree with Slater that the The pro-Israel “left” wing is any less racist but at least they put on a pious (but fake) face of tolerance.
Yeah, really. And where do you suppose Witty will be when that happens, huh?
Oh… right. He’ll shuttle off to Israel, kick out a Palestinian family and live in his “homeland.”
Just remember, folks, if anybody so much as gives us Jews a dirty look, they might as well be hauling us off to concentration camp.
When Americans treat Jews, considering what the Zionists have done, a tiny fraction as bad as they treat Blacks or other minorities simply for having the temerity to be alive, I’ll start worrying.
And if the punishment for inflicting Zionism on Americans is being given dirty looks and maybe even being called names, we’ll have gotten off easily, in my opinion.
What could be more severe punishment than having to see and hear our independent senator, Joe Lieberman?
Well, maybe having to see and hear Hagee tops that.
That passage reminded me of something Fredy Perlman wrote in “Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom” – link to libcom.org
:
“The State of Israel was not interesting to me during that decade, although I heard talk of it. My relatives spoke with a certain pride of the existence of a State with Jewish policemen, a Jewish army, Jewish judges and factory managers, in short a State totally unlike Nazi Germany and just like America, My relatives, whatever their personal situations, identified with the Jewish policemen and not with the policed, with the factory owners and not the Jewish workers, with the Jewish hustlers and not the suckers, an identification which was understandable among people who wanted to forget their close encounter with labor camps. But none of them wanted to go there; they were already in America.
My relatives gave grudgingly to the Zionist cause and were baffled – all except my racist relative – by the unqualified enthusiasm of second to nth generation Americans for a distant State with Jewish policemen and teachers and managers, since these people were already policemen and teachers and managers in America. My racist relative understood what the enthusiasm was based on: racial solidarity. But I wasn’t aware of this at the time. I was not an overbright American high-schooler and I thought racial solidarity was something confined to Nazis, Afrikaaners and American Southerners.”
So you grew up with the set piece instilled in your head; so did millions of Americans of every stripe and color. Takes a long time to unlearn the schooling, although it’s easier now with the internet; control of that ain’t so easy.
GIVE THEM ENOUGH ROPE AND THEY WILL HANG THEMSELVES
The Zionists think this ancient adage does not apply to them.
But it does and perhaps much sooner than many think.
Someone on this thread suggsted that dual-loyalist Jewish oligarchs like Haim Saban be required to pay reparations to the victims of Israeli aggression.
I have a simpler and more feasible suggestion. Stop all US aid to Israel and let the Zionist billionaires provide these funds themselves if they want to continue to aid the Jewish state. The idea of hard pressed American taxpayers being saddled with a burden the Zionists could easily handle themselves is outrageous. How dumb can the goy get?
Haim Saban’s companies are all registered in the Caymans. He doesn’t pay, so he bragged, US taxes. Poor US people pay to take care for the US roads he travels.
The whole tax code is geared towards the elite with capital to spend and invest. Wilson was asleep and so was congress in 1913 when they created the IRS and Federal Reserve; was quite a belated Xmas present to the unwashed masses.
The problem I see here is that America’s Jews view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the prism of their own experiences half a century ago in the United States.
The uninformed among them continue to believe that if they faced anti-Semitism in America, then the “barbarians” of the Middle East must surely have inflicted tenfold the anti-Semitism onto Israelis.
That point of view is rooted in a deep sense of victimhood, but also in a deep sense of distrust of non-Jews and racism toward non-westerners.
While the Jewish Americans of the 1960s where marching for equality hand in hand with African Americans, today’s Jewish Americans have all but forgotten that period now that they have attained positions of power in American society.
So, apparently, have African-Americans.
Avi,
I started reading “Iranophobia” the other day; it’s a slender book but complex. Haggai Ram sees Israeli obsession with Iran as a product of Jewish Israeli “moral panic;” with patterns of Jew-vs-Jew conflict and the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi pecking order — or rather, caste system: Mizrahi Jews (which is rather squishily used to include Iranian Jews sometimes, though the word more properly refers to Arab Jews) are looked down on as “Oriental,” and despised by Ashkenazi just as Ashkenazi were perceived as Oriental by Europeans, and so despised.
