Robert Siegel interviewed the Israeli writer Amos Oz on National Public Radio last night, ostensibly about his new collection of short stories, but Siegel wasn’t that interested in the short stories and soon moved Oz on to the Situation. Tell us about Israel, he asked reverently; and the tone of the interview was that Seigel was seeking reassurance from a great old figure of Israeli culture (such as it is).
Siegel asked Oz about the deal to free Gilad Shalit, after "being held hostage" for five years, and about the fruitless peace process that once seemed so promising; and Amos Oz said that he was sure that something good was about to happen, that there would be a deal. The settlers would move. There would be two states living side by side, maybe not as friends but at peace. At the end of the interview you felt good.
A lovely miracle. But for me there was an unpleasant undercurrent to the interview. Siegel is smart. He knows that Israel of beloved Jewish memory is in trouble; because of Netanyahu’s intransigence, the intransigence of the Israel lobby in the United States and Obama's collapse--the old positive image of Israel that American Jews had is dying.
I bet Siegel, who noted proudly that he interviewed Amos Oz years before, has that fond old memory of Israel. Why else would he refer to Gilad Shalit as a “hostage” of the Palestinians? Gilad Shalit who was a soldier in uniform and serving the endless hateful occupation when he was captured by Hamas. Why else would he allow Amos Oz to refer to the Palestinian prisoners who were freed as terrorists and murderers, twice? How many of the thousand are murderers? How many were resisting occupation as the Iraqis have, and the Afghans, and the American revolutionaries? How many thousands of political prisoners are still behind Israeli bars?
The unspoken anxiety in the interview was this: I am Jewish. I am in my 60s now. I grew up with a valiant idea of Israel. Then the 1967 war produced this occupation and why is stupid Israel prolonging it. When are you going to stop the settlements? All these people are turning against Israel. My children’s generation is turning against the great liberal democracy. They don’t understand how much this place meant to us. They are trying to delegitimize Israel. Isn’t that awful? It is wrong. You can't delegitimize this country, that feels anti-Semitic. I am going to ignore that. But what are you doing about it, Israel? We trusted you to do something. You are giving us a bad name, Aemrican Jews, just because we supported you, blindly. Why did you keep building those goddamn settlements. Oh I know, Amos Oz, you didn’t build them. Good for you. And maybe you are dreaming when you talk about the settlements going away and anyone finding it fair the crumbs of land they have left for the Palestinians—but I need to dream. I want to dream. I don’t want to wake up. Neither do you. "Thank you, Amos Oz."
Update. I said Siegel was in his late 50s when I filed this last night. I'm pretty sure he's in his 60's.
Phil, you could be right in your insight into Robert Siegel and his motivations. But you also could be just guessing.
Amos Oz personifies some of the problems of the Israeli Left.
Here’s the chronology:
2006: Israel invades Lebanon, intending to crush Hezbollah. As the war begins, Amos Oz, David Grossmann and other members of the “Zionist Left” hold a press conference to announce their support for Israel’s invasion. The war is initially very popular with Israeli Jews. Within a few weeks, the mood changes: the initially popular war becomes unpopular. Hezbollah gives a good account of itself on the battlefield: it’s nearly one dead Israeli soldier for every dead Hezbollah fighter. Israeli casualties rise to a politically unpopular level. At that point, Grossman and Oz jump ship and oppose the war. In the final days of the month-long war, Grossman’s son, a soldier in the I “D” F, is killed.
2008-20009: Israel, smarting from its bloody draw with Hezbollah, attacks Gaza. The war is popular with Israeli Jews. Amos Oz – are you ready for this? – supports the war. Later the war becomes less popular. Amos Oz jumps ship, and opposes the war.
There’s a pattern here. I didn’t hear the Siegel interview, but I doubt that he brought up the political track record of Oz, who might call himself a pragmatist, but in my mind gives opportunism a bad name.
