Sheera Frenkel of McClatchy reports that even as Netanyahu arrived for the talks
members of his political party were in Washington to push a different agenda.
Danny Dayan, a settler leader and member of the Yesha Council, the lobby for the settler movement in Israel, was meeting Jewish and congressional leaders in Washington to try to convince them of the importance of expanding Israel's settlements.
Do they own us? Why isn't this a scandal? Who in Congress did Dayan meet with? Where is Obama?
Blame the Palestinian rejectionists.
How about “blame the members of Congress for undermining the negotiations.” Just because the settlers show up, doesn’t mean anyone has to meet with them.
Wannsee II — that’s what the conference is called at Yeshiva World :link to theyeshivaworld.com
This is but one among the many reasons why I don’t consider colonists to be civilians, especially not those who “live” in Hebron in houses they took by force at the barrel of a gun from Palestinians.
I believe that David Samel made the distinction that some of these colonists may have murdered Palestinians, but since we don’t know whether those who were gunned down had blood on their hands then tolerating their shooting is inconsistent with the moral distinction between military and civilian targets.
That’s where I disagree with David. Given the simple fact that colonists — especially those in Hebron — got their houses using nothing but force and intimidation coupled with their random use of violence against any Palestinian makes me all the more unsympathetic for them.
At the end of the day, what is taking place in Hebron is a slow process of ethnic cleansing. Every colonist that moves into the neighborhood knows quite well what he is supporting and what he is joining.
In the end, the only person I could feel sorry for is the poor child who was shot down in that incident by the culprits, whoever they happen to be. The adults in that vehicle, including the men and women knew quite well what they were supporting, and in what they were participating.
If a family of Nazi Germans in 1940 moved into a house previously owned by Jews who were rounded up just the previous day and a Jew with a gun who managed to evade the Nazis and evade capture was in a position where he could shoot that Nazi family, then I wouldn’t feel one bit of sympathy for them. Especially if I knew that Nazi family dutifully helped the state persecute Jews, and walked around city streets beating Jews, burning their stores and spray painting “Juden” on their front doors.
One doesn’t join the vile Hebron colonist movement without supporting their violent tactics and their racist ideology to the hilt.
Well said, Avi. That’s exactly what’s really going on in the West Bank and we need to call the settlers what they are — international criminals.
Avi, with respect, I don’t think murdering four Hebron ‘colonists’ is in any way justifiable. Everyone here is well aware of their violent behaviour.
McClatchy : real journalism.
Why don’t they just call the congressional leaders and ask them?
Let us not forget that Knight Ridder and McClatchy got their Iraq intelligence reporting right.
I never said it was justifiable. I said I have no sympathy for them. I don’t support violence of any kind. I don’t like it and I don’t think it’s useful to anyone, unless in cases of self-defense where one is cornered and has no way out.
What I did write was that I have no sympathy for them. In other words, I will not shed a tear knowing quite well what they stand for, what they represent, what they do on a daily basis. Like I said, you don’t get to live in Hebron as a colonist unless you’re filled with hatred and ideological fervor.
Those who choose to live in the colonies of the occupied territories due to economic/financial motives live in ones where the nearest Palestinian is a few miles away, unlike Hebron where a colonist would live in the second floor on top of a Palestinian family living in the first floor. The colonies in the West Bank are like country clubs, with well kept lawns, nice shopping centers, water aplenty etc.
In contrast, Hebron is the equivalent of Queens. So, those who choose to “live” there by forcibly terrorizing Palestinians out of their own homes are ideologues through and through. They are the Meir Kahanes of the “settler” movement, the Baruch Goldsteins.
Israel’s de facto policy of blood and soil is a mirror:
[W]ithout consideration of “traditions” and prejudices, it [Germany] must find the courage to gather our people and their strength for an advance along the road that will lead this people from its present restricted living space to new land and soil, and hence also free it from the danger of vanishing from the earth or of serving others as a slave nation. — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, (1971) 646.
For it is not in colonial acquisitions that we must see the solution of this problem, but exclusively in the acquisition of a territory for settlement, which will enhance the area of the mother country, and hence not only keep the new settlers in the most intimate community with the land of their origin, but secure for the total area those advantages which lie in its unified magnitude. –Hitler, Mein Kampf 653.
Phil, I know this stuff is serious, but “Tail Beats the Dog” is one of the funniest damned things I’ve read in a while. I love it.
>> Danny Dayan, a settler leader and member of the Yesha Council, the lobby for the settler movement in Israel, was meeting Jewish and congressional leaders in Washington to try to convince them of the importance of expanding Israel’s settlements.
It’s time for the humanists on this site to chime in with unequivocal condemnations of what is clearly destabilizing maximalism!
Hmmm…or perhaps Mr. Dayan is to be admired for his calm, calculating, emotion-controlled “warrior” approach?
Do you remember a hippie “guru” from the 60′s named Stephen Gaskin. He organized a very large commune in Tennessee called “The Farm”. Much of the current norm of homebirthing, soy food processing, and initial low-tech solar energy research (solar hot water) was hastened there.
I lived in a commune outside of Eugene, OR in 1973, partially a spin-off from the Tennessee commune. Steve Gaskin came to Eugene and talked about the uselessness of the term “blame”.
So I guess there’s no blame to be attached to the murder of the four settlers, if Gaskin is right. That seems wrong to me.
>> I lived in a commune outside of Eugene, OR in 1973, partially a spin-off from the Tennessee commune. Steve Gaskin came to Eugene and talked about the uselessness of the term “blame”.
And your point is…what? You blame Hamas, you blame “destabilizing” peaceful protesters who get shot in the face by Israelis, you blame the Palestinians for “failing to make a ‘better wheel’”, you blame pretty much everyone except Israelis/Jews/Zionists. Looks like you didn’t learn much from Mr. Gaskin.