Since the European zionist project is to duplicate European society in Palestine, where Jews can be in charge, in order to establish the Europeanness — not Orientalness — of Jews, the presence of Mizrahi Jews in Israel reminds Ashkenazi of themselves in Europe: Mizrahi create a kind of mirror that reawakens in Ashkenazi the same sense of exclusion as they felt in Europe.
That’s one of the theses Ram develops.
It’s a fascinating book; great deal of insight into Jewish Israeli psyche, about which Ram expresses a great deal of fear.
I read the postscript to “Iranophobia” but so far have not found any of Ram’s writing that proposes solutions.
The only resolutions I’ve seen anywhere to what Avigail Abarbenal calls “Israel’s growing insanity;” that Ian Lustick calls “perpetual PTSD” and a “death cult mentality;” and that Norman Finkelstein calls, “lunacy,” is Finkelstein’s prescription that “Israel needs to suffer a devastating defeat.”
Oh — and Joachim Martillo’s suggestion that the assets of zionist billionaires be seized. That doesn’t do anything to help Jewish Israelis out of their fraught mental state, however.
So, I think a TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION project, and RESTITUTION are the only salvation.
Confession is good for the soul.
Slater is not completely wrong in his comment. Phil Weiss, as other bloggers, is in fact walking on a razor blade. While criticism of Israel is legitimate when it seeks objectivity and does not lose sight of the often contradictory complexity of the Middle East conflict, it becomes dangerous and counterproductive if it is instead characterized by an obsessive fixation on a single alleged offender, precisely Israel. Following the blog a few months now I can not help but note the strong preponderance of content and anti-Israeli rhetoric fielded in this blog. Far from seeking to assert an alleged Jewish self-hatred of the blogger, I claim, however, that the lack of a critical balance which is able to take account of and highlights the responsibilities and duties of all actors in the conflict, attracts an audience avowedly anti-Israel – but often also subtly anti-Semitic – and encourages the tendency to demonize the sole accused in the dock – Israel and always only Israel.
This bad habit creates a kind of impunity – a carte blanche – for all sorts of untruthful and libelous topics. So a commentator can shamelessly affirm that the Jewish people has no relation with the land of Israel, that there is no evidence in this matter, without someone who cares to correct his mendacity. Another may freely spread the theory that the Jews of Israel are all white Kazar converts. There are those who say that Israel started all the wars and commits genocide on Palestinians equal to what the Nazis committed against Jews. Or that the Israelis a week ago attacked the Lebanese, even if everything points to the contrary . Or that Jews control the world’s major mass media, not to mention the financial markets. Worst kind of propaganda that seems to come straight from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the Charter of a fanatical Islamist group. So the hyper-criticism of Israel turns out to be an own goal: instead of triggering a process of genuine reflection about how to resolve the conflict, taking into account all aspects of reality, it adds fuel to the fire of the acrimonious controversy and often – of the outright hate for all kind of dissent.
In this sense, I think that Phil would be well-advised to rethink the approach on his blog, certainly giving space to criticism of Israeli policies, but also putting emphasis on the responsibilities of the other side, both Palestinian and Arab/Islamic. Making the critical balance to his stronghold. Besides, to blame an alleged Jewish rightwing for a possible rekindling of anti-Semitism, is a way of passing the buck to the old way, without really wanting to understand the problem. Slater’s critical comments should instead be an opportunity to improve the quality of this blog that otherwise will hardly be able to make a positive contribution to the conflict’s resolution, but rather exacerbate tensions.
Let’s forget about “balance.” The oppressors do not deserve equal time with the oppressed, nor the guilty with the innocent.
Let’s try instead, “truth.”
WOW, it’s Witty on steroids.
it becomes dangerous and counterproductive if it is instead characterized by an obsessive fixation on a single alleged offender, precisely Israel.
Oh, jesus, Israel isn’t a ‘single offender’ — it’s a country of rightwingers enacting policies to their detriment and ours, hence the blog — and your efforts to render a nation anthropomorphic are ridiculous argumentation.
The rest of your blather accuses commenters of rights they have under the US Constitution. If a blog could have ‘resolved the conflict’, some enterprising well-meaning blogger would have done it already. Maybe you should comment on Witty’s blog and accomplish it.
