Wolf Blitzer had Herman Cain on CNN yesterday and asked him what he thought about the prisoner exchange in Israel and Palestine. Pizza boss said he couldn’t judge it and Blitzer pressed him. He said, what if we had a bunch of Al Qaeda prisoners that we were going to exchange for an American prisoner? What if they wanted us to release a bunch of people in Guantanamo?
Palestinians are jihadis, was the message from this former reporter for the Jerusalem Post, who also worked for AIPAC, the Israel lobby giant.
On NBC’s Morning Joe, meanwhile, the koffee-klatch turned to two Jews at the table for their opinion of the release, neoconservative Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Mark Halperin (whose views on the issue I have no clue about but whose father is a liberal Zionist). Both men spoke for Israeli society. They said that Israel is a big family, and Gilad Shalit was like a missing member of the family, and so on emotional terms, everyone in Israel is for the release.
Blinders. Not a word for the Palestinian perspective. Not a word about Why Palestinians would seek to resist occupation.
Jewish blinders. Zionist blinders. Forgive me if I get confused sometimes.
Here are some good Jews. In the Israeli press, no less. People of understanding (thanks to Ilene Cohen). Gideon Levy, “Shalit is returning to a state in psychosis”:
Who isn’t against terror and for Shalit’s release? But that same sobbing society did not for a moment ask itself, with honesty and with courage, why Shalit was captured. It did not for a moment say to itself, with courage and with honesty, that if it continued along the same path there will be many more Gilad Shalits, dead or captured. In successive elections it voted, again and again, for centrist and right-wing governments, the kind that guarantee that Shalit will not be the last. It tied yellow ribbons and supported all of the black flags. And no one ever told it, with courage and with honesty: Shalit is the unavoidable price of a state that chooses to live by the sword forever.
No one ever asked it: Why is it permissible to negotiate with Hamas over the fate of a single soldier yet prohibited to do so over the fate of two bleeding peoples?
Instead, Israeli society now wraps itself in a self-righteous cloak of self-praise: How concerned we are about the fate of a single soldier. And what about the fates of many soldiers, of an entire army, an entire people?
And realist Akiva Eldar emphasizes that the core reasons for Shalits are not going away:
Hamas will exploit any opportunity to kidnap an Israeli, just as Israel does not miss any opportunity to assassinate wanted Palestinians. . . . / A minister who supports outposts and opposes negotiations with the Palestinian camp that is working to contain Hamas terror and supports the two-state solution cannot argue that prisoner exchanges “will provide a tailwind to terror and strengthen the Hamas government” (Moshe Ya’alon, during the cabinet debate on the Shalit deal ).
Herman Cain is a cardboard excuse for a politician.
His 9-9-9 plan won’t even raise enough money to meet outgoings.
Brzezinski nailed the sad Republican puppet show on Meet Joe yesterday morning.
I hate the settlers. They are going to bring judaism down with their old Testament Jewish fingernails are worth more than anything Arab sickness.
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2011/10/reward-offered.html
* Reward Offered
Want to make $100,000. Bring two murderers to justice.
As Maariv reports, as well as HaKol HaYehudi, the Liebman family who lost their son Shlomo killed together with Harel Bin-Nun of Shiloh, while on security patrol at Yitzhar in 1998, have announced they will pay $100,000 to anyone willing to kill the terrorists who were released as part of the prisoner swap.
* I spent several days in Palestine [which is where?]
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2011/10/phillip-weiss-is-so-but-so-upset.html
And even if the blog owner is a bigot with a tiny wiener he represents a massively influential Weltanschauung in Israel.
Maybe that’s because they couldn’t find a Palestinian who was dumb enough to go on and talk about how thrilled the Palestinians were that people who helped kill small children in the Sbarro pizzeria were coming home.
Eldar’s comment is more similar to Blitzer’s than different, even by your quote.
He does see the oppression though. Blitzer probably does as well, but doesn’t emphasize it.
If he were still an Israeli journalist rather than American or global, who knows.
Not a word about Why Palestinians would seek to resist occupation.
Or why they might want to see members of their family home. I guess non-people can’t be expected to miss their non-sons and non-daughters, non-husbands and non-fathers. If they resist occupation, it can only be because they “love death”. Non-people have no rights and no dignity.