Anyone who thinks that Palestinians are human beings, who are entitled to human rights, is going to find Amos Oz a very weak reed to lean on. Some Israeli Jews who have fought courageously against Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, but Amos Oz is not among them.
Amos Oz had always descried himself as a leftist, yet he personifies the status quo among the left in Israel. He’s a Labor party guy, think Olmert, Peres. And I never thought of him as a leftist. I thought of him as a hypocrite, a label that fits many so-called leftists in Israel.
But, David Grossman is a bit more honest, a few degrees farther away from Amos Oz’s hypocrisy and bigotry. Still, they are both Zionists.
Besides, expecting a writer to speak truth to power is rather futile when he is looking to sell some books to Americans. What was he doing in the US, anyway? Was he on a book tour?
Wow, this guy Amos Oz is amazing. In Februari 2001! he said like: Arafat is responsible for The Only Democracy In The ME choosing Sharon to be PM.
(You know, there are details with democracy only a writer can see. Grossman is in there to).
That’s a common trope among Israel and her supporters. Anything that might be bad about Israel, can always be blamed on the Palestinians — even the way Israelis vote!
It’s funny, all this talk of “Jewish self-determination” and they’re still slaves to their own xenophobia. To the point where they can’t even be bothered to feel responsible for the way they vote in elections.
Phil, get a grip. Schalit was held hostage. You don’t have to love Israel to call a spade a spade!
Gilad Shalit was a soldier in uniform. If you want to call him “hostage” then go ahead and change the Geneva Conventions by replacing all references to POWs.
But, you’re one of those American Christians who works with a Jewish guy — by your own admission — and therefore considers himself an authority on everything Israel. Apparently you don’t have to have a clue to click the Submit button as anyone with a computer can pretend to be an expert these days.
Get a grip on reality!
RE: “Gilad Shalit was a soldier in uniform. If you want to call him ‘hostage’ then go ahead and change the Geneva Conventions by replacing all references to POWs.” ~ Avi_G.
In point of fact, it is Israel who insists that a ‘state of war’ exists between Israel and Hamas. Israel claims that this ‘state of war’ entitles them to maintain the blockade of Gaza. If this ‘state of war’ did not exist, Israel would not have any legal argument at all for maintaining the blockade of Gaza.
So if Gellian is correct (and there is not a ‘state of war’ between Israel and Hamas, despite Israel’s claims) then Israel’s blockade of Gaza is unquestionably illegal (in contravention of international law).
RE: “So if Gellian is correct (and there is not a ‘state of war’ between Israel and Hamas, despite Israel’s claims)… ” ~ me, a priori
ELABORATION: Only if there was not a ‘state of war’ between Israel and Hamas (despite Israel’s claims), could Gilad Shalit have been “kidnapped” and “help hostage”, rather than his having been “captured” and “held as a POW”.
In that case, Israel’s blockade of Gaza would be unquestionably illegal (in contravention of international law).
RE: “you’re one of those American Christians who works with a Jewish guy… Apparently you don’t have to have a clue to click the Submit button as anyone with a computer can pretend to be an expert these days.” ~ Avi_G.
SEE: “New Confederacy Rising”, By Theo Anderson, In These Times, 10/05/11
“Testing, once again, whether this nation can long endure.”
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to inthesetimes.com
Excellent article by Theo Anderson. Thanks Dickerson.
Thanks for posting this, Dickerson.
“Schalit was held hostage. You don’t have to love Israel to call a spade a spade!”
!!!!
Indeed.
And Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians as hostages.
!!!!!!!!
Schalit was not a hostage, he was a captured soldier. But more than 160 Palestinian children are hostages right now. Israel has a long history of using terror as a tool of occupation and ethnic cleansing; these children are being used as hostages to terrify every Palestinian family with the threat of midnight raids where IDF soldiers drag children away from their parents.