From “Oh, jesus, Israel isn’t a ’single offender’ ” to “accomplish it.” is my comment at 10:20 pm.
MRW
“your efforts to render a nation anthropomorphic are ridiculous argumentation”
O course, Israelis are “aliens”….. This garbage is exactly what I was referring to. Thanks for immediately provide the proof of the pudding, MRW.
On the other hand, you’re right when you say that this is just a one-dimensional blog of obsessive anti-Israel and anti-Zionist orientation without further aspirations, as there are in abundance in the web – see dissidentvoice, palestinethinktank jewssansfrontieres and more of the same.
“On the other hand, you’re right when you say that this is just a one-dimensional blog of obsessive anti-Israel and anti-Zionist orientation without further aspirations, as there are in abundance in the web – see dissidentvoice, palestinethinktank jewssansfrontieres and more of the same.”
All of which advocate what you so vociferously and obsessivebly oppose – human rights and justice for Palestinians. That might not seem like a worthy cause to a facist racist like yourself, but to the rest of the human race, it’s significant.
You – the Palestinians – should start to accept democratic rules in your politics and society. After we can start speaking about justice.
Bdw, have you ever been to Israel?
I thought that when the Palestinians did try democracy, Israel and the U.S. jumped on them for voting for the wrong people.
“You – the Palestinians – should start to accept democratic rules in your politics and society”
I could say the same thing about you – the Israelis – who should start to accept democratic processes in other state’s politics and society. You could start by recognizing that Hamas were democratically elected, rather than puniching the Palestinians for voting the wrong way and then pretending the electino never happened.
And yes, I have been to Israel.
I have never been to Israel but Chris Hedges has, Jonah.
He watched Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian children “for sport,”
“Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered—death squads gunned them down in El Salvador and Guatemala, mothers with infants were lined up and massacred in Algeria, and Serb snipers put children in their sights and watched them crumple onto the pavement in Sarajevo—but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”
then he talked to Democratic and Jewish Israel’s Jewish elite, those noble people who have so “accepted democratic rules in their politics and society” that they elected moral monsters like Lieberman and Netanyahu and cheered as IDF slaughtered Gazans. Hedges talked with two of these upright, moral Israeli Jews; they blamed the deaths of those children on Palestinians:
I have been invited to dinner with a friend, a surgeon, and his family in their affluent home in West Jerusalem. His father fled Vienna for Palestine shortly after the Nazis took over Austria. They are liberal Israelis, no friends of Sharon and no friends of the growing religious right. They support the creation of a Palestinian state. I worry about them every time a suicide bomb explodes in the city.
At the table I try to make them grasp, just for a moment, what I felt watching the children on the dunes in Khan Younis. I tell the story. They admit that it is wrong, and then add, “But you have to understand, the Palestinians are brainwashed.” I concede the point, hoping only to impart the raw cruelty of what I saw. I try again. I fail. I fall silent.
Democratic rules in politics and society when they are being occupied? Seems like similar policy of the U.S. in Iraq – democracy under occupation.
So if the Palestinians accept democratic rules, Israel will stop building settlements? Or stop illegally detaining people who practice non-violent resistence?
I’ve been to Israel. My dad’s buried there. What does that have to do with anything? Believe me, my experience is completely different from say Donna Shalala. A shlameel like me gets better treatment even though she’s just as American as I am.
Now if you want to get into how badly the guy who was trying to rip us off for the cost of the burial plot, we can do that.
“Democratic rules” is just a fig leaf AND a red herring.
Why should the Israelis recognize Hamas? Is Hamas willing to recognize Israel? Is Hamas willing to reach a lasting peace (not a “Hudna”) with Israel? Is Hamas, although democratically elected, democratic itself?
But why are strong democratic rules in Palestinian politics and society so important to move forward? Because they are the only guarantee that a new Muslim state called Palestine next to a Jewish state called Israel will not possibly fall back into anarchy and terror. However, the Palestinian society does not appear yet ripe for democracy, as evidenced by their fratricidal conflict, although they expect from Israel to be inconditionally open and egalitarian.
So, you have all been to Israel. That’s fine – this, at least.
P.S. Psycho prefers to rely on reports of others …
actually, it is Israel that is engaged in “fratricidal conflict.”
The psychosis into which Jewish Israel is descending is a conflict of Jew vs. Jew: Ashkenazi vs. Mizrahi vs. Haredi. It’s Abraham vs Moses — Ashkenazi Jews cannot abide the notion that they are Middle Easterners – despised Orientals; and it’s (European) Jacob contending to take from (Oriental) Esau his patrimony; the Jewish mythos living out in real time.
That does not even account for the very real possibility that Arab Palestinians are more the selfsame Jews who stayed behind when Jerusalem’s elite were exiled to Babylon, more ancient Jews than the Ashkenazi Jews from Europe whose vision is to create Western Europe in the Middle East (wandering in the desert 40 years suggests geography not a strong suit).
Israel’s war on Palestine and orgasm to war on Iran are proxies for the wars Jews are battling with themselves, on themselves.
Jews have been at war among themselves throughout their history, Jonah; you’d know that if you’d get your head out of the nurturing belly of that American whale.
who the f&%k needs Israel to recognize anybody? What huge imago makes Israel think it has any authority to make demands on anybody? A rump state that cannot govern itself, that has no art, no literature, no architecture, no idea, no design that does not involve killing or that is not stolen from another — who the f&%k would value recognition by such a one? Does Miss America require the validation of recognition of her beauty by a guttersnipe? Gaza and the Palestinians possess their own beauty, their own integrity. Israel could only fantasize about being so communally centered and committed as Palestine; any state that requires the perpetual pity of the world to validate its existence is not a state worthy of existence, or of validation.
whiininini psycho prefers to rely on reports of others whinininini
any comment on the homicidal tendencies of IDF, jonah?
PS #1. I can’t imagine what would make me want to go to Israel.
#2. Israel would take one look at the Iran stamps in my passport and refuse to admit me.
Dear G’d, Psycho, and you even believe in absurdities you write. It’s must be your Psychodrama.
“Dear G’d,”
Oh, please!
You don’t mind thieving in daylight but to put an o in god, that’s oh, my! taboo!…
The spelling means also “ineffability”, thanky, similar to the notion of “Emptiness” in Buddhism or “Ghayb” in Sufism. Don’t expect that you grasp it, thanky.
Look jaundice..Only your religious folk write it this way for reasons that are easily understood. I don’t give a rat’s derriere if you’re religious or not, a believer or not, it’s your thing, but it’s the hypocrisy, the tartufferie, if I may, in that you steal in broad light (among many other nastier things), but cannot bring yourself to commit the supreme offense of putting an o where it belongs in a name..So much “respect” and observance of a taboo overpowers, in your mind, all the other ills and evils you commit every minute of the day..
This much I understand..
I don’t give your country more than 15 to 20 years before it becomes the Jewish equivalent to Saudi Arabia..Wouldn’t that be wonderful? ..We all desperately needed just another obscurantist religious state in the M.E.
“I don’t give your country more than 15 to 20 years before it becomes the Jewish equivalent to Saudi Arabia”
You don’t need to look so far away. The Palestinians themselves have never made a clear distinction between secular nationalism and religious expansionism.
any comment on the homicidal tendencies of IDF, j’nah?
in case you’ve forgotten:
“Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of whom were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they kill an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of whom are under eighteen. . . . but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”
your comment on this absurdity, j’nah?
“The Palestinians themselves have never made a clear distinction between secular nationalism and religious expansionism.”
Never?!! Are you sure? ….Well your ignorance is dumbfounding. Every single Palestinian liberation movement in the 50s 60s and 70s was secularist nationalist..until Hamas appeared on the scene in 1987.
1-Fatah – Largest faction, Left-Wing/nationalist.
2-The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) –
3- The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) –
4-The Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) – Ex-communist,
5-The Palestine Liberation Front (PLF, Abu Abbas faction) –
6-The Arab Liberation Front (ALF)
7-The Palestine Democratic Union (Fida) –
8- The Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF)
9-The Palestinian Arab Front (PAF) -
10- The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC)
All of these, ALL, are secularist/nationalist….
Until Hamas appeared in 1987..
This just shows how much BS you spew..