The prophet Micah tells us that the Lord requires us “to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with (our) God, ” but Israel deliberately mocks every one of these requirements. If you “love Israel,” aren’t you embracing cruelty, injustice, and contempt for God?
link to imeu.net
According to the latest figures released by the Israeli Prison Service and DCI-Palestine, on 1 October there were 164 Palestinian children (aged 12-17) in Israeli detention facilities, including 35 aged 12-15. Seventy-six of these children have been sentenced, while 88 children are being held in pre-trial detention.
The number of Palestinian children detained in Israel fluctuates, said UNICEF spokesperson Catherine Weibel in Jerusalem. In 2010, on average 250 children were in detention each month, and in 2009 the monthly average reached 300, she said.
DCI estimates that each year about 700 Palestinian children aged 12-17 from the West Bank are prosecuted in Israeli military courts after being arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli military, police or security agents. According to UNICEF, more than 7,000 Palestinian children were arrested and detained by Israeli authorities over the past 10 years.
Gellian,
Israel doesn’t consider the Geneva Conventions to be applicable. What’s your point?
“Hostage” is a functional descriptive word, expressive of why the captor is holding the captive. Israel held thousands of Lebanese “hostages” after the 1982 war and has held thousands of Palestinian “hostages” right along, often 10,000. How do we know they are hostages rather than POWs or criminals being punished according to law? Because Israel opportunistically offers to trade them for things it wants, such as the release of Schalit.
He was a POW and also a hostage.
Similarly, the West Bank is “administered territory” because it is (like most of the earth) administered (really, not a very useful word, is it?) but it is also, and more importantly, “occupied territory”. Hah! It is also “disputed territory”. so West Bank is “administered”, “disputed”, and “occupied”. Only the last of these terms has legal significance at international law.
There are two kinds of writers: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder.
- Brian Aldiss
Zionist American Jews are like spoiled children — which they are, with all that privilege — “Oh please don’t take our fairy tales away from us, please let us go on believing in the stork, the tooth fairy and the burning bush, please don’t burst our bubble, for if you do you will bring about the ruin of everything we have grown to love since childhood….”
And I don’t know how much discrimination there was against Jews in the US when I see movies from the 1960s chalk full of Jewish names listed under Producer and Casting Director.
All I hear are whines from these people.
There. That’s a good dose of realism for today. Shabat Shalom, eh?
Exactly, Avi.
Well, the issue is that there is a power elite.
And that elite has always included Jews. But, while the average Jewish guy was facing bigotry, one only hears about that bigotry when its mention stands to advance the interests of those in power. It’s the same thing with the Holocaust. Who keeps invoking the Holocaust? Wheelers and dealer in politics and finance who stand to profit from painting themselves as victims, even though they have always had their dinners served on gold plates. ‘Victims’ of anti-Semitism like Alan Dershowitz and Haim Saban come to mind.
Must Jews always see themselves as victims?
Fierce debate has been raging in ‘The Independent’ about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Here, one leading Jewish thinker argues that until Jews shake off their persecution complex, there can never be peace in the Middle East
By Antony Lerman
In the wake of Israel’s attack on Gaza, eager voices are telling us that anti-Semitism has returned – yet again. Eight years of Hamas rockets and the world unfairly cries foul when Israel retaliates, they say. Biased media are delegitimising the Jewish state. The Left attacks Israel as uniquely evil, making it the persecuted Jew among the nations. Even theatres keep wheeling out those anti-Semitic stereotypes, Shylock, Fagin and the “chosen people”, just to torment us. If this bleak picture were an accurate portrayal of what Jews are experiencing today, who could deny that suffering is the determining feature of the Jewish condition?
In most Jewish circles, if you pause to question this narrative and suggest that it might be exaggerated, that it unrealistically implies a level of dreadfulness and victimhood unique to Jews, you’ll attract hostility and disbelief in equal measure, and precious little public sympathy. But in the work of Professor Salo Baron, probably the greatest Jewish historian of the 20th century, we find powerful justification for just such a questioning.
Professor Baron spoke out angrily against what he called the “lachrymose conception of Jewish history”, which placed suffering at the centre of Jewish life. “Suffering is part of the destiny” of the Jews,” Professor Baron said in an interview in 1975, “but so is repeated joy as well as ultimate redemption.” Another distinguished historian, Professor Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, said Baron always fought against the view of Jewish history as “all darkness and no light. He laboured mightily to restore balance”.
Baron, who was born in Poland and went to America in 1930 to teach at Columbia University in New York, died aged 94 in 1989, perhaps one of the most significant years in post-war Jewish history. With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the suppression of Jewish religious practice and cultural expression came to an end. More than two million Jews were finally free to choose to be Jewish or not. An astonishing number chose Jewishness and a remarkable revival of Jewish life began. This historic moment aptly illustrates the central truth of Baron’s critique.
Twenty years on, that revival continues, but the world’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza and the dramatic rise in anti-Semitic incidents in a number of countries since the war began have led many to paint a very dark picture of the current Jewish predicament. So, in thinking about the accuracy of this, especially in view of the poisonous weed of anti-Semitism that Howard Jacobson, writing in The Independent last month, claims to find growing in practically every patch of criticism of Israel, I wondered what light Professor Baron would have found in the current darkness. Would he have concluded that the lachrymose conception of Jewish history has returned and that a restoration of some balance is required? Have we Jews succumbed psychologically to a sense of eternal Jewish victimhood, a wholly negative Jewish exceptionalism, or is paranoia justified?
Some pioneering research, published as Israel’s bombing of Gaza began, throws some light on this. It reveals just how much the feeling that no matter what we do, we are perpetually at the mercy of others applies to Jewish Israelis. A team led by Professor Daniel Bar Tal of Tel Aviv University, one of the world’s leading political psychologists, questioned Israeli Jews about their memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, and found that their “consciousness is characterised by a sense of victimisation, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanisation of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering”. The researchers found a close connection between that collective memory and the memory of “past persecutions of Jews” and the Holocaust, the feeling that “the whole world is against us”. If such a study were to be conducted among Jews in Britain, I suspect the results would be very similar.
For Jews to see themselves in this way is understandable, but it’s a distortion and deeply damaging. As Professor Bar Tal says, this view relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. The Jewish public does not want to be confused with the facts. If we are defined by past persecutions, by our victimhood, will we ever think clearly about the problem of Israel-Palestine and the problem of anti-Semitism?
To justify its attack on Gaza, Israel threw the mantle of victimhood over the residents of southern Israel who have lived under the constant threat of rocket attack from the territory since 2001. Israeli government and military spokespeople seemed to get a remarkably sympathetic hearing in the media when they made this argument. But history did not begin in 2001. As the Israeli journalist Amira Hass notes, the origin of Israel’s siege dates back to 1991, before suicide bombings began. The relentless emphasis on Israeli suffering, to the exclusion of all other contextual facts, and the constant mantra that no other country would tolerate such a threat posed to its citizens over such a long period provided the basis for arguing that the military option was the only alternative. The victim is cornered and there’s only one way out.
But the popular Israeli phrase ein breira, “there is no alternative”, won’t stand one second’s scrutiny. There was a wealth of informed senior military and security opinion, especially following the disaster of the 2006 Lebanon war, which argued that there is no military solution to the problem of Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah. Even before Lebanon, in 2004, former IDF spokesman Nahman Shai, a senior figure in the Israeli establishment, said: “Despite all the anger, frustration, and disgust we feel, we ought to talk to Hizbollah. We must exploit every possibility to reach a compromise with them and gain precious time. Does it really embody all the evil in the region? What are we waiting for? We can always go back to fighting terrorism.”