Is Israel willing to recognize the Palestinians as a dispossessed people? Is Israel willing to recognize the Nakba? Willing to recognize the 1967 war was an Israeli war of preemption? Willing to acknowledge what Israel did in Lenanaon, in Gaza during OP Cast Lead? It’s piracy on the high seas? The Irgun and Stern Gang terrorism that brought the birth of the state of Israel? Well, actually, Israel has recognized the latter–so why not incorporate
that awareness into its treatment of the Palestinians? Israel is only a viable demoracy for Jewish Israelis. And, wanna compare the economic, diplomatic, rhetorical, and military aid to date Uncle Sam has given Israel (sans strings) to that paltry sum Uncle Sam has given the Palestinians (mit strings)? As an American and a taxpayer, given that gross discrepancy, why shouldn’t Americans “single out” Israel for an accounting?
Non quite correct, thanky.
You demonstrate once again to have pretty superficial views of Palestinian nationalist militancy and the Middle East conflict as a whole.
From the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem El-Husseini, the father of Palestinian nationalism, who in the twenties of the last century called for the holy war against the Jews and infedels and during WWII collaborated actively with the Nazis; to his nephew Yassir Arafat, who repeatedly appealed to Allah in his fight against Israel; until the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades whose Qur’anic verse on their banner professes: “Fight against them! God will chastise them by your hands, and will bring disgrace upon them, and will succor you against them; and He will soothe the bosoms of those who believe” – we clearly see a fil rouge of Islamist belief which goes through the nationalist Palestinian movement. Palestinian Islamic Jihad exists since the early eighties and has carried out several terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Today Islamism – the political face of Islam – can be considered an integral part of the Fatah movement and identity.
link to meforum.org
Lancethruster linked to a long 1983 piece by Fredy Perlman, “Anti-Semitism and the Beirut Pogrom”
link to libcom.org
It is a great memoir of leaving Europe as a kid one month before the Nazis invaded his country and rounded up Jews. He went to Latin America and then the USA. The long article bears reading.
Wait a minute!
You say he went to Latin America?
Aren’t we continually being told that everywhere was closed to Jews trying to escape from the Nazis?
“Worst kind of propaganda that seems to come straight from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or the Charter of a fanatical Islamist group. .”
right from teh Hasbara manual. Point 145-333. When you are completely unable o make a conerent or congent argument, always insert a rfernce to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whether relevant to the topic or otherwise.
Shingo,
It’s quite instructive that those who continue to defend Israel’s atrocities, haven’t a genuine thought in their head. When they can’t mimic or imitate other arguments, they resort to plagiarism. Either way, their behavior is counterproductive and futile. That Zionism has been peddling the same shtick for more than a century, doesn’t help their case either.
This Memo to the President from Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is signed by
Ann Wright, Col., US Army Reserve (ret.), (29 years); Foreign Service Officer, Department of State (16 years)
Ray Close, Directorate of Operations, Near East Division, CIA (26 years)
Phil Giraldi, Directorate of Operations, CIA (20 years)
Larry Johnson, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Department of State, Department of Defense consultant (24 years)
W. Patrick Lang, Col., USA, Special Forces (ret.); Senior Executive Service: Defense Intelligence Officer for Middle East/South Asia, Director of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 years)
Ray McGovern, US Army Intelligence Officer, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA (30 years)
Coleen Rowley, Special Agent and Minneapolis Division Counsel, FBI (24 years)
begins:
We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war.
Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel.
This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens. …
[Not the most important part of the memo, but in connection with this thread is the following passage toward the end of the memo:]
Even if the U.S. were to be sucked into a war provoked by Israel, there is absolutely no guarantee that the war would come out well.
Were the U.S. to suffer significant casualties, and were Americans to become aware that such losses came about because of exaggerated Israeli claims of a nuclear threat from Iran, Israel could lose much of its high standing in the United States.
There could even be an upsurge in anti-Semitism, as Americans conclude that officials with dual loyalties in Congress and the executive branch threw our troops into a war provoked, on false pretenses, by Likudniks for their own narrow purposes.
We do not have a sense that major players in Tel Aviv or in Washington are sufficiently sensitive to these critical factors.
You are in position to prevent this unfortunate, but likely chain reaction. We allow for the possibility that Israeli military action might not lead to a major regional war, but we consider the chances of that much less than even.
Of course it’s not Slater but SMITH who I’m referring to. Sorry for the mistake.
Geez, can’t you get the targets of your slanderous accusations straight? I know you’re wielding a rhetorical shotgun and gunning down everything that moves but you could at least have the courtesy to make a token effort at aiming.
no sweat, jonah; nobody noticed: nobody’s paying that much attention to you.
Can someone explain to me how this tragedy is merely the “right wing” when 90 plus % of the Israelis polled wanted the Gaza massacre and asked for an even tougher “response?” How did the right wing get the majority rule, if they were not voted in by the Israelis? Just thought I would ask.
While you are at it, perhaps explain why atrocities and colonial settlements increased the most under left wing leadership? Just another silly question.
“I didn’t do it; don’t blame me; he —> did it.”
VR,
It’s the old Good cop, Bad cop routine. Apparently, it works well in politics, too.
I keep a blog, Notes from the Levant link to levantnotes.blogspot.com
in which this morning, I noted nine different everyday incidents from Israel over the past few days, any of which might merit their own blog post. I was simply too overwhelmed to publish one on each, because they are so repetitive, and wholly expected.
My problem is that, subjected to this regular flow of horror stories, I am finding it very difficult to separate my feelings about Zionists and Israelis, and Jews in general from outside that shitty little Levantine country.
Where do Haim Shaban and Chuck Schumer fit in?
Richard, I am glad you can mimic the talking points of Jerry Slater, you should be proud. Lucky for the Jews of this world you live in a third world shit hole and your thoughts and feelings about Jews are insignificant.
Keep hating, we won’t feel a thing…..
Zionism ain’t racism, huh?
“you live in a third world shit hole”
My my my!! Now look at that! And to think you’ve been well hiding all those considerate thoughts about those lesser countries with alternative life styles, all the time from us! Thanks for finally sharing..
BTW, for your enlightenment, dimwit, Thais, to pick up just one example, were voted among the happiest people on earth when the US, the paradise you call home, is ranked towards the bottom..Here, enjoy..
link to en.wikipedia.org
LOL…Israel would be a third world shit hole buddy if not for US taxpayers.
Right now it’s just a gold plated toilet we dump money down.
Someone mentioned that this blog is strictly about Israel and that is true, however there are things going financially in the US that are going to affect our support of Israel if financial scenario number two comes to pass and odds are it will.
Richard,
I think it’s important to keep in mind that while the world Jewish community hasn’t spoken unanimously against Israel’s crimes, many do, and many have sacrificed. It won’t be fair to them or to anyone else who advocates for equality and human rights, to lump them together. Because in doing so you would be going against those very ideals for which you stand.
The trouble is, Avi, that the Jews who object to Israel’s crimes are seldom seen or heard in the greater world. The message that keeps banging through is that most Jews support Israel.
RoHa,
That’s exactly my point. It seems that we agree. And that’s why I think that as a collective that which facilitated Israel’s crimes for so long, America’s Jews need to step up to the plate and do what’s right. Because if they didn’t, they will find very little sympathy when the time comes.
It took Germany several decades to recover from the stigma of being associated with the Nazis, let alone to recover from the ideology which many Germans some actively, and others apathetically, supported. Perhaps someone who’s lived through that period could shed more light on the subject, but it seems to me it took an entire generation.
check this out, annie:
To Be German
I meant avi. apologies.
ThaNKS, PG. It was a good and interesting read. And right on point. I emailed the author.
If and when the public comes to the realization that, as General David Petreaus, among others has said, our government’s unconditional support of Israel puts our soldiers at risk in Afghanistan as well as being a threat to national security, there very well could be a blowback against Israel’s Jewish supporters here in America. Except it would be against all Jews, not just Israel’s Jewish supporters, the reason being that once racial or ethnic hatred breaks loose, the haters seldom distinguish between who is and who is not “deserving” of whatever the punishment that’s to be inflicted upon the hated group. What’s more Jews (as the designated hated group) wouldn’t be protected by government officials who, it should be noted, undoubtedly would prefer to see Jews, rather than themselves, bear the brunt of any blowback. Nor woulf the Zionist state itself make any effort to protect its Jewish-American supporters,, other than to say, as the Israeli PM did four years ago during the 2nd Labanon War, (after French Jews were challenged in the streets by that war’s opponents) -”Since you’re not wanted in (France, America, any nation other than Israel) get thee to Israel where you belong*” What’ll prevent a blowback against Israel’s Jewish supporters in America? Jewish Americans awakening to the danger that could lie ahead should they remain on the sideline, thereby permitting Israel & its American supporters to get away with their claim that the settler-state speaks for Jews everywhere, rather than rising up en mass, denouncing Israel and demanding justice for Palestine.