Early in January this year, Israel’s former Mossad chief and former national security adviser, Efraim Halevy, said: “If Israel’s goal were to remove the threat of rockets from the residents of southern Israel, opening the border crossings would have ensured such quiet for a generation.” Daniel Levy, former adviser in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, shows clearly where the wrong choices were made: withdrawing from Gaza without co-ordinating the “what next” with the Palestinians; hermetically sealing off Hamas and besieging Gaza after the 2006 elections instead of testing Hamas’s capacity to govern responsibly; instead of building on the ceasefire, Israel was the first to break it on 4 November. In short, there were other alternatives.
The current flurry of diplomatic activity only confirms this. Tony Blair’s first trip to Gaza, Hillary Clinton’s talks with Israel’s leaders and stronger language on settlements and the $5bn pledged for Gaza at the Egyptian donor conference are all discomfiting signs for Israel’s polity, now in a state of electoral upheaval. They show that the Gaza offensive blasted open the doors to alternative diplomatic options, as well as the possibility of a new Palestinian unity government. Instead of validating the government’s line that this was justice for Israel’s traumatised southern citizens, it only served to demonstrate to the world, and especially to the new Obama administration, Israel’s responsibility for the injustice of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
It’s not a political judgement to feel compassion for Israelis terrorised by Hamas rockets, and it’s just the same for Palestinians living in a virtual prison in Gaza. But the objective predicaments of the two populations are not the same. To convince yourself that a turkey shoot is an act of great heroism, you need the “self-righteousness” and “blind patriotism” Professor Bar Tal found in his study. You see yourself as David against the Islamist Goliath. The world sees a powerful elephant and an aggressive, rogue mouse that draws blood. The elephant hands the mouse the power of veto over the entire Middle East peace process by demanding that the mouse recognise the elephant’s existence before any meaningful negotiations with Palestinians can take place. All this does is send a message of weakness: “We genuinely believe that our existence is threatened by this mouse.”
Professor Baron argued that you cannot understand the history of the Jews outside of the histories of the societies in which Jews lived. Yet this narrative of victimhood is sustainable only on the basis of a negative Jewish exceptionalism which severs the Jewish experience from the historical mainstream.
The hope and optimism which accompanied the collapse of communism and the Jewish revival in Europe in 1989 have certainly been eclipsed by a defensive, fearful, ethnocentric mindset, which makes a just resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict ever harder to achieve and casts a pall over Jewish life everywhere. So why are we reading our own times through the prism of a lachrymose view of Jewish history?
If you’re urging me to list the faults of the enemies of the Jews, to say it’s all because of them, you might as well stop reading now. Yes, of course our predicament is partly caused by others who wish us no good, but before we heap blame on them, I want to hold up a mirror to ourselves, to know what’s our responsibility. The liberal historian of Zionism, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, said it’s “wrong to deny the Jews the dignity of having made their own history, even its pain”. Consider these five interlocking points.
There is every reason why the Holocaust should be a constant influence on our thinking. But by insisting on owning it, fencing it off and seeing it as uniquely unique, we’re in danger of lifting the Jewish tragedy out of history altogether. And this process has been a conscious act. If seen as completely unfathomable, the Holocaust is easily used to justify extraordinary measures to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. This is a dangerous road to travel.
Being so defined by the Holocaust, Jewish leaders in Israel and elsewhere regularly use the tragedy to dramatise Israel’s position or the threats facing Jews. So when the US Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman described the attack on the Caracas synagogue as “the scene of a modern-day Kristallnacht” – the 9 November 1938 pogrom in Germany in which 91 Jews were killed, more than 30,000 were arrested and 191 synagogues were set on fire – he diminished Kristallnacht. But more than this: it perpetuates the view that we Jews are for ever the objects and never the subjects of history. This was never more than partially true, but ever since the establishment of the state of Israel, it has ceased to be true at all. Israel changed everything – whether you’re close to Israel or not. Israel acts on the world stage; it calls itself a Jewish state; what it does affects the Jewish position worldwide; it cannot pretend to powerlessness; it’s the subject of history, not the object, and in being so turns Jews everywhere into subjects of history too.