Seems to me Jews need to learn to look beyond themselves. Do Palestinians make such poor victims that the flag of antisemitism has to be raised before American Jews will feel its a worthwhile exercise to oppose the evils of Zionism?
Oh that the common good was always foremost in the minds of humans, but if that were so, why the need for a golden rule?
nice
I haven’t been able to tell much difference between left and right ANYTHING for a good couple of decades now.
Consumerism trumps ideology?
A major part of the problem in the US is that Ashkenazi Jews, who dominate over all other Jews in the US when it comes to the worship of Israel, think of themselves as white and are comfortable with their racism. They prefer to associate with white racists than admit even the existence of Jews who oppose occupation and ethnic cleansing.
unreal. les, you can’t generalize like that anymore than you can claim sarah palin is like me because we’re both from the same ethnic background.
annie, according to Haggai Ram, les is on to something.
you’re comparison fails because whites in the US do not generally sort themselves into Irish whites, Norwegian whites, English whites, but Jews DO sort themselves into Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrahi Jews, or Western European white Jews and Oriental Jews. Israel is an Ashkenazi fantasy; Mizrahi Jews are a violent intrusion on the western European purity of the fantasy.
Here’s what Haggai writes :
Ashkenazi Jews, who dominate over all other Jews in the US when it comes to the worship of Israel, think of themselves as white and are comfortable with their racism.
would that include phil? medea benjamin? do you need me to list others. certainly you must understand there are plenty of ashkenazis who don’t dominate over anyone nor have any will or desire to. this is a gross generalization. it’s not even worth a debate as far as i am concerned so you go ahead and take the last word.
articulation is useful.
I include generalizations in my reasoning, which I presume is what most people do. That’s why we have the phrase, “the exception proves the rule,” for the Phils, Medea Benjamins, etc. Look again at Max Blumenthal’s videos of young racist American Jews in Israel who are obviously not the exception and consider themseves to be very main stream Jews.
Which Ashkenazi Jew are you referring to? Or are you referring to all Ashkenazi Jews? How can you be sure? Have you polled them. Unprovable generalizations (stereotyping) are the mainstay of racists. Are you one? As for young racist American Jews in Israel, I could show you hundreds of young Jews in America who couldn’t care less what happens to Israel, so wrapped up are they in the country they were born in and love. As for the Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Mizrahi labels, except in Israel, perhaps, you exaggerate the importance of such identies in Jewish life. And when it comes to fighting racism in this country, whether it’s against Blacks, Latinos, Gay/Lesbians, even Moslems, you might check out who’s in the various anti-racist struggles. Maybe you shouldn’t, though, because you’ll find many, many Jews. Oh, yes, I know, they have ulterior motives. Isn’t it wonderful that only racists like you have no ulterior motive. Some sort of chosen people?
What is taboo about raising the issue of white racism among Ashkenazi Jews, especially knowing that it is disturbing to some of them including Max Blumenthal. That’s like saying there is no such thing as (non-Jewish) white racism because some whites are not racist.
Point taken, but why do you ignore racism against whites in your list? Recently a black worker killed 8 white fellow workers simply because they were white, and then blamed it on white racism when the facts reveal that black worker was treated more than decently at work. The story is mostly being told without mention of the color of the perp or his victims. There’s tons of official minority organizations, and no white ones. Is this America’s version of stopping the clock in 1938?
There’s tons of official minority organizations, and no white ones.
white’s aren’t officially a minority last i heard.
Recently a black worker killed 8 white fellow workers simply because they were white
and you know this how? “A neighbor of Thornton’s said he had complained about “racial harassment” at work.“. maybe it wasn’t so simple.
the facts reveal that black worker was treated more than decently at work
more decently than what?
The story is mostly being told without mention of the color of the perp or his victims
this massacre occurred after a disciplinary meeting in which he got fired. it says in the article “The victims were located in various spots around the complex.” which indicates they were hand picked. it also says “Mr. Cirigliano was president of Teamsters Local 1035. He was present during the disciplinary hearing. ”
now i don’t know about you but a normal person might consider he was angry at being fired, he brought the gun to work because he knew he was going to be fired at the meeting and he shot Mr. Cirigliano because he was connected to the firing, not ‘simply because he was white’. another victim “Hollander’s cousin, a vice president at the company, was shot in the arm and the face”. hmm, vice president of the company who was firing him?
“simply because they were white” doesn’t quite pass the mustard w/this story although racial issues certainly could have played a part in it, i don’t know.
that is the core argument of Haggai Ram’s “Iranophobia: Israel’s Iran Obsession:” that Ashkenazi Jews cannot tolerate the existence of Mizrahi Jews — Iran’s Jews, in the utopian, idealized, white, western European culture that Israel is supposed to represent.
In looking at Iran and Jews from Iran, Ashkenazi Jews see themselves as the despised “orientals” in Western Europe, and they hate what they see. When Ashkenazi Jews see Iran as 1938 Germany, they are projecting their own hatred on Mizrahi Jews.
When American Jews arrived in Israel they were surprised to see “Black Jews.” Sounds racist to me.
If Ashkenazi Jews are so concerned about being seen as the despised “orientals in Western Europe, why is it that more Russian Jews now are choosing to immigrate to the West (Germany especially), rather than to Israel? As for Iranian Jews, there are about 25,000 of them. Do you really think that Ashkenazi Jews in Israel are projecting their own hatred on Mizrahi Jews? Is that opinion based upon your having queried any Israelis as to why they see Iran as 1938 Germany, or is it strictly out of your or some other anti-Jew’s imagination? Seems to me that it’s not necessary to delve into the subconscious to figure out why Israelis fear Iran. Their government has been bombarding them with propaganda relentlessly for how many years now? Just like our own government is doing, albeit, in a somewhat lower key. No surprise, this, because that’s what the drumbeat for war is all about. And, say, Israel attacks Iran, what would that be about? Empire USA being lucky enough to have a client state that’ll do it’s dirty work, so that, if things go wrong and there’s any blowback, most of it will be directed at the client state & its supporters elsewhere. Which means that now is the time for all Jewish-Americans to rise up and support justice for Palestine, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because the more Jews who oppose Israel and support justice for Palestine, the more difficult it’ll be for our government to claim that America is duty-bound to defend the Jewish state? Why? Because Jewish opposition to Israel and to an Iran War will invalidate said claim – “Sorry Mr. President, but Jewish-American opposition to Israel renders your claim null & void.”
take it up with Haggai Ram, yourstruly, it’s his research and his analysis, not mine.
I didn’t detail or even review the entire 135-page thesis — a complicated, multilayered thesis — in an 80-word off-the-cuff comment. I’m not even go to try to unpack your response. I’ll spend my time thoroughly outlining and reviewing the book, with the hope that you will then address the topic and thesis honestly and with intellectual integrity.
” Diaspora Jews cannot influence Israeli policies, but they are implicitly identified with them, not least by Israel’s own insistent claims upon their allegiance. The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews……The depressing truth is that Israel’s current behavior is not just bad for America, though it surely is. It is not even just bad for Israel itself, as many Israelis silently acknowledge. The depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews.”
tony judt
Judt gets it right yet again.
Phil, nb the complaints re the tree system here. Replies go awry. Can it be fixed?
Most of the Jews that I have known are leftist supporters of Israel. I don’t buy the rightwing claims. I really don’t care if Jews pay a heavy price for their activities. Afterall, I have heard about the Jewish zeal for justice my whole life. Turn-about is fair play and all that stuff.
I don’t mind if the Jews who committed or connived at the wrongs pay a heavy price. I do mind if Jews who had nothing to do with the crimes pay a heavy price.
And I would hate that any of those who stood by, supported and fought along side the Palestinians for their rights, be affected in any shape or form..That would be a tragedy..
so true, RoHa and thankgod; that is why more and more Jews must stand together and call to account those Jews who committed or connived at the wrongs, to demand that THEY pay the heavy price, and not be permitted to slink off with their booty.