This is starkly illustrated in the fact that the UK Jewish community’s defence body, the Community Security Trust, reports a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents since the beginning of the Gaza war. This is not a new phenomenon. For some decades, incidents have increased at times of high tension or violence in Israel-Palestine. Jewish leaders and commentators are indignant at the implication that Jews worldwide are responsible for Israel’s actions. Don’t conflate Jews and Israel, they say. But matters are far more complicated. Most Jews support Israel; they feel it’s part of their identity; official Jewish bodies defend Israel when it’s criticised.
None of this justifies one single act of anti-Semitism against Jews perpetrated because someone claims to be angry about Palestine. But we can’t have it both ways. If you’re close to Israel, you can’t just own your connection with the country when all is quiet; you have to own it when what Israel does provokes outrage. The consequence of this is recognising that by provoking outrage, which is then used to target Jews, Israel bears responsibility for that anti-Jewish hostility. If Israel were truly concerned about Jews worldwide, it would think long and hard about the implications of this reality.
The incongruous truth is that while we are drawing attention to anti-Semitism more comprehensively than at any time in the past 30 years, I sense that so much of the Jewish world is more comfortable with an identifiable enemy that hates us than with a multicultural society that welcomes Jews on equal terms.
Any anti-Semitism must be taken seriously, even at the best of times, but our appetite for the apocalyptic assessment of the anti-Semitic threat seems to know no bounds. When the Labour MP Denis MacShane writes that “Neo-anti-Semitism is a developed, coherent and organised system of modern politics that has huge influence on the minds of millions” and that it “impacts on world politics today like no other ideology”, can we really take such hyperbole seriously?
It’s perfectly possible to acknowledge the pain caused by increased anti-Semitism but reject wild scenarios and counterproductive ways of dealing with the problem – such as demonising strong criticism of Israel. We should be able to have a dialogue about alternative ways of interpreting what’s happening and what needs to be done. Sadly, the Jewish establishment here and other self-appointed gatekeepers of Jewish dignity see this as traitorous and a denial of anti-Semitism.
Nothing illustrates better how we are in thrall to the uniqueness of our suffering than the shocking silence from most Jewish leaders that has greeted the rise of Avigdor Lieberman – a politician who, in Haaretz’s words, “conducted a racist campaign against Israel’s Arab citizens and is suspected of grave criminal acts” – to king-maker for the next Israeli government. It’s sickening that the leaders of Israel’s three largest parties have courted him and conferred respectability upon him, with not the slightest hint that they might be metaphorically holding their noses.
Before we put down the mirror, the final image we see is that of Lieberman.
We are not condemned to accept the fate which the closed-minded ethnocentricity of so many Jews dictates to us. Ameliorating our predicament, restoring the balance, could come from acknowledging modest but profound truths, even if we get to them through distasteful comparisons.
I know that the siege, bombardment and invasion of Gaza were not like the German obliteration of the Warsaw ghetto – a comparison that critics of Israel are spreading through the internet I believe. And our need for calm and compassionate examination of the reality of the conflict would be greatly enhanced if we could retire such comparisons. But if we pause to think of the suffering of a dying Jewish child in the ghetto and a dying Palestinian child in Gaza, who would dare to suggest that their suffering is any different. Yet, as Professor Baron seems to imply, we fall all too easily into the trap of thinking that there is something unique about Jewish suffering. There isn’t.
Antony Lerman is the former director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research
link to independent.co.uk
That’s very good information, mig.
Yes, a lot of these I’m-a-victim tropes are part of the indoctrination.
Avi: spoiled children, true, but with this difference: children grow up. The Zionists want to die without having their fantasy disturbed by close attention to unpleasant facts.
It’s perfectly accurate to describe Shalit as a hostage. There’s no contradiction between this and his status as a POW.
It’s also perfectly accurate to describe the Palestinian prisoners in Israel as hostages. Indeed, Israel has often called them “bargaining chips.” Which makes you wonder about their commitment to “we don’t make deals with terrorists.”
This is the point that people like Siegel and Oz don’t want to make. No, the Palestinian prisoners are terrorists, each and every one of them, and nothing else.
Thanks, Phil. I won’t give NPR a dime since it became NJR and won’t permit accurate reporting on the Palestinian situation. I figure let the rich Jews have to support it to keep it going. It will keep their money out of other endeavors. And NPR is having trouble getting general supporters in my neck of the woods. It never dawns on them that NPR is now looked upon with the same disdain many are heaping on the NY Times. It’s supposed to be a national radio. It isn’t.
And guess who else NPR is losing support among? Latinos.
I feel the same. However, how can we ever break the Zionist choke-hold on WNYC/NPR if we leave the funding ENTIRELY to Zionists?
The problem is that even a shadowed discussion of Zionist money (money received and threatened/feared not to be renewed) creating CENSORSHIP on NPR is vorbotten. doesn’t happen. THEREFORE it could well be the case that a majority of donors (actual and potential, dollar-weighted) to NPR would PREFER good reporting on Israel/Palestine, but there is no way to find out — the investigative question cannot be asked!
Shalit was a political bargaining chip. Period.
POW? Hardly. Our POWs lived in 4′ x 6′ bamboo cages half-underground unable to stand up for five years. With snakes and rats in their cages.
Shalit, according to himself, “lived with a few people” in isolation for five years and had TV. And if I remember correctly, he’s been in an apartment in Egypt for the past two years.
Jerry Slater pegged it: schmaltz.
But let’s see Israel bomb Iran. Let’s see them understand what a real POW has to endure. Israelis have never had to fight a war above sea level or 50 miles from their own beds. They’re whusses with big bad American weapons (and their own purloined from US plans) to play with.
My point in bringing up POWs was a worst-case-scenario kind of thing.
But NPR’s rhetoric is emblematic of the exceptionalism and hubris that is all things colonialist, to include both the US and Israel.
I mean, look at the extent to which those in power have perverted the language of conflict. Journalists and innocent civilians with no arms in their possession have become “Enemy Combatants”. Teens throwing stones at armored military vehicles and tanks in resistance of a 44-year-long occupation are “Terrorists”. But, a uniformed soldier, part of a tank unit, that imposes a siege and inflicts collective punishment against 1.5 million human beings, is a “Hostage”. Give me a #@$%*$& break.
Nothing makes sense anymore.
Could not agree more, Avi.
Remember where NPR was on the reporting of nukes in Iraq, in 2003? Exactly.
Two states at peace living side by side.
Is it even possible, jews have to ask themselves that question and wait for the answer.
Jews in america ought to be able to be proud of Israel, afterall they have contributed their lives work to that project.
Is Israel a Liberal Democracy?
RE: “Jews in America ought to be able to be proud of Israel, after all they have contributed their lives’ work to that project. Is Israel a Liberal Democracy?” ~ atime forpeace
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
SOURCE – link to en.wikipedia.org
RE: “The unspoken anxiety in the interview was this: I am Jewish. I am in my late 50s. I grew up with a valiant idea of Israel. Then the 1967 war produced this occupation… I want to dream. I don’t want to wake up. Neither do you. Thank you, Amos Oz.?” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Even renowned historians and seasoned NPR hosts will employ ‘defense mechanisms’ to avoid experiencing ‘cognitive dissonance’. Can you count the applicable number of ‘defense mechanisms’ involved here on one hand? Or, does it require both hands?!?!
TAKE IT AWAY SIGMUND & ANNA (from PlanetPsych.com):
SOURCE -link to planetpsych.com
ALSO SEE: Defence mechanism – link to en.wikipedia.org
“they don’t understand how much this place meant to us”
because they know that the one about a land without a people for a people without a land is a lie that puts not only the palestinians at risk
the rest of us* too
sooner, rather than later
which brings us to the occupy the world movement -
now circulating on the internet -
A Suggested Platform for the Occupy Movement In The U.S.A.
Peoples Needs*, Not Corporate Greed
*Cancel all students’ debts.
*Stop the foreclosures of people’s homes immediately.
*Stop layoffs of public servants; teachers, state employees, workers, nurses.
*Close all 720 U.S. bases around the globe and spend the money on the American people.
*Lower the military budget by 50% and create jobs and fund people’s needs.
*Tax the 1$ billionaires and their corporations. No taxes for those below the poverty line.
*Formation of the U.S. National Transition Council (USNTC) to transfer the power from the 1% to the 99%. The existing government of the U.S. is made of the rich and is for the rich. Unless the power is transferred to the people’s government no long lasting change will take place.
Billionaires attack, People fight back. -
and how’s this for a starter?
just the fact that money can purchase our government
that there seems to be never too much money for making war
yet not enough for even the most basic human needs
not to mention all the greed
as for the 1% over the 99%
transformation to the 99% over the 1% now in progress
if a single spark can start a prairie fire, what happens when suddently, almost everywhere, there’s this universal spark?
mvsquared?
cmsquared
m – the number of people participating
c – the collective spirit*
*spirit, as in those eighteen magical days in tahrir square
Phil: My children’s generation [...]. They are trying to delegitimize Israel.
No they are not. They are just criticizing Israel.
It was not just Jews who had the dream. Nor, oddly enough, had the dream much to do with Jews as such; to many it was the dream of a brand new nation arising from the embers of the war as a beacon of humanity and an example to the world. A lot died with that dream, not least a big chunk of optimism.
Just to set one’s Sunday off with a good old pessimistic sigh
link to maannews.net
I listen to NPR for local news but I believe it is more biased than any other news show. I listen and laugh at the pro-Israel slant. But I guess that’s where their $ come from.
‘Pecunia non olet.”
You give me the money, I will give you “NPR talk” the way you want me to.
Israel is like Chinatown, Jake.
Amos Oz faked and censored testimonies of Israeli soldiers about war crimes in 1967
link to warwithoutend.co.uk
No discussion of Amos Oz would be complete without mentioning the 1967 war book he edited called “Soldiers Speak” or “The Seventh Day” in English. This book is one of the seminal works of the Israeli “shot and cry” hasbara.
In addition the type of things mentioned at the link, Oz choose to ignore testimonies of the religious soldiers like Hanan Porat, one of the founders of Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful), who told Oz about the group’s plans to colonize the West Bank. Oz did not include any of this in his book apparently since it did not fit the picture of young Israelis he was painting.
Amos Oz’s autobiography is wonderful. But his mother was right . She couldn’t live in Israel. So she killed herself.
The country was structured by small minded people like his father with their parochialism and life defining hatred of Arabs
And it shows.
“Gilad Shalit who was a soldier in uniform and serving the endless hateful occupation when he was captured by Hamas. ”
Gilad Shalit was captured for one reason: to be used as a bargaining chip with the Israelis. His treatment did not conform to the most basic standards of the Geneva Conventions. He was therefore not a POW.
He was a hostage, held for ransom, the ransom being Palestinian prisoners.
“His treatment did not conform to the most basic standards of the Geneva Conventions. He was therefore not a POW.”
This is stupid. Even if it assumed that his jailers failed to abide by the Geneva Conventions, that does not change his status, it means nothing more than that his jailers failed to abide by the Geneva Conventions.
And given serial crimes against humanity inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israeli, he’s lucky he was treated as well as he was.
Hop
“He was a hostage, held for ransom, the ransom being Palestinian prisoners.”
Would you explain, please, which laws the treatment of the following Palestinian prisoners conforms to?:
15 yr old boy beatern so badly in custody that his testicles had to be surgically removed
30yr old man shaked repeatedly until he fell into a coma and died
man tortured in custody for 4 days until he was left paraplegic
link to